This is not a normal show for me.
This is a bit of a pop-in to explore and unpack a concept
that I've been encountering so much in my work with my clients
really, really interesting stuff.
It's the concept of transactional love.
The concept of transactional love.
If any of y'all relate to--
Hey Kim, last how are you doing, Mary, good to see you.
Just so you know, I will be keeping my eyes on the road
and so you have nothing to worry about.
I may glance to just see comments and everything,
but I am safety first.
I got two little puppies here next to me.
I am 100% committed to that.
What I want to explore today, and by the way, if you're watching on YouTube,
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Towards the end guys, as I do always, I do a full wrap up
and I emphasize all the best takeaways from this video at the end of the video.
All right.
What I want to explore and what I want to unpack with you all
is the concept of transactional love.
That we have to give love to get love.
That we have to earn love.
Can any of y'all relate to that?
Can any of y'all relate to the concept of feeling like
you have to earn the right to be loved by somebody?
Hi, Lorinda, how's it going? Nice to see you.
Because I know in my work with women and in my own life,
I worked out with those women around the
and then also in my own life and in my own experience for a long time,
I'm seeing that a lot of people are viewing love as the transaction.
That they have to give it in order to earn,
that they have to earn the right to receive the love of people.
I want to start off by saying right off the bat
that you do not have to earn the right to be loved.
That is a foundational truth and something that I think that we forget
because we're conditioned to believe something other than that
by our parents, by our families, by early-stage relationships.
We're conditioned to believe that we have to earn the love of our parents.
That you have to mow the lawn to get acknowledgement from your father.
That you have to do this to get love from your mother.
Even at an early age,
we develop with this wiring that especially with the opposite sex,
that we have to earn their love.
Does that make sense?
What's up, Sarah? How you doing right, my dear?
What's up Brandon, bro? How you doing my man?
This all plays down to a deeper issue that I see
and it's the issue of seeing love as a currency.
It's all about seeing love as a currency.
We view love as this transactional currency
that are like, okay, well, if I want to receive some currency,
if I want to get something, then I have to give something back.
I think that that's such a dangerous way to look at it
because it makes love conditional.
Whenever we start seeing love as a transaction
and we start viewing love as a currency,
one of the biggest dangers is that it makes our love conditional,
that we are giving love with an expectation that we're going to get it back.
Anytime, guys, I say this over and over and over again,
is giving love with an expectation that we're going to get it back from somebody else,
is that an empowered or a disempowered position to be in?
What do you guys think?
Y'all know it is a supremely disempowered position to be in
to be giving love with an expectation,
to be really setting any concrete expectation of,
okay, I did this for you now, now you're going to do this for me.
Any time we set our hard fast expectation on another person,
we're giving our power away to them.
It's a very dangerous space to be in and it's setting yourself up for disappointment.
We have to be really careful about viewing love as a currency
and doing relationships as transactional
because when we do that,
we are setting ourselves up for disappointment,
we're giving our power away
and we're setting up a dynamic where the whole relationship becomes very gamy.
Well, you did this for me, now, I'm going to do this for you
and we're in this continuing--
it's almost like we're bartering
for love and attention and affection with our partner.
What's up, Michelle? How you doing my dear? Good to see you.
This is something that we got to be careful about
because a lot of us have conditioning around this from our childhoods.
We have conditioning that we had to earn the love of our father
or we had to earn the love of our mother.
Love was something that had to be earned.
You do not have to earn the right to be loved.
You are worthy of being loved purely because you exist,
purely because of who you be, because of who you are right now,
you are worthy of love.
You are lovable and that you're enough.
You're enough to be loved simply for existing.
In order for us to overcome this, we get to stop looking at love as a currency
that we have to give in order to get
because here's the funny thing,
when we give love, we do oftentimes get love back,
but not because of our expectation.
When we give love, we get love back
because anytime we give away love, we create more love.
Love is not a finite resource for us,
but when we're giving love,
expecting to get it back and we need to get it back,
that expectation is us seeing love as a finite resource
and we do not get to do that.
We don't get to do that.
We don't get to see love as a control mechanism.
How many of you guys--
Give me a one if you can relate to love being a control mechanism.
Have you been controlled by someone who loved you
and did they use that love as a way to control you
or have you used love as a way of controlling somebody else?
