#anyways its hilarious bc i genuinely feel like people mansplain all these things about love and shit online

[sapphic-bifrost]

healthy love is not transactional, but it is reciprocal. i am tired of people talking about “fairness” as if equality in love means matching action-for-action and penny-for-penny. i hate it when people use “transactional” to describe love. its such an unfeeling, simplistic word for such a deeply complex concept. love is not a balancing of checkbooks or a division of hourly labor, but it is a give and take.

it is a mutual supporting of each other, the understanding that sometimes one of us will fall behind and the other will have to pick up the slack. it is the understanding that we are both allowed to fall, and depend on the other. it is the understanding that we will ask each other for help when we need it.

it is the understanding that neither of us will simply sit down, knowing the other will assume the best intentions and pick up the slack anyway. it is the understanding that we would rather work a bit harder to hold up our end rather than allow the other to carry the brunt of the extra work.

it is the understanding that we each will not take advantage of the other’s love, will not allow the other to take more work than they should, even if they can. even if they want to.

it is the understanding that there is an inherent, objective middle ground that must must must be the baseline. that if this middle ground, if this average, if this “normal” dynamic settles somewhere too far from the center, that frustration and exhaustion and perhaps even bitterness will eventually and inevitably seep into every effort.

it is the understanding that those who are keeping score are either unwilling to do more than is exactly necessary to balance books, or simply cannot do anymore and are desperate for assistance. it is the understanding that a relationship with a scoreboard is not one where everyone is happy.

love is not transactional. transactions are one-for-one, they are defined and cold and are a means to an end. describing love with such a word makes me feel that there are people who think love is only what you can get from it. as if love is measured in goods and services, in hours and dollars. instead of in smiles and laughs and secrets and gentle touches. instead of in the warm feeling you get when someone makes you feel content with the world.

transactional implies you either get or you give. but its a bit of both, isn’t it? isn’t it a joy to care for someone else? isn’t it a joy to make someone laugh or carefully plan to surprise someone or put effort into a tiny thing to make someone’s day just a bit better? is it not a privilege to be able to show love to others? is it not rewarding to truly put blood, sweat, and tears into something and have your efforts produce something wonderful? i wonder what kind of person only values what they can get from love and not what they can give. i wonder what kind of person could make it an unpleasant experience to love them. i wonder what kind of person could stand to be loved and not want to reciprocate. i wonder what kind of person could ever think of love as anything at all like a transaction.