How did it get to be commonly known that love = sacrifice? Power demands sacrifice. Love and power are not supposed to be bedfellows.
Love did not start as a sacrifice. It got trained into it.
Several systemsโreligion, storytelling, and power structuresโkept reinforcing the same equation until it felt like common sense.
Starting with religion, because it is the loudest – in Christianity especially, love is literally defined through sacrifice: โGod so loved the world that he gaveโฆโ The highest expression of love becomes giving something upโcomfort, safety, even your life. Martyrs, saints, suffering as devotion. It creates a moral hierarchy: the more it hurts, the more โrealโ the love must be. Pain becomes proof.
Then storytelling picked it up and ran wild with it. Think of every tragic romance: someone always has to lose somethingโstatus, family, sanity, life. Romeo and Juliet did not just love each other; they died for it. Modern versions are softer but still there: โI gave up everything for youโ is framed as noble, not concerning. We rarely celebrate the couple who justโฆ communicate well and sleep eight hours.
Power systems benefit from this idea. If you can convince someone that love means enduring discomfort, staying loyal no matter what, giving more than you receiveโฆ You can keep them in situations they would otherwise walk away from. Families, institutions, even relationships lean on this.
โStay. Try harder. Love means not leaving.โ
That is not love talking. That is control wearing a love costume.
Humans like meaning. If we have suffered, we need it to mean something. So the brain goes, โThis must be love, otherwise why am I still here?โ Sacrifice becomes retroactive justification. It soothes cognitive dissonance.
Love, at its cleanest, does not require you to diminish yourself.
Attachment might. Fear definitely will. Power always does.
Real love is oddlyโฆ non-dramatic. It does not need grand gestures of loss to prove itself. It tends to look like consistency, mutual care, freedom to leave without punishment, and choosing to stay anyway. It feels more like expansion than depletion.
Sacrifice can exist within love, sureโparents lose sleep, partners compromiseโbut it is not the currency. It is a side effect, and it goes both ways. The moment sacrifice becomes the price of admission, you are not in love anymore. You are negotiating with power.
Love and power have been tangled together for a very long time, and most people were taught to call that knot โromance.โ
