Month: September 2024

Love is based on self interest and is transactional. But we are often told love is self sacrificing and given freely. Love is a social construct, just like race. Our culture often tells us the beliefs to have on love, just as with everything else.

First, what is love? How do you define love? Love is the act of caring for someone over and over. When someone shows a pattern of caring for us and doing what is in our best interest, we say this person loves us. Love is a verb. Love is the act of caring for someone over and over. Love is the establishment of a pattern in behavior.

Why do we love our parents as children? If love is about self interest, why do we seem to be born loving our parents and family? Because we are trying to survive. If we love our parents they are more likely to like us and care for us. We love our parents even if they destroy us, because we are trying to survive. And if we can get them to love us our chances of survival improve as children.

Love is about self interest. As a human you are designed to survive. We love our parents to improve our chances of survival as children. But if you have a parent that destroys you and you continue to view destruction as love your chances of survival decrease dramatically.

Love is not manipulative. When someone cares for you in order to get a certain result that is in their best interest, but not in yours, this is manipulation. Love and the act of caring for someone over and over means doing things that are in their best interest.

Say you have a partner, and this person likes to get you coffee and food all the time. This seems like it’s in your best interest. And it’s a caring act. However, if that person only likes to get you coffee and food so they can poison you. Then it’s not caring. It’s destructive and manipulative. Love is not manipulative or destructive.

The next thing that comes to mind is why would we love someone if we don’t get to manipulate them? What’s in it for us? When you create a pattern of caring for someone over and over to create a loving relationship and bond, they will also create a pattern of caring for you over and over. Love is based on self interest. It’s pretty impossible to love someone who destroys you or manipulates you. This is because they are not creating the pattern of caring for you over and over. It’s pretty impossible to love someone who doesn’t care for you.

Love is a two way street. Love is the combination of two people creating a pattern of caring for each other over and over with their actions. If someone doesn’t do caring acts for you, you will not love them. But you may mistake manipulative acts as caring. However, once you identify manipulation the love that you thought you had for someone disappears very quickly. Because the pattern is interrupted.

If love is about self interest, then what is self love. Self love is the act of caring for yourself over and over. It is creating a relationship with yourself where you trust that you will do what’s in your own best self interest. Self love is also about self interest. You have to do what is best for yourself. And you have to be able to trust that you will be able to identify and do what is in your own best interest. You develop this confidence in yourself and this self love by creating a pattern of caring for yourself over and over. Self love is just a pattern of actions. To develop or increase your self love, you just create more of a pattern, more caring acts. Self love becomes the norm when over time you always make decisions in your best interest. It’s when you can trust yourself to protect you.

Now this doesn’t mean love is selfish. Selfish people manipulate others. Loving people compromise when it doesn’t effect their self interest. Say you like Mexican food, but your friend likes Italian. It’s not going to hurt you to eat Italian with them. It’s a compromise and it’s a caring act. This is how you create a pattern of love.

Now say you are vegetarian and your friend wants to go to a steakhouse with no vegetarian options. It would be self sacrificing to go to the steakhouse. You would be giving up your self interest. However, maybe that person will do a caring act for you to make up for it. If your friend offers to buy you the best salad they have at the steakhouse because they really want to go there and then you get to pick the movie you both go see. That is compromise and it is a little self sacrifice. But your friend compensates you for your sacrifice. It’s transactional. And the sacrifice was compensated for.

Self interest doesn’t make you selfish. It increases your chances of survival. You are supposed to make decisions that encourage your evolution and survival. This is Darwinism. It is survival of the fittest. If you cannot identify and act on your own best self interest predators will kill you.