“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

Reciprocity. Also known as “doing something because you expect something in return”, is useful in life, but disastrous in love. While reciprocity can be highly useful and beneficial in many normal day-to-day interactions, it should not be part of a romantic relationship.

It is our need to always have our love returned that creates disastrous, dysfunctional and destructive relationships. We wish that people would just love us back. We see love as something tangible. Something to give. Something to receive. Something to exchange.

We have a need to keep score and to track how much we are loved by a specific person. A relationship scorecard puts people in the position of justifying past wrongdoings with righteousness and it puts you in a position of constantly checking whether someone loves you enough.

This is a broken model. It turns love into something that is finite; something that can be given away and in turn has to be given back.

In this broken model we call relationships “partnerships”. A partnership is an insidious metaphor that invokes contracts, agreements, fairness, equality. None of that should ever be applied to love.

Love isn’t equal.

Love isn’t measurable.

Love isn’t fair.

Love isn’t a single connection.

Love is: Multiple threads of connections all without a direct thread coming back. It is equivalent to a billion “feelers” that are extended to a person’s soul so that you can experience a person for who they truly are. The only outcome should be discovering what a person means to you.

You love.

You are loved.

There is no because. There is no must. There is no need.

There is only “I love you”.