Is love truly unconditional or just a power play?
When we love someone, we expect that person to be our support, to share our happy and difficult moments with us. But what happens when love is no longer free, but becomes an obligation? How do we know if our relationship real or did we just catch each other into a web of demands, expectations and conditioning?
People often think that they can't live without love. They see it as something that completes them, something that gives them meaning. But what if what we think is love is actually nothing more than an illusion?
What if our sense of belonging deceives us and we are not really happy, but just addicted to the feeling that someone needs our love?
Love that suffocates – when “I can’t live without you” means losing yourself
How often do people say, “He is my everything” or “Without him, my life has no meaning”? These words sound romantic, but in reality they reveal a dangerous trap – the loss of one's own identity.
Love should not be the solution to inner emptiness. If someone needs a partner to feel complete, then they don't love the person, but rather need what that person offers them - a sense of security, validation, value.
When it becomes a condition for personal happiness, It's no longer love, but addiction. And like any addiction, this one has its price. A person who becomes dependent on their partner loses their world, their dreams, their power. Instead of two complete individuals, a relationship is created where one gives everything and the other becomes the center of their world.
Love that demands change – can we love someone and transform them at the same time?
When we meet someone, we are fascinated by their unique qualities. We love the way they speak, the way they think, what excites them. Everything seems perfect until there comes a moment when we start thinking, “I would be even better if I changed this and that.”
In many relationships, turns into a silent battle, where one or both partners try to adapt their partner to their needs. This doesn't happen overnight. It starts with small comments, with suggestions, with friendly hints. But each such correction really means one thing - the partner as they are is not good enough.
To love is to accept, not to correct. When we start to mold another person to our own liking, we are telling them that they are not worthy of love just the way they are. And if someone agrees to such a transformation, then they are no longer the same person we fell in love with. In the end, they are left two strangers – one who has lost himself, and the other, who created an image he perhaps never wanted to have.
Love that becomes a contract – “I to you, you to me” as a formula for disappointment
Many relationships are built on the belief that everything should be balanced. Partners expect each other to provide certain things – one brings security, the other warmth, one provides for the home, the other for the future.
At first glance, this seems fair. But when it becomes a contract, it loses its magic.
“I gave you everything, now you have to give me the same.”
“If you truly love me, then you will do this and that for me.”
"I sacrificed myself for you, now it's your duty to repay me."
Love is not a commercial exchange. When in a relationship we start to weigh who contributed more, who deserves more, who is more loyal, who is more patient, true affection disappears. It does not measure, it does not compare, it does not expect. When love becomes a debt, it turns into a burden, not a joy.
How do we know we are loving and not manipulating?
Love is not a need, it is not a control, it is not a contract. Love is a choice.
When we love someone, we don't try to fix them, we don't expect anything in return, and we don't set conditions. Love means freedom - the ability to remain who we are while allowing our partner to be who they are.
True love doesn't demand proof, it doesn't demand sacrifice, it doesn't set ultimatums. To love means that it's enough for us that someone is happy, even if it means that their dreams and paths don't always intersect with ours.
If love hurts, if it oppresses us, if it makes us less than we were before – then it is not love, but a power play. The question is not whether we love, but whether we love in such a way that we remain free and at the same time bring joy to each other, not burden.
