I recently talked about buying love.

Can love be bought?

And what is the true definition of buying love?

When I grew up as a kid, love was a purchased transaction between my parents and myself.

My grandparents and my parents.

And, my grandparents and me.

I learned about purchasing love at a very young age.

I remember my grandmother was always about rewarding us if we loved her more.

It was weird. It was always like having to choose which grandmother was the better grandmother. It was always the feeling that I had.

My dad’s mother, Grandma Frankie, was constantly trying to be the better grandmother, and remind us of that over and over again.

She had more money, so she used her money to really make us feel like she was the better grandmother.

She was so generous, she would always give us money for sneakers and buy us clothes.

She would say things about my Grandma Rose, that she was cheap. My mother would say things about her mother, Grandma Rose, being cheap. So I was under the influence at a young age that, when you’re generous with somebody, that’s what love means.

My grandmother definitely tried to buy love, and whenever when we were, well, combative.

Whenever we tried to speak our mind.

My grandmother would withhold the money. So we knew that if we were good boys and girls and we got money for sneakers and other things, it meant that grandma loved us.

So I learned that that’s what buying love means.

My dad, instead of telling me he loved me, would pay my bills. If we weren’t talking, he’d cover my auto insurance, whatever it might be.

So I learned this terrible habit, and throughout my entire life, I’d help people with money. I did it because I was being generous, but another part of me was being stupid. You see, I was the one making the money, I was the one working hard, I was the one saving the money. But yet, I’d have people from time to time, throughout my entire life, tell me how they needed money for a short period of time.

How this was a good business opportunity.

How the job market wasn’t good and they’d just need a little bit more to hold them over.

I never looked at the greater lessons of this. Because the lessons kept showing up over and over again.

That’s the beauty of life: lessons will continue to show up over and over again, until we finally acknowledge them.

I was buying love.

I felt that, if I didn’t help these people out, they wouldn’t be my friend, wouldn’t love me. Now, I wasn’t even conscious of this. This wasn’t something I thought about, this was all unconscious programming. I didn’t think that if I don’t give X, Y, and Z $10, that they’re not going to love me. I was operating on what I learned as a kid. You give money, and if you give money, people love you back. So internally I was trying to buy love, buy friendships, without even realizing it.

The lesson kept coming up for me, over and over again, yet I kept doing it over and over again, until finally, recently I realized something.

All this ever does is bite you in the ass, because the generosity is never mutually reciprocated.

Sure, they appreciate it, but when you’re down and out, they’re not coming back and helping you out. It was all about them, and how it affected them, and how their life should be. It’s okay, I’m not blaming them. I made the conscious choices. Or did I?

I actually probably made unconscious choices, because I didn’t think it through, probably because I was living off of a program that really wasn’t mine. This was my parents’ stuff. This was my grandparents’ stuff. These weren’t even my beliefs, because when I look back at the things that I did, I get angry at myself and I need to forgive myself, because I didn’t see the lessons when they came up, and they’ve come up throughout my entire life.

It’s almost like my soul contract knew that I would have to learn these things, but yet I was so stubborn I didn’t.

Luckily, I’m starting to learn. Luckily, I’m realizing that love is not bought, I’m trying not to be generous with my wallet. I’m trying to be generous with what’s most important, my heart. I feel for people who need money, I feel for people who choose not work a job because they don’t want to work that job, or rather try find other ways, whatever anybody’s path is, I totally accept it.

But I’m no longer buying love. I am loved, I deserve love. And if somebody wants to be with me, they want to be with my heart, and not my wallet. Big, big lesson in life for me. Hopefully you pick up and learned something.