Breaking the Spell of Conditional Love

When self-worth is built on performance, love becomes a test you’re destined to fail.

There was a time I thought love had to be earned.

It didn’t come from nowhere. I grew up in a home where the standards were high. Excellence was expected and demanded, but rarely celebrated. I can still remember moments where I did well, really well, but it wasn’t quite enough. My grades were good, but not good enough. If I completed a task, it could’ve been done sooner, or better, or with more effort. There was always a way to improve, always some invisible bar just out of reach. And without knowing it, I began to internalize the belief that being loved meant performing better.

That boy who tried so hard to be enough is who I carried into my adult relationships.

Without realizing it, I began showing up in partnership with a kind of quiet hunger. If I could just be more loving, more stable, more generous, more romantic—maybe then I’d finally feel seen. Maybe I’d earn my place. I never said it aloud, but somewhere underneath the surface, I was trying to prove something: that I was worthy of staying for.

And here’s the thing. When you enter a relationship already believing you’re not quite enough, you unconsciously invite the other person to agree with you. Not maliciously often unconsciously—but if I was always subtly trying to “do more,” it put my partners in a position to expect more. It made “you should be better” the invisible contract of the relationship.

That pattern repeated itself for years. At times I was with partners who genuinely couldn’t meet me emotionally, or who withheld affection when I didn’t perform to expectation. At other times, I was simply with good people responding to a dynamic that I had unknowingly created.

That’s the hard truth: the belief that I had to earn love created the very cycles where love felt just out of reach.

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The spell didn’t break all at once. It started slowly, almost imperceptibly.

It began the moment I started listening to my own discomfort instead of overriding it. When I expressed dissatisfaction, simply to say: “This doesn’t feel good to me.” When I began communicating my own boundaries, clearly and without apology.

These weren’t dramatic ultimatums. They were small acts of self-respect: I need to feel appreciated when I show up. I need to know that uncomfortable conversations won’t be avoided or weaponized. I need to feel included in the life I’m building with someone and not kept at arm’s length. I need to be allowed to be human, not flawless, not endlessly accommodating.

When I began expressing my needs clearly, what came back wasn’t mutuality, but withdrawal, resistance, or subtle contempt. That was the moment I stopped interpreting silence as mystery. I began calling it what it was: avoidance dressed up as depth. What I once mistook for complexity, spiritual processing, emotional nuance—was just emotional unavailability in disguise.

And that’s when the spell began to break.

I used to think the silence meant something profound was happening beneath the surface. Now I understand it was often just a refusal to engage.

Looking back, I realize now that I had been living under a spell for most of my adult life. One that lives in the subtle patterns, unspoken rules and silent contracts you make with yourself when you’re young.

The spell I was under said: If you’re good enough, they’ll stay.

It said: If you anticipate their needs, you won’t be left.

It said: If you never make them uncomfortable, they’ll never withdraw their love.

This spell created a version of me that looked like the perfect partner: attentive, generous, affectionate, loyal. But underneath that was a quiet desperation. A fear that if I let my guard down, if I wasn’t constantly showing up at my best, I’d lose them.

And here’s the harder truth I’ve had to sit with: that version of me, the peacemaker, the self-sacrificer, wasn’t just loving. He was also trying to control the outcome. Trying to avoid rejection by being whatever the other person needed. Trying to keep the relationship safe by making himself small.

It wasn’t malicious or manipulative in the way we usually think of manipulation. But it was still a form of performance, which is the opposite of intimacy.

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Somewhere along the way, I also came to understand another piece of this pattern that lives beneath the surface of many relationships:

The dynamic of investment justification.

Many women (not all) grow up with a deep emotional imprint shaped by a father figure who was powerful, sometimes loving, often unpredictable, and hard to please. A man they had to perform for to feel noticed. A man they couldn’t quite reach.

