What happens to the soul when love becomes transactional?
I used to believe that if I worked hard enough, loved deeply enough, or gave purely enough, I would finally be seen.
I chased worth the way some chase sunlight — always just out of reach, always fading at dusk.
Every success felt like a temporary reprieve from invisibility. Every achievement, a momentary breath before the next proving began.
And when I finally stopped performing for love — when I chose truth over approval — the love I thought I had built vanished.
That was the moment I realised how much of our world mirrors this same conditional dance.
We call it success. We call it duty. But underneath, it is still the child inside us, performing to be enough.
From the very beginning, we are taught that reward follows compliance.
Be quiet, and you’ll be praised. Be good, and you’ll be safe. Do well, and you’ll be loved.
Finish your food, and you get dessert. Say thank you, and you’re called polite. Smile even when you feel pain, and you’ll be told you’re strong.
It seems harmless at first — this soft scaffolding of reward and expectation. But over time, something sacred is traded. Innocence is shaped into image. Wonder is replaced by work. And the pure joy of being slowly gives way to the exhausting weight of achieving.
The Performance Contract
I remember sitting with a friend in her living room. Her five-year-old daughter kept getting out of bed, making the slow journey down the stairs with hopeful eyes and a mischievous grin. On her third attempt, she leaned through the bannisters, sighed deeply, and declared, “I don’t even care about the gold star.”
Eden was her name.
We tried to stifle our laughter at her clarity.
In that moment, my friend looked at me wide-eyed and whispered, “Well, that’s the end of gold star bribery. Parenting strategy: 0. Five-year-old: 1.”
Even then, this little one could feel it: the invitation to be good in order to be rewarded.
And she wasn’t buying it.
We laugh in those moments — and yet somewhere along the line, most of us did buy it.
We said the right things, smiled at the right moments, coloured inside the lines.
Not because it felt natural — but because it felt necessary.
We learned early that goodness comes with conditions.
Be useful. Be impressive. Be easy to love.
And so we became performers in our own homes.
We managed emotions, fixed problems, dimmed our needs, and learned to anticipate what would make others comfortable.
We discovered that safety didn’t come from being fully ourselves — but from being applauded.
We fell into rhythm with what others expected of us, and when we stopped? The silence that followed felt like exile.
The child who learns to perform becomes the adult who over-delivers.
The one who burns out trying to be everything for everyone.
The one who stays too long in relationships where presence is only welcomed when it performs.
It wasn’t exhaustion that finally reached me.
It was the slow dying of my spirit.
A sense that life was passing me by — and I hadn’t even begun to live it.
I felt like I had aged overnight, like some golden part of me had gone dim from all the pretending.
And yet… something ancient within me still remembered what it meant to feel free.
Have you felt it too?
That quiet ache beneath the striving — the part of you that longs to be seen without the performance?
The Mirror of the Family System
The family is the first system where we learn the laws of love.
Not as soul-to-soul love, but through the lens of human need, habit, and pain passed down through generations.
In that field, we learn that love is something to be earned.
We sense which parts of us are celebrated… and which are too much.
We adapt. We edit. We offer the version of ourselves most likely to be received.
At first, it’s subtle: a look of approval, a tone of disappointment, the withholding of affection until we’ve “made it right.”
But soon it becomes a pattern — one that shapes our nervous system and encodes our sense of worth.
We become the helper, the achiever, the peacemaker.
Not because it is our true essence — but because it’s what kept love near.
And this is how the performance begins.
Not as vanity, but as survival.
Later, we call this loyalty, professionalism, service, success. We call it being strong, being resilient.
But beneath the achievements and polished identities is the same ancient ache: Will I still be loved if I stop trying so hard?
And here’s the quiet truth we begin to see…
The world we call “society” is simply a larger version of that early home.
Societal structures become the collective parent.
Praise and recognition become the new reward.
And we – still hoping to be chosen – learn to please, to produce, to perform for belonging.
The Worship of Respectability
We live in a world that has been taught to trust appearances.
Where titles like doctor, teacher, spiritual guide, or pillar of the community become symbols of trust — even when they are only masks.
Respectability becomes a kind of armour.
A shield against inquiry.
A stage where image is mistaken for integrity.
We are taught to honour the role, rather than the presence within it.
