Reciprocity of Love Widgets

We need to give. Yet we also give to get, get what we need, love in symbols we understand, and so we do what we can: compromise, give and take, consciously and unconsciously do things in certain ways simply for our partner’s satisfaction. And such things are not solely widgets bartered. Because we do them out of our love and for our partner’s sake, those widgets become love widgets, more than mere motions on a stage or lines we speak, they become the currency of our relationship, the currency of our love, they become love symbols and we become a person who loves by those symbols.
~Octopus Heart

There may some truth (operative word here is 'some') to the common assessment that men are uxorious because they have learned (perhaps from a very young age) to find comfort and security in lavishing attention and ceding control, and women are dominant because they have learned (perhaps from a very young age) to find comfort and security in controlling and manipulating their environment to their advantage.

Admittedly both these suggestions are more than a little reductionistic, yet I think they accurately reflect the tension between the success of finding the comfort and security every human wants and desires and the potentially unhealthy ways in which, and the potentially unhealthy lengths to which, we will go to successfully get that comfort and security.

Moreover, if everyone wants love in symbols they can understand, and if these are the symbols a person understands, then in the feedback need and love symbol negotiation I think it is only right and fitting that we not only want to give our partner what they want (because we love them) but that they get some comfort and security in whatever way they understand.

But should one actively trade? Relationship bargaining, like sex bargaining, bothers me.

I give my wife the help fit for her and her happiness because I love her and want her to be happy. Yet I also do this for my sake - so that I am happy and complete, because being her 'help mate' is what completes me. I do not help her hoping she will someday do anything specific for me in return; in this way my love and help to her is 'somewhat unconditional'. Because on the other hand, I do expect that she will choose to do things that adequately express her love for me, where, when and how she desires, and I expect to receive expressions of love from her - although still I don't think even this is (even an unconscious) condition for the love and help I give. Thus that she would try to force herself to trade or exchange love widgets out of duty or obligation bothers me - because I do not wish her to feel ... beholden. I value her freedom, and the subsequent happiness from her freedom, too much.