So when they grow into adulthood, they’re often drawn to men who mirror that same emotional pattern: men who are strong, a little mysterious, not easily moved. Men they can invest in, fix, or win over, just as they once longed to reach their father.

And this creates a loop: The man must justify her investment. And the way he does this… is by staying just out of reach.

The danger for men wired to please, who confuse over-functioning with love, is that we break the spell too soon. We become emotionally transparent. Available. Predictable. Understandable.

And then, paradoxically, we lose her respect. Not because we did something wrong, but because the childhood pattern didn’t get to finish its script.

So what’s the answer?

It’s not silence. It’s not control. And it’s not disappearing to become more mysterious.

It’s learning to embody true boundaries, not as punishments or power plays, but as a way of life. And this is not to manipulate her attraction, but to honor our own sovereignty.

When I tried to set boundaries out of reactivity or pain, they didn’t land. They felt weak, hollow, performative. But when I began to live from a place of clarity—“This is who I am. This is how I live. You’re free to meet me here or not.”—something changed.

A true boundary doesn’t seek control. It offers truth. And the woman who’s ready for that won’t need to be controlled. She’ll feel something ancient in her system say: “Oh. There you are.”

The moment before turning back to the one who always stayed. Sometimes the bravest thing is standing still long enough to hear yourself. That’s where the spell breaks and sovereignty begins. Photo by Marek Piwnicki

Where the old story ends, the soul returns. Ultimately, the spell didn’t break with blame. It broke with clarity.

It broke when I stopped needing to prove that I was a good partner. When I stopped trying to manage someone else’s approval through perfection. When I realized I didn’t need to convince anyone to see my worth, especially someone who only reflected it back when I met their conditions.

One of the hardest parts of untangling from these patterns is learning how to hold two truths at once:
That the other person may genuinely have felt frustrated, disappointed, or even critical of something real…
and that the way those perceptions were delivered did not invite connection—but instead destabilized, diminished, or disoriented me.

There’s a difference between critique that opens a door…and critique that tightens a noose. In mutuality, criticism is offered to build understanding. It says: “This matters to me, and I want to stay close.” There’s warmth in it, even if it’s uncomfortable.

But when criticism becomes chronic, contemptuous, or cold, especially when it shows up right before emotional withdrawal or abandonment, it’s not about connection anymore. It’s a tactic. Sometimes conscious, sometimes not. But a tactic all the same.

Learning to discern the difference without invalidating the other’s experience is one of the quiet superpowers of adult love.

It allows you to say:

“I see that you feel this way. I hear you.”
“But the way you’re delivering this doesn’t feel safe or respectful to me.”

You’re not gaslighting them. You’re just not self-gaslighting anymore.

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If you still find yourself second-guessing, questioning your worth, or trying to perform your way into love, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because you inherited a spell.

One you now have the power to break.

You’re allowed to ask for what you need.
You’re allowed to stop apologizing.
You’re allowed to stay, or to walk away.

And if a child still waits in the shadow of your heart, hoping to be chosen,
Step toward them.
Let them know: you’ve returned.
You are the home they were always waiting for.

I’m not sharing this to be understood by those who couldn’t meet me.
I’m sharing it to never again abandon the one who always did.

What did you have to do to feel chosen?

[Postscript: Eros]

I’ve met Eros in a glance that lingered too long. In a laugh that opened an ancient door. On lucid nights, riding a centaur across the sky.

And in the voices of Serge and Brigitte, singing Bonnie and Clyde like a spell. Breath, tension, danger. The sound of Eros with a cigarette and a getaway car, driving without brakes.

But I’ve also confused Eros with obsession. Projected Beauty onto what could never contain it. Chased ghosts when I should have listened to the silence.

I am no longer living in the in-between—
between collapse and emergence,
between fear and freedom.

Now I ask:
Can I let Eros move me without possessing what it points toward?
Can I praise the flame without needing to own the fire?

Eros beckons. Persistently. Toward life.
Into the unknown. Into the wild.