Transactional "Love"

Transactional "Love", if it can be called love at all, is an effect of codependent behaviors used as a means of securing love. There are four main codependent archetypes, the victim, the helper-holic, the control freak, and the love addict, and it is the helper-holic and control freak archetypes of codependency that engage in transactional love. You can see this form of "love" playing out in real time on places like TikTok (not everyone is doing this, but many many are) where those who sell themselves through live streaming are primarily control freaks using their helper-holic aspect to love bomb their audience and secure attention and money (love), essentially doing good deeds as a means of hooking their prey and getting things (in relationships, controlling to secure love). "See, I did this good deed for you, now you owe me!" On the converse side, those who are primarily helper-holic archetypes on TikTok will perpetually give actual value, such as money, in the hopes of being noticed / seen by the live streamer, and will often be bled financially dry by up to hundreds a day, so then their "helping" is a covert way to control, making the control freak their secondary archetype—controlling through helping. They give without any guarantee of receiving value, or because they feel guilty for not giving enough value, and/or the same they feel for not being valuable enough, it's like self-flagellation to atone for their perception of not being worthy enough to be loved.

Let's look at the healthy alternative, which is giving love from gratitude as a result of receiving actual value from a loved one. For instance, when I experience someone I love, from my deep gratitude for their presence in my life, and love for the value that they offer as a person, aka, the beneficial character traits that they have consciously baked into their personality that spill over into my life just through being with them, I feel such love and gratitude that I do good deeds—I'm not giving (love bombing) to secure their love, but giving love and doing good deeds because I love who they are and the value that they offer me just by being in my life. With the control freak and helper-holics though, they are doing good deeds to hook others, love bombing them as a means of trapping their prey in a web of guilt and shame to secure a perpetual source of love while offering little actual value (beneficial character traits) in return, and the helper-holics are doing good deeds (giving love) to pay back the control freaks for their good deeds, either from shame (I'm not valuable enough) or guilt (I don't do enough valuable things), just hoping for a table scrap or two of love and attention from the one they desire attention from, as a means of making up for their feelings of lack and unworthiness. A good question helper-holics could ask themselves before they offer their help to another is "am I getting any value, or did I already receive any value, for the help I am offering to them", and remember, "hoping for a return" is not actual value.

In some parts of the world, hunters build monkey traps by hollowing out a coconut and putting rice in it, and bury the coconut in the ground. When a monkey puts its hand in the coconut and grabs the rice, their hand gets stuck, and they stay stuck because they don't realize all they have to do is let go of the rice and they could get free from the trap. In this metaphor the rice are the good deeds and love bombing done by the control freaks, while the monkeys are the helper-holics who refuse to let go of the control freaks and the promise of their false love in order to free themselves from the trap, because they believe they NEED the love from the control freak to survive, which is likely a projection of a parental figure who wasn't there for them as a child. A few here and there do let go of the rice and escape the trap, but unfortunately, many more do not.