There’s a video of a woman who explains why relationships fail. You ask your boyfriend to exchange morning texts, he agrees, but soon forgets. You remind him but he forgets again. And then you stop liking him, and the relationship ends.
The video went viral because people intuit that something is wrong but can’t put it in words. It’s the marketization of love that bothers them. In the video’s definition of love, it’s no longer a feeling that you experience. It’s no longer the romantic love, the overpowering emotion that changes everything. It’s no longer the love as we have understood it in our civilization since the 12th century. It’s now a transaction. You give me XYZ and I give you “love” in return.
The interesting thing is that what’s being exchanged in this transaction isn’t real. It’s a simulacrum, an empty sign. The morning texts are supposed to mean that the boyfriend cares. But they don’t really mean it because they aren’t a spontaneous expression of his feelings. If he wakes up in the morning, and you are the first thing he thinks about, and he’s filled with joy and expresses it in a text message, that’s beautiful, and it does mean something. But if he only does it as a chore, then the texts are meaningless. The woman wants to purchase something completely worthless and give something equally worthless in return.
Transactional love is an exchange of simulacra. He offers a fake sign of caring, and she gives fake love in return. Actual love is scary. You can’t squeeze it into a formula of transaction, of supply and demand. It can’t be quantified or explained with graphs and arrows like the woman does in the video.
We are so afraid of life that we hide from it among empty signs, primitive formulas, and barren equations. Transactional love is no love at all.
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