10 Signs You Were Raised to Earn Love, Not Just Have It
Were you raised to earn love through being good, useful or successful? Explore 10 signs childhood approval may still shape your relationships and parenting.
EARNED LOVE
Season 01: EARNED LOVE - Week 01: APPROVAL
Let’s Talk
Nobody had to tell you, “You have to earn my love.” Most of us probably never heard those words.
Sometimes you learned it another way. You learned it when being good made everybody happy. When bringing home something worth celebrating made the room feel warmer. When helping made you useful. When not needing too much made things easier. When agreeing kept the peace. When being upset, difficult, loud, emotional—or simply saying no—changed the energy in the room.
Nobody called it earning love. You were just paying attention. And kids are good at that. We notice what brings people closer. We notice what makes them pull away. We notice which parts of us get praised, which parts get corrected, and which parts seem to make life harder for everybody else.
Somewhere in all of that noticing, we can start making little agreements with ourselves: Be good. Don’t disappoint anybody. Don’t make this harder. Help. Get it right. Make them proud. Be someone people want around.
And maybe you were loved. Maybe you were loved deeply.
That’s what makes this conversation more complicated than simply saying our parents didn’t love us enough. You can be loved and still learn that certain versions of you are easier to love out loud. When you’re a child, you don’t necessarily have language for that distinction. You just learn what works. Then you grow up, and sometimes the rules grow up with you.
"You can be loved and still learn that certain versions of you are easier to love out loud."
RECOGNITION
10 Signs You May Have Learned to Earn Love
These aren't a diagnosis, and they aren't a scorecard for deciding whether you had “good” or “bad” parents. They're simply places to notice where approval, belonging and worth may have gotten tangled together.
01
You can tell when someone's energy changes before they say a word.
The text got shorter. Their tone changed. They walked into the room differently. Their face did something, and almost automatically, you're scanning: What's wrong? Are they upset? Did I do something? Being aware of other people's emotions isn't inherently unhealthy. But it's worth noticing what happens inside of you when someone you love isn't okay—especially when your first instinct is to figure out whether you're responsible for fixing it.
02
Disappointing someone can feel worse than simply making a mistake.
There's a difference between thinking, I got that wrong, and thinking, They're disappointed in me. One is about what happened. The other can start feeling like it's about who you are. So sometimes correcting the mistake isn't enough. You need to repair the other person's opinion of you, too. You need them to know you're still good, dependable, worthy, lovable—the person they thought you were before you got something wrong.
03
You explain yourself long after the answer was already complete.
“No” becomes a paragraph.
You give the reason, then the context for the reason, then reassurance that you aren't angry or selfish or inconsiderate. You soften the answer so the other person doesn't misunderstand what you meant. Sometimes it isn't enough for your decision to be reasonable. You need the other person to believe you're reasonable, too.
04
Praise feels good, but relief feels even better.
You did it. You got the grade. Finished the project. Solved the problem. Showed up when everybody needed you. Of course you're proud. But underneath the pride there can also be relief:
Okay. I'm good.
Not only I did something good.
I'm good.
When approval and worth have spent enough time sitting beside each other, it can become difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Psychologists have studied something called parental conditional regard—when a parent’s affection or approval becomes connected to a child meeting particular expectations.
And here’s what matters: conditional approval can actually work in the short term. A child may do the thing that’s expected of them. But research has associated greater parental conditional regard with contingent self-esteem, where someone’s sense of worth becomes more dependent on meeting expectations, as well as greater internal pressure around behavior.
In other words, sometimes the child learns the behavior and learns something about what doing that behavior means about them.
That’s part of what we’re paying attention to here.
ROOTED PROOF
There’s research behind this, too.
Research: Assor, Roth & Deci (2004), Journal of Personality; Haines & Schutte (2023), Journal of Adolescence.
Understanding where it comes from helps us decide what we want to carry forward
05
You feel responsible for getting everybody back to okay.
Tension makes you uncomfortable. Someone is angry. Your partner is irritated. Your mother sounds disappointed. Your friend is acting differently. Suddenly, you're working to restore the relationship. You explain, fix, apologize, make a joke, change the subject or give in. Sometimes we're not actually trying to resolve the disagreement. We're trying to make the relationship feel safe again.
06
You know what everybody else wants before you've figured out what you want.
“Where do you want to eat?”
“I don't care.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Whatever you want.”
Maybe you really are flexible. But when you've spent enough time adjusting yourself around other people, your own preferences can stop getting the first word. You check the room before you check yourself.
07
Being needed can feel safer than simply being loved.
You're the dependable one. The listener. The fixer. The person everybody calls because they know you'll figure it out. Being needed can feel reassuring because it gives you evidence that you have a place in someone's life. There's a reason for them to keep calling. A reason for you to belong. Sometimes that can feel more secure than trusting that someone would choose you even when you aren't doing anything for them.