And so, those who wear the mask of service are rarely questioned.
Because to admit harm within a trusted role is to disrupt the illusion that keeps us feeling safe.
The performer is praised.
The one who speaks truth is often silenced — or shamed for being “too much,” “too emotional,” or “ungrateful.”
It’s easier to believe the story that fits the frame than to feel what doesn’t.
But truth is not always comfortable.
And the soul does not fit inside a title.
When Image Becomes Survival
Children learn that image is survival. If love was given only when you were smiling, excelling, or making others comfortable, you learned to edit yourself to survive. You learned to sense every room, to read every tone, to anticipate every need. You became fluent in the language of safety — and it cost you the native tongue of your own truth.
You disowned your anger because it made others uncomfortable. You buried your grief because it disrupted the illusion. You polished your edges until they gleamed. And the world rewarded you for it.
But peace cannot exist where truth is hidden. You cannot breathe freely inside a role.
The Stage of Applause
When we’re raised to perform for love, we’re not always taught how to recognise performance in others.
And so we mistake charisma for care. Charm for character. Helpfulness for heart.
This is how some of the most controlling individuals go unnoticed — because they wear the perfect costume.
The community volunteer. The chatty neighbour. The beloved teacher. The spiritual guide.
Not all do this knowingly. But there are some that do.
They learn how to be seen in just the right light.
They become who the world wants them to be.
Performance becomes their currency — and admiration, their addiction — to gain access, to bypass scrutiny, to maintain control.
They couldn’t possibly be harmful,” people say. “They’re so kind. So generous. So involved.”
But when performance is rewarded more than presence, truth has nowhere to land.
And those being harmed are often doubted — because the role looks too convincing to question.
And so, the stage remains lit while truth waits quietly behind the curtain.
Silenced Twice
Some stories are not silenced because they are unbelievable — but because believing them would require the world to feel what it has spent generations avoiding.
First comes the harm itself. The betrayal. The violation. The moment a child’s reality fractures under the weight of someone else’s power.
But the second silence — the one delivered by society — cuts even deeper.
One girl, trafficked by her own parents to Hollywood studios — not for films we see on the big screen, but for something far more exploitative — found the courage to tell the police what was happening. She was mocked. “If something like that were going on,” the officer said, “I’d know about it.”
Another woman, a Black foster child placed with a military family, was passed through systems that praised her carers while ignoring her pain. When she finally spoke the truth, she was dismissed as delusional — sectioned, institutionalised, and given electric shock treatment to silence what they could not accept.
Neither of them were protected. They were instead punished for breaking the illusion.
Because we are taught to trust roles more than essence — to believe the respected title over the quiet voice.
This is what performance culture protects: the appearance of goodness, at the cost of actual humanity.
Silenced once by abuse. Silenced again by disbelief.
Some of the most harmful patterns go unnoticed — because they’re dressed up as generosity, community, and charm. And some of the deepest wounds remain hidden — because those who survived them were taught to smile, stay quiet, or be grateful they made it out.
This is the hidden cost of a world built on performance: truth becomes the casualty, and those who carry it are left holding wounds no one wants to see.
But the truth is this:
You cannot transmute darkness in the world if you only ever focus on the light.
You cannot rest in New Earth while bypassing the wounds that made the old world fall.
Take a moment to ask yourself:
Where have you been silenced?
Where have you mistaken survival for strength?
Where is your soul still performing, just to belong?
Restoring the Real
To stop performing is to risk rejection. But it is also to reclaim life. Every time you choose presence over perfection, you withdraw your energy from a system that was never designed to honour your soul.
Because in a world that equates value with usefulness, the simplest acts of truth become revolutionary.
When you speak without polishing your edges, when you rest without guilt, when you express without needing to be impressive — you restore something far more sacred than approval.
You return to the frequency of what is Real.
Presence becomes the new currency. Expression becomes the new exchange. And worth, at last, returns to the seat of the soul.
You were never here to play a role.
You were always here to reveal the unique essence and creatorship of your soul.
You do not need to perform to be worthy. You do not need to prove yourself to be loved. You do not need to earn what was always already yours.
A joyful life, great love, and all that nourishes your soul are your birthright — by your very existence.
And as you rest into that truth, the performance ends — and the play of life begins anew.
With a clear and present heart,
Victoria
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