How Much Does Love Cost

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Once I was asked - can love between two adults be unconditional? I didn't find a simple answer back then. How would you answer this question

People are social beings by nature. We cannot live alone. This circumstance presupposes an exchange, ideally fair, but this is not always the case. It includes resources, products of production, labor, relationships, emotions … Stop !!! Is something wrong or is everything correct?

For those who answer negatively to the first question about love, this listed series of interchange does not raise objections. Indeed, they will remember the balance in the take-give relationship. One can cite as an example the popular book of the American preacher Gary Chapman "Five languages of love", which is a direct practical manual for translating feelings into market equivalents: you are a gift to me, and I will give you time, so we will equalize our emotional contributions, and it will be fair. Others will say that feelings cannot be bought, that emotions cannot be controlled.

It seems that both are right, but there is a contradiction: a fair exchange must be based on something, otherwise it, fair, is impossible. You can't get a fair deal if both disagree on the value. So everything has a price, including love? This question is more philosophical than psychological, but one or another answer to it assumes different values and different behavior in relationships.

The love of mother and baby is unconditional, otherwise he will not survive. The maternal instinct is inherent in nature. She doesn't think, she just loves. As he grows up, the baby begins to comprehend the intricacies of exchange and the market value of feelings. Saying to my grandmother in time: "I love you" guarantees ice cream or even a smartphone. Grades at school, in addition to their main function, suddenly begin to influence the attitude of parents. Quite sad from my mother: “I will not love you if you don’t obey.” Everything has a price, and in adolescence you can get a bill that is not easy to pay: I suffered you, gave birth, nursed you, took care of you, now I want love and respect, or simply, without any fuss: I am your mother, so you must love me. It seems that this is not a completely fair deal. When it began, there was no one to conclude a contract with. This is how the price of the issue permeates love.

As you know, the main thing in business is profit. Often, in a relationship, a person, consciously or not, also expects a profit. These expectations spoil life very much, because, more often than not, they are not met. If the value of a good or service is formed by a social contract, then difficulties arise with the value of emotions. The value of one's own feelings is overestimated, and the partner is underestimated or vice versa. In general, the main difficulty is in their assessment, so it is more difficult to conclude an agreement. How not to remember the classic here - I gave you the best years, and you cheated on me, betrayed me! Or - I earn money for us, so you must love and please me! Well, the cherry on the cake - everything has a price! If you look closely, many of the less radical claims are driven by these simple motives.

Everything is clear with the contract. I paid for a kilo of sausage and I want to get it. By analogy, a mother has devoted most of her life to her child and expects an adult son or daughter to be grateful to her for this. My wife is disappointed - I love him very much, but he doesn't appreciate it. Attempts to weave feelings into market relations are visible at every turn. Expecting emotional balance involves counting in your head. Problems arise because the settings do not match. Something goes wrong, life has failed. It is not possible to exchange sausage for love. In short, this is a difficult task - to correctly determine the value of what cannot be touched and seen!

What to do, the reader who has mastered all this will ask? Well, you can enter an emotional currency and the exchange rate against currencies will be normal, and the cost will be determined by the degree of body tension or by the number of tears shed. But seriously, each individual person would feel much better if he thought less about his value, calculated less how much emotion he put into the relationship, how much he should get in return. How much is a sincere smile worth? How much is coffee in bed and a warm blanket thrown unexpectedly over your knees? How much is a friend's shoulder? How much is delight in the eyes of a lover? How much is the light and warmth warming from the inside from the feeling of closeness?

The paradox is that as soon as you try to calculate it, all the gold turns into shards, like in the cartoon about the golden antelope. This thought will immediately shift the focus of attention to the future, to the future, and you will set a new goal, which will receive something in return for your emotional investment. I care and have the right to count on reciprocity. And now you will enjoy not what you are doing now, but what you will receive in return, in the future. It is far from the fact that you will wait in the form as imagined.

Emotional calculator will turn on expectations and you will become a hostage to them. This will be accompanied by doubts - am I doing enough to make it appreciated? Am I getting too little in return, or am I good enough for this love? He's not my match. Such thoughts will spin in my head, turning them off from the process of relationships, and this particular moment will cease to be magical, it will turn into another mechanical action. This happens in sex, it does not work out very well if thoughts do not allow you to focus on the process. "Am I doing the right thing? What if he notices my excess weight? I have to be cool in bed, otherwise …" In general, the result is the worse, the more thoughts and expectations.

In our age of market relations, it is difficult to refrain from calculating everything, including feelings. Pictures are sold at auctions for a lot of money, films have a huge budget, a ticket to a concert costs money. This is a price to pay for emotions. And here everything is fair, well, almost, because not everyone who paid for it has them. Rembrandt or Schnittke will still not be able to make a claim. But it’s easy for a partner: I’m with all my heart, and you… And it seems that everything is fair, you tell me - I tell you, but the result is disappointment. In business, the larger the transaction amount, the more likely you are to get a good discount. Such a funded system does not work in relationships. Love arises contrary to logic, as in the well-known Russian proverb: "Love is evil …", and only gratitude appears in response to a partner's concern. It even happens that attentiveness to his interests is taken for weakness, because once this character was taught that life is a struggle for a place in the sun. Reason and feelings do not always coincide, it is just that different parts of the brain are responsible for this.

There is no love without emotional exchange. Only it happens according to some completely different rules. She quickly shrinks from indifference, does not tolerate violence, and this does not depend on the quantity. Even one harsh look or phrase can question her. She is very strong but vulnerable. There is also chemistry that cannot be calculated and evaluated. In outer spaces and microcosm, the laws of earthly mechanics do not work. Market laws do not work in the space of love. It fades away without reciprocity, as the light of a campfire slowly fades away, turning into a flicker, barely noticeable in the night, if no wood is added to it. Only the energy intensity of the emotional firewood of a love fire is very different, it is difficult to determine what exactly is needed to maintain it. Well, time. Estrogens and testosterone fall, curlers and belly appear, the distribution of roles is debugged, the exchange price is determined, and it’s not even decent to talk about love.

Mother Teresa, world famous for her good deeds, invested not only material but also love in charity and never expected anything in return. She was happy, this was evident not only from the interviews, but also from the footage of the filming. The secret is simple: you can have fun giving your warmth. In her "prayer" - a kind of life motto, she said that there will be difficulties and falls, that you will face injustice, misunderstanding and ingratitude, but you do good because you need it, and everything else is not important. In other words, don't expect it. Giving warmth is a goal, the achievement of which gives happiness. Mother Teresa is famous for the fact that most of us cannot resist the penetration of business into relationships. This is how we were brought up. A sense of justice based on the correct exchange of goods and emotions reacts quickly if something is disturbed in this habitual order.

Marriages of convenience are stronger than those of love. They have a contract and their price is fixed. You can buy sex, obedience, someone will say that you can buy love, but then you need to immediately agree on what to invest in this concept. With love it is more difficult, it, like happiness, slips away when you try to catch it, just like a sun bunny, light and intangible. She runs "as fast as she can" from attempts to evaluate, ring, fasten, tame. However, I do not insist, for someone really, everything has a price.