Is Your Love Transactional?

I don’t know about you but I’ve spent decades trying to please other people. I was convinced that no one would love me for who I am and that I had to deliver on what other people wanted in order to be accepted.

I didn’t dare to ask for what I want because I expected that people would say ‘no’. As a result, I was constantly trying to work out that if I did X, Y and Z, then people would give me what I want (mostly safety and love).

I became brilliant at reading other people’s mind and knowing what they wanted before they knew it.

To be honest, it was utterly disastrous. It cost me so much energy. I could hardly ever relax, too busy shape-shifting and being what other people wanted me to be.

The worst part is it didn’t really work.

You see, what I wanted was for the other person to fill this void I felt on the inside, this utter sense of worthlessness that I carried since birth.

Even when people gave me love, it didn’t fill that gap. I felt unlovable and their efforts to prove otherwise felt futile.

Your partner, your friend, your colleague, your client can’t make you feel loveable or worthy.

It’s an inside job. If you’re trying to get other people’s affection by giving them what they want, love becomes transactional.

If this rings true, please, don’t be hard on yourself. You learn to love by watching the adults in your family. Many of us didn’t have healthy role models around love and self-worth.

Personally, I can see now that this sense of worthlessness that I lived with was not entirely mine: that’s how my mother felt; that’s how my grandmother felt; I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it went further back down the ancestral line.

So my attempts to heal my patterns around self-worth did not render any great results until I started healing these blocks at parental and inter-generational levels.

The amazing thing was that once I felt worthy of love, my money blocks shifted too, because I was able to receive good things in life. I deserved them for just being me and suddenly, love stopped being transactional. I did not needed to effort so much to get people’s love.

P.S. Are you ready to feel lovable and worthy of good things in life? Join my 5-week course where you’ll heal blocks to love and money at parental and inter-generational levels: www.gularavincent.co.uk/unlock

P.P.S. Can’t ask for what you want? I’m running a 3-hour masterclass ‘What Do I Want?’ on 20 January. Join me live here: www.gularavincent.co.uk/want

With all my love,

Gulara