Love as a transaction

Is transactional parenting at the heart of some estrangements?

Something I’ve been thinking about is transactional love. I have a google alert for estrangement and the daily list always includes a letter that someone has written to a newspaper about their family and an either existing or potential estrangement. The letters are rarely about parents who have been physically abusive or extremely neglectful to their children. Generally the families described are ones that would seem pretty functional from the outside. I guess writing to an agony aunt is something someone does when the problem is nuanced and decisions are not easy to make. Everyone around you would support you in ceasing contact with a family member who was physically abusive to you or who abandoned you as a child. In most of the cases that I read, things are more complicated.

I’ve probably been reading these agony aunt letters for a few years now. The only clear thread that I see running through them is the notion of transactional love.

Transactional love vs unconditional love

Transactional love is the opposite of unconditional love. It is the exchange of love or affection in return for something else such as material goods, social status, or emotional support. Unconditional love is characterised by the lack of expectation. It is loving someone for who they are and that love has no conditions or expectations attached to it.

I think it is unrealistic to not have an element of reciprocity in most relationships. We cannot take without giving. However, one hopes that in a healthy relationship there is no scorecard. We give what we can gladly and receive what is offered happily. It is without thought or measurement, an unconscious dance involving the sharing of time, resources, and love.

Transactional parent-child relationship

The parent-child relationship is slightly different. After all, a child does not choose to participate in the relationship. From the start, the relationship is a ‘given’ with an unequal balance of power. To a child a parent’s love is vital and the withholding of it is so detrimental that using it as a method of controlling your child is like bringing out a nuclear weapon. All parents may struggle to be authoritative with their children and sometimes we unavoidably slip into a transaction system. Rewards for potty training, studying, chores, etc. Taking something away from them if they don’t do what we want. This is not the same as transactional love if the love is unquestionably there, no matter how the transaction goes. Yet it is still best to try to move away from these ways of handling your children. When your relationship is flowing well, your child will mostly want to please you and, often, more will be achieved by talking to them about why they don’t want to do something than simply trying to bribe them to do it. We’re all human and therefore flawed though. From my unscientific observations of problem pages, things go wrong when these transactional elements become the foundation of the relationship and the love itself is not a given.

Examples of transactional love

Typical examples of these transactions gone wrong are things like:

• Parents who give the silent treatment when their children don’t do what they want, whether it’s not getting certain grades or not choosing a partner they approve of.

• Ostracism of a child if they don’t conform to the family view of how to live life.

• The pitting of siblings against each other in a battle for parental affection.

• The use of wills and financial gifts to control children.

• The use of emotional blackmail to ensure children behave in the way the parent wants.

Transactional parents

All of the myriad letters with all of their unique details boil down to a parent expecting a child to provide something in return for love, or love being expected in return for something. Underlying this pattern of behaviour is generally an emotionally immature parent who doesn’t have the capacity to really love. They don’t know how to give without the expectation of receiving, their parents probably didn’t know how to either. A chamber within their metaphorical heart has never been opened because they have maybe never experienced unconditional love themselves. They are so insecure in the concept of love that they instead try to control their children even as adults. I like to think of love rolling downhill within a family, you hope to give more love to your children than you receive from them and, that extra love you’ve given them, rolls down into their children. Maybe for these parents they didn’t have enough love rolling downhill to them to be able to pass much on.

Now, as a parent myself, it can be easy to slip into transactional love. Sometimes it seems like the only way to get your child to do what you want, or sometimes it can hurt when your child doesn’t reciprocate your affection in the way you’d like them to. However, the difference is that the love of most parents is never actually on the line. Most parents don’t stop talking to their children if their children disappoint them. Most parents will always make the first move to fix things. There is generally a healthy boundary between a parent’s life and their child’s life and therefore they don’t seek to overly control their child. You might have wanted more of a role your child’s wedding or to meet your grandchild straight away but if your child expresses their own approach to these things, you swallow your disappointment and move on, you don’t create a nuclear situation out of it. It would never occur to you to talk negatively about one child to the other because your goal is for your children to love each other. You comprehend where you end and your child begins and the idea of hurting your child is painful to you.

None of this is to say that these parents in these pages don’t love their child. They mostly do. However, they have not fully developed their emotional capacities and love is entwined with control in their minds. At the root of it seems to be a lack of self awareness and insecurity. Take the frequently seen problem of a parent blowing up their relationship with their child over some minor detail of their child’s wedding. This is insane yet I have seen it happen again and again. I mean it is one day. Usually a bit of digging reveals that the parent does not like the bride or groom. Maybe there are valid reasons. It’s common to think that no-one is good enough for your child but it is also beneficial to love someone who loves your child and to accept that no-one is perfect. I can’t help thinking that the bride or groom has become a vessel into which they pour their grief over the passage of time and the loss of control over their child, or perhaps they desire to live vicariously through their child and therefore the spouse does not fit the vision they would have of the perfect spouse. These are all feelings that many parents might have at times but they would hopefully take time to process their feelings rather than act on them. They would certainly not withhold their love over some aspect of their child’s wedding. There would hopefully be another family member who calls them to account and prevents them destroying an important moment in their child’s life.

This has ended up very rambling but I think what I am concluding with is that transactional love is a common thread within estrangement. Parents who love transactionally are perhaps people who haven’t really matured and learnt how to love. It’s something to think about as transactional love is not always very obvious but you’ll notice how it makes you feel. I have no miraculous advice about to deal with it but probably the best approach is to not participate in the transaction.

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It would be great to hear your experiences of transactional love in the comments.