This is a super, super, super important thing for you to look at
and reflect on in your life.
Do you have a pattern of love being transactional?
This is especially true with people who love to support others.
People who are supporters, a lot of women are supporters.
I am a supporter.
A lot of my clients are supporters.
We view love as this thing that we give away to people
and we use it as a basis of creating safety and stability in relationship.
Those are a couple of initial important points
is that you do not have to earn the right to be loved.
That is super important.
The second point is love is not a transaction
and whenever we give our love conditionally upon receiving it back,
then we're giving our power away
and we're setting ourselves up for disappointment, fundamentally.
Are you with me on this?
Another point that I want to make
that's super important around this is is around the concept of ROI.
ROI.
What's ROI stand for?
Tell me guys, what does ROI stand for?
Hannah Elizabeth, how are you doing my dear?
ROI stands for return on investment.
This is where I see a lot of women getting hung up.
I see a lot of women getting hung up on getting ROI
out of men that they've invested a lot of time, a lot of energy and a lot of love into.
This I see, especially a lot with women
is that they'll stay connected
in toxic relationships or in situations and in experiences
where they're not getting what they're worth,
they're not being treated in a way that's worthy of them
because they've invested so much time and so much energy in that person.
Again, that's viewing love as a currency.
That's doing this whole thing as a transaction
and so the mindset behind it, at least subconsciously,
is like okay, well, I've invested all this time, all this energy,
all this everything in this person,
I need to get a return on that.
That's just a dangerous, dangerous game to play, guys.
I'm going to turn off just to be responsible and to finish doing this
because I do want to look at you guys as I'm talking about this.
Have you guys ever done that?
Especially the ladies here?
Have y'all ever been in a situation with a man
where you've stayed with him even though it wasn't working out
because you're like, well, I've invested all this time,
all this energy, all this X, Y, and Z in this guy.
I got to get a return on this.
Maybe you're not thinking that consciously
but at some level, that's what's keeping you in the game.
Can you relate to that?
Kim can relate to that.
I know Mary can.
I know a lot of women can, a lot of my clients have
and again, guys, it's not a weakness that you love so deeply
and it's not a weakness that you want to get a return
from a man that you're in a relationship with.
It's not.
It's beautiful that you're able to love so deeply,
but when you allow it to keep you connected to toxic situations,
then it becomes something that harms you rather than helps you.
It would be like in the stock market, investing in a company
thinking that you're going to make a lot of money off it
and then the stock starts tanking
and then even though the stock's tanking, you could still cut your losses
and you can still leave, but you're determined to get this ROI
because you've put in so much money
and you've invested in the vision of what this company was going to be.
You just ride that ship all the way down into the ocean and into the abyss,
and then it ends up bottoming out on you.
I want you guys to just look at where have you allowed
needing to get a return on your investment in a relationship,
where has that stopped you from walking away from something toxic?
Hi, Michelle, how you doing? What's up, Michelle?
Michelle agrees.
Kim says she left and it was the best thing she ever did
and that's beautiful, Kim, and I'm so happy for you.
I'm telling you, guys, Kenny Rogers said it best,
you gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them,
know when to walk away and know when to run.
Don't count your money when you're sitting at the table,
there'll be plenty of time for counting when the gambling's done.
I think we could all agree, yes, I did just do an entire chorus
of The Gambler by Kenny Rogers but I think it's really important, guys,
because we have realize that embarking on a relationship is an assumed risk.
There's going to be a degree of investment.
Women come to me and they're like, well, I want to be in a relationship,
but I don't want to risk getting hurt
and it's like, nope,
that's not the way that it works.
If you want to be in a meaningful, heartfelt relationship,
you get to risk being hurt.
That's part of the game.
That's part of the deal,
but it doesn't mean you get to just keep yourself stuck in a toxic situation
just because you've invested that time in it.
Don't let your need to get an ROI on a man or a relationship or a situation
sink your life or keep you tied to someone who's become an anchor in your life.
Again, this all goes back to that central theme of love is currency.
Love is a transaction.
Emotions are currency.
We really get to change that because fundamental in the concept of currency
is the concept of scarcity.
You feel me there guys?
If we're looking at love as a currency, it means there's a finite amount of it
and we're conditional in how we're giving and getting it back,
but love is an infinite resource that we can generate from within ourselves.
