The Quiet Violence of Expectations

Love is supposed to be the purest of all human emotions — selfless, nurturing, unconditional. We grow up believing in this ideal, the kind sung in lullabies, immortalized in poetry, and preached in the language of sacrifice. Yet, beneath the soft words and tender gestures, love often carries an unspoken violence — the quiet, suffocating weight of expectation.

 Beneath the soft words and tender gestures, love often carries an unspoken violence — the quiet, suffocating weight of expectation.

It begins early. Even before we learn to name emotions, we are told what love should look like. A mother beams when her child takes their first steps, but her joy fades into worry if the child is “late.” A father feels proud when his child excels in school but grows silent when they choose art over science.

The lesson is subtle but enduring: love must be earned. We must perform, fulfill roles, and meet standards to be worthy of affection.

We are taught that love is a gift, but it is almost always transactional — an exchange of validation, comfort, and approval. When we behave, achieve, or conform, we are rewarded with closeness and care. When we fail, deviate, or simply exist outside the script, that warmth retreats. Love, in practice, becomes a currency.

The Myth of Unconditional Love

Society loves the phrase unconditional love — it gives us something to believe in when life feels too conditional. But look closely, and it begins to unravel. The mother who stays up all night for her child’s fever may also carry silent resentment if the child grows up “ungrateful.” The lover who promises forever may begin to withdraw when the other’s ambitions or moods no longer align with their own.

The lover who promises forever may begin to withdraw when the other’s ambitions or moods no longer align with their own.

Even in friendships, affection often follows usefulness — emotional support, social validation, shared habits. When one person stops fulfilling their expected role, the connection weakens. It’s not that people are incapable of love, but that love is rarely free of context.

Unconditional love, if it exists, demands radical acceptance — to value another not for who they are to us, but for who they are, even when that challenges our comfort. That kind of love is rare because it asks for something most humans fear: losing control.

Love as a Mirror

Expectations grow out of the need to see ourselves reflected in others. We love the idea of being good parents, good partners, good friends — and we depend on others’ behavior to confirm it. A child’s achievement becomes proof of good parenting; a partner’s devotion, proof of our worthiness.

But when others stop mirroring what we want to see, love falters. A child who rebels, a partner who changes, a friend who grows distant — these moments unsettle not just our bond with them but our identity itself. So we push, criticize, demand — not always out of cruelty, but out of fear. We want love to remain predictable, to fit the image we’ve built of what it should be.

We want love to remain predictable, to fit the image we’ve built of what it should be.

In this way, expectations become a form of control. They disguise themselves as care — “I just want the best for you,” “I know you can do better” — but often they are demands for conformity. We love not the person, but the idea of the person. And when reality breaks that illusion, love becomes conditional.

The Performance of Affection

So much of love today is performance — gestures curated for visibility, validation, or reassurance. We post about anniversaries, share appreciation posts, celebrate milestones — not always because we feel them deeply, but because we fear what silence might imply.

Even in private, affection often takes the form of routine duty rather than spontaneous choice.

We call, text, check in, say I love you — yet these acts sometimes feel rehearsed, like ticking boxes on a script of “how to be loving.”

This performativity doesn’t mean the emotion is fake; it means the expression has become habitual, expected, measured. The pressure to prove love ends up diluting its essence. Love, in its truest form, is not a performance but presence — an acceptance of another’s being, even when there is nothing to gain from it.

Want vs. Need

How often is love a want and not a need? A want arises from choice, curiosity, and admiration — a desire to know and share life with another. A need arises from fear — fear of loneliness, of failure, of losing identity.

Much of what we call love is, in truth, dependency disguised as devotion. We cling to others to feel whole, to escape emptiness, to confirm our value. And when those people fail to meet our emotional needs, love turns into resentment.

When people fail to meet our emotional needs, love turns into resentment.

True love is wanting, not needing. It is the willingness to let the other exist freely — to let them be messy, inconsistent, human — without withdrawing warmth. But this is easier said than done. We live in a culture that confuses attachment with affection, and validation with intimacy.

The Quiet Violence

Expectations rarely shout. They whisper. They linger in the way we sigh when someone disappoints us, the way silence replaces conversation, the way love becomes conditional upon apology or improvement.

This quiet violence is not visible, but it shapes relationships profoundly. It teaches us to suppress parts of ourselves to remain loved. We shrink, edit, and censor — because authenticity risks abandonment.

We learn to perform loveable versions of ourselves, and in return, receive love that feels hollow because it’s based on illusion.

The tragedy is that everyone plays this game, often unconsciously. Parents, lovers, friends — all victims and perpetrators at once. We expect others to make us feel secure while fearing their freedom might take them away.

 Loving Beyond Scripts

To love without condition is not to abandon boundaries or ignore harm. It is to recognize the humanity beneath behavior — to see the person even when they are not performing their role well.

It means telling your child, “You are still loved even if you fail.”

It means telling your partner, “You are still worthy even when you change.”

It means telling yourself, “I deserve love even when I’m not perfect.”

Loving beyond expectation is an act of courage — to allow love to evolve, to let go of control, to find peace in imperfection.

Perhaps the goal is not to eliminate all conditions — that may be too ideal — but to see them clearly. To be aware of the silent bargains we make in love, and to slowly unlearn them.

 A Different Kind of Love

Imagine a love that values presence over performance, understanding over agreement, being over doing. A love that allows you to be seen not as a role — parent, child, partner, friend — but as a person in all your chaos and contradiction.

A love that allows you to be seen not as a role — parent, child, partner, friend — but as a person in all your chaos and contradiction is necessary.

Such love does not erase expectations but softens them. It creates space for disappointment without withdrawal, for disagreement without disconnection.

Love, then, becomes not a transaction but a practice — of patience, honesty, and humility.

The quiet violence of expectations will always linger at the edges of human connection. But awareness can turn that violence into tenderness. When we begin to love others — and ourselves — not for how well we fit a script, but for how real we are beneath it, love finally begins to resemble what it was meant to be: free, forgiving, and alive.

About the Author

I am Sanchari Mukherjee, a student doing Masters in English from the reputed Presidency University, Calcutta. I love writing and appreciate art in all forms. Being a literature major, I have learnt to critically comment on things of various kinds. I take a deep interest in deconstructing the various essential structures and revealing the mechanisms of their working. Really glad that you came across my blog, hope you found it covering some critical insights essential for progress!