Valentine’s Day! Does Your Love Have A Price Tag?

There is a shimmering magic in the air this weekend, isn’t there? It’s Valentine’s Day!!!!

Thankfully, this year’s edition falls on a weekend, meaning lovers can extend the celebration to Sunday.

Lovers are planning lovey-dovey, mushy dinner dates, surprise wedding proposals, and maybe just a simple dinner-at-home situation.

What are you planning?

We all want to be loved. It’s a natural human desire, and the soft, fluttering hope that someone, somewhere, truly sees us is a priceless gift everyone should experience.

Many people will give their lovers gifts tomorrow, and why not? You can’t truly show you love someone if you don’t make sacrifices for them.

But, I ask,  where do we draw the line?

Beyond the chocolates, cakes, teddy bears, dinner dates, shared moments, and grand gestures, something unpleasant seems to be characterising the modern Nigerian romance space, and that is the rise of transactional love.

Love is increasingly being treated like a high-stakes, highest-bidder business deal.

Is social media culpable, or has this always been the case, but now amplified by social media?

We now trade affection for security, and loyalty for gains, turning the sanctuary of what a healthy relationship should be into a trade-by-barter marketplace. This “quid pro quo” culture is the silent bane of true emotional connection. It tells us that we are only as valuable as the “benefits” we bring to the table.

When love becomes a transactional give me, I give you, rub my back, I rub your back affair, then we stop being lovers and start being customers.

The downside is that we feel constant pressure to push ourselves off the edge to prove a point.

We want to be the wealthiest, little wonder Yahoo boys are now seen as the real lover boys, bodies are augmented because the more physically appealing, the more the cash flow.  But where is the room for the messy, beautiful reality of being human?

True intimacy is found in the serene, unscripted moments:

Being loved when all you have to offer is the purity of your affections and desire for true intimacy is what should really matter.

As we celebrate this Valentine’s, let’s challenge ourselves to look past the “ledger.” Transactional love may offer a comfortable life, but it can never offer a full one.

A soul-to-soul connection requires us to set down the price tags and pick up the courage to be truly loving and willing to love in return.

After all, the most beautiful things in life, such as the way a hand feels in yours, a shared laugh at with locked gazes, the peace of being understood, of having and being with your own person are the things that could never, ever be bought.