Love is not a currency.
Love is an energy.
It's an energy that we always have more of to give
provided that we allow ourselves to unlock it.
When we give love away,
it's not like we're giving it away and we don't have more to give.
We get to anchor ourselves in the fact that we are empowered
because we are infinite springs of love.
We are infinite Springs of connection.
Just because we connect with somebody and they don't work out,
it doesn't mean that we're never able to connect again.
We get to be willing to give love unconditionally.
We get to be willing to connect with people without conditions.
We get to be willing to show up vulnerably
and recognize that just because we're hurt, it doesn't mean that we can't heal from that.
Just because we don't get the love back that we want,
doesn't mean that it wasn't worth it to give that love in the first place.
I would rather to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Those are words that resonate deeply in my heart right now
and those are words that I choose to live by.
It's much more painful for me to think about
never having the opportunity to love and connect.
That's much scarier to me.
Hi, Rachel, how's it going? Hi, Mariposa.
It's much scarier to me to think about
the possibility of not loving and not connecting
and holding myself back from that,
than allowing myself to connect and then having it not work out.
Every relationship is going to end one of three ways.
You're going to get married and stay together forever
or you're going to break up or one or both of you is going to die.
That's it.
Every relationship has a beginning, a middle and an end.
If we allow the beginning or the middle or the end
to stop us from embarking on the journey,
we're cutting ourselves off from vital parts of the human experience.
What's up, Lee brown? How you doing, Magda?
Again, circling back to where we started with this,
love doesn't get to be transactional because love is infinite
and it's an infinitely recurring resource flowing out of us.
We don't get to look at love as a currency
because when we look at love as a currency, we start to look at it as a transaction.
That's dangerous because this is not about you getting a return on your investment,
this is about you learning to love and give and expand and grow
and connect in the infinite capacity that at a deep level you know you're capable of.
Nobody can hurt or destroy you without your permission.
You have such profound power.
You really do.
What's up, Michael Castles, how you doing my man?
Again, guys, that's just something that's been in my heart
because I've been working with so many women who they're healing.
They're healing from relationships where they felt like they'd been taken advantage of
and where they've been with men
and they've allowed the conditionality of the love that they received,
that they had to give love to get it back.
That's not true.
You are lovable for whom you are, for who you be in this moment.
You don't have to do a thing to earn the right to be loved.
This is foundational.
I want you to repeat that to yourself until it's embedded in your soul
because it's so important.
Don't give your power away to anybody else and predicate it on--
don't sacrifice who you are to receive love from anybody else.
That doesn't get to happen anymore.
Am I right or am I right?
I know I'm right because I'm having this conversation every day
with my beautiful clients all over the world.
I wanted to share it with each and every one of you
as I drive from Jackson, Mississippi to Sarasota, Florida,
to go say hi to my beautiful family.
Mariposa says when we love independent of everything,
we know that we are perfect.
Exactly.
It's beautiful.
It's such an empowering space to love unconditionally,
to love from a space of limitlessness rather than from a space of scarcity
because love is an infinitely renewing resource
that exists and springs forth from within us.
All right?
You have no reason to fear loving.
You have no reason to fear being loved.
If the love that you're receiving from somebody ceases,
consider it a blessing because it means that now you've got space
to receive and accept love from somebody else.
Foundationally, you are an infinite receptor and conduit for love
and there are so many people out there ready and willing and delighted to love you
to the capacity and the extent that you open yourself up to be loved by them.
That is a fundamental thing I want to also mention
is that your ability to be loved by others
is going to be directly tied to your capacity and your ability to love yourself.
Am I right or am I right?
If you do not love yourself,
you will never be able to truly and fully receive love from somebody else.
Another factor limiting your ability to be loved by somebody else
is your ability to connect and be vulnerable to that other person.
Don't be sitting here talking to me or talking to your friends
about how you're not feeling truly loved and connected to your partner
if you're not willing to truly connect and love them from your end.
Like Lee says, it all starts with you.
It does.
The degree to which you've got your walls up or down
is going to determine that person's ability to connect and pour love into your life.
We cannot have our cake and eat it too.
We cannot go out into the world with our walls up and our guns drawn
and then be like, "Why won't man connect with me?
Why am I not being loved the way that I want?"
You're not being loved the--