Why Do I Give So Much to Get Love Back?
The difference between giving from love and giving to get reassurance, and how to start telling them apart.
In a recent live session of my Strong Heart program, someone asked me a question with unusual honesty. He had come to see that the way he showed affection to his partner had quietly become a way of seeking reassurance from her, and that it had grown automatic: a steady stream of warmth and attention that, underneath, was really asking whether she still cared. He wanted to know how the healing would go and where to begin.
Some of us recognize some version of this, even if we’ve never named it so plainly. We give and give in a relationship, and somewhere beneath the giving is a question we’re quietly hoping the other person will keep answering.
It helps to start by noticing that affection like this usually has more than one motivation running at the same time. I sometimes picture two ponies pulling the same carriage down the same road. One is the loving pony: you care about this person, you’re naturally warm, and expressing that warmth is simply you being yourself. The other is the anxious pony: the part that gives to get something back, that offers affection partly to quiet a worried question inside. Both ponies are pulling toward the same affectionate act, which is exactly why they can be so hard to tell apart from the inside.
The loving pony needs no fixing. The work is only ever with the other one. And the giving-to-get pony tends to come from a particular place, a felt sense that something is missing, that the care you need isn’t quite there or isn’t quite secure. That sense of deficit is what gives the giving its subtle, almost compulsive quality, the way it can start to feel less like a choice and more like a reflex.
The trouble isn’t your warmth. It’s that some of it has become a way of asking whether you’re still loved.
This is common, and there’s nothing shameful in it. It usually means an old and tender need is still looking to be met. The encouraging part is that it can be worked with directly and gently, and this balance between warmth and steadiness is much of what we explore in my Strong Heart program.
In the rest of this article, I’ll walk through three things I’d suggest to anyone caught in this pattern: how to start meeting the underlying need yourself so the giving isn’t doing that job, how to slow the impulse down and read what the other person actually wants, and how to talk with them, in concrete terms, about the kind of affection that works for you both.
