Love is Needy

"Is love needy??

I think you are most in control when you are in love........"

This was a post by a Facebook friend and it got me thinking...

Yes, love is needy. 

Love needs to be met halfway or at least 70/30 and in shifts too. One partner may be doing the heavy lifting in one area of their lives or at a period in their lives while the other seems to coast along but as long as they stick together, the tide most often shifts. Requiring the 30 percenter to give more. It would be an anomaly for one partner to keep taking while the other does all the expression of love. If this happens to be financial in nature, it creates a power imbalance and a dependency that chafes according to the temperament of the dependent. 

The one who keeps giving may also start to get resentful. This is most obvious in cases when only one partner earns money or one partner has a health condition that makes them dependent on the other for their daily movement and all. This is why the emphasis on the nuclear family structure, especially those who desire a clean breakaway from extended family structure, is not ideal. Extended family members create a buffer when one of or both couples are not "feeling" themselves, a soft landing and refill stations for depleted emotion tanks. 

 No, you are not necessarily in control when you are in love. The partner that feels the love less controls most outcomes within the relationship. Their willingness (or not) to reciprocate the other's feelings frequently sets the tone, pace and direction of the relationship. Their nature and tendencies also will come into play. People will try to tell you that it is better that the man be the one that is more in love than the woman because women reciprocate easily but this is not 100 percent. Some women will become selfish when they know they can use "I love you" to get their wishes done easily.

Basically, love is reciprocal. We cannot restrict love to the giving aspect, we have to also explore the receiving of love. Even charity done to strangers is done with the expectation of judicious use of what  is received; there is expectation of gratitude, no matter how simply expressed;  and a pay forward when the receiver can afford to "bless" others. Now imagine love, which is a stronger emotion and narrower in its object of interest, being expressed without a need for or an expectation of reciprocation. It is impossible. There is always an expectation when two people are in a love relationship. Even neonates reciprocate when they are fed or their soiled diapers changed - some smile, and some sleep off so the carer can go do something else. 

I hold that reciprocity cannot be divorced from the definition of love. If not, why do we assess our mates? We assess the physical, intellectual, spiritual, social and even economic aspects of them before and during the love relationship. There is the place of measuring up too even though in measurements, there has to be a cut-off point, a point at which one partner will say of the other, "He's got most of what I like in a mate. He's got 70% and I'm cool with that," or, "Oh no, I'm going to have to hold on for my 100% babe, I'm not about that 'stooping to conquer' life". 

Like someone said, hatred is not the opposite of love, it is indifference. No one gives without expectation of receiving or expression of gratitude for and to the giver. The points that cannot and should not be determined by others outside the love circle, the negotiation points, are issues like what is up for exchange - is it attention, is it words of affirmation, is it money, is it sex, is it a promise of exclusivity - whatever, but something is always on the table being exchanged. This is why we have books like the Five Love Languages to help us be better at giving love, and receiving love. 

 I'm a romantic and I love love stories but I'm also keenly aware that no matter how intangible, there's a give and take. I will do an historical perspective to the meaning of romantic love soon.