08
You feel guilty when you set a boundary—even when you know the boundary is reasonable.
You know you can't do it. You know you don't want to. You know saying no is probably the healthiest answer. So you say it. And then the guilt comes. Sometimes that discomfort isn't really asking, Was my boundary wrong? It's asking, Will you still feel the same way about me now that I didn't give you what you wanted?
09
Rest feels different when you haven't earned it.
There's always something else you could be doing: laundry, work, cleaning, planning, helping, answering somebody, handling something. So sitting still can feel strangely irresponsible. Nobody may be demanding anything from you anymore. Sometimes you became the person doing the demanding.
10
You know how to become the version of yourself a relationship seems to require.
You can be strong over here, easygoing over there, helpful here, quiet there, independent with one person and endlessly understanding with another. That doesn't automatically mean you're fake. Sometimes it means you learned how to adapt. Maybe adaptation helped you belong. Maybe it helped you avoid conflict. Maybe it helped you stay connected. But after you've gotten really good at becoming what a room seems to need, there's a question that gets harder to avoid:
Where are you in all of those versions?
Recognizing these things in ourselves can get uncomfortable because eventually we have to stop talking only about what happened when we were children and look at what we carried with us when we left. I can see that much more clearly in my own life now.
There was a period in my childhood when being “good” meant more to me than staying out of trouble. It felt like security. I wasn't living with either of my parents, and I understood enough about my circumstances to know that the people caring for me didn't have to. Nobody needed to threaten to send me away. I made my own calculation: be respectful, follow the rules, don't cause problems, and you'll be fine.
I was provided for. I had clothes, shoes, somewhere to live, my hair was kept done. I was grateful for those things, genuinely. I also needed a kind of emotional love I didn't always know how to ask for, and there were moments when I learned that asking wouldn't necessarily mean receiving it. So I learned to quiet some of that need. The problem is, quieting a need doesn't make it disappear.
I grew up and carried that hunger for love into places that had nothing to do with the home I grew up in. In romantic relationships, I would actually tell people, “I don't require much.” At the time, I thought I was saying I wasn't difficult. I wasn't demanding. I wasn't asking anyone to jump through hoops to love me. Looking back, I can see how often I was giving people permission to offer me very little while I gave them a lot.
I complied. I accommodated. I tried to keep conflict from escalating. I tolerated things I shouldn't have tolerated. I didn't have a healthy understanding of boundaries, so disrespect, neglect and even abuse could exist alongside my desire to keep the relationship.
Sex became tangled in that search, too. Experiences early in my teenage years introduced me to sexuality before I had anyone helping me understand boundaries, what belonged to me, what I could say no to, or what I should expect from someone who claimed to care about me. So I gave parts of myself away easily—my body, affection, loyalty, love—while still searching for those very things myself.
I loved people the way I desperately wanted someone to love me. But that doesn't mean I was always good at loving people. There were friendships where I didn't show up. Important moments I missed. People I disappointed. Times when I wasn't the friend, sister or person I wish I had known how to be. Looking back at myself only as the person who gave too much would let me avoid the places where I also had growing to do.
I wasn't simply walking through life loving everybody perfectly while everybody failed to love me back. I was trying to build relationships with tools I didn't have yet. Underneath so much of it was the same question I had learned to ask much earlier: What do I need to do to keep my place here? Sometimes the answer was give more. Sometimes it was ask for less. Sometimes it was tolerate something. Sometimes it was become whatever version of myself seemed easiest for another person to keep.
That's one of the things I'm beginning to understand about earned love: it doesn't always look like begging somebody to choose you.
Sometimes it looks like convincing yourself that you don't need very much once they do.
ROOTED IN REAL LIFE
Who Did You Learn to Become?
"I wasn't trying to take up more room in somebody's world. I was learning how small I needed to become to fit inside it."
Your story doesn't have to look anything like mine for you to recognize yourself here.
Maybe you grew up in a loving, stable home and still figured out early that achievement got attention. Maybe you became the child who brought home the grades, collected the awards and made everybody proud.
Maybe you were the responsible one because there was already enough going on in your family. Maybe you became funny because laughter could change the temperature of a room. Or maybe your version was being helpful, quiet, tough, independent, successful, spiritual, easygoing—or simply becoming the child who never asked for anything because you could see how much everyone else was already carrying.
None of those qualities are automatically bad. Being helpful isn't a wound. Being successful doesn't mean something happened to you. Being considerate, independent or responsible isn't evidence that your childhood was secretly terrible.
The question is what those things came to mean to you.
Did being successful become proof that you were worthy?
Did being helpful make you feel secure in your place?
Did being quiet protect you from becoming a problem?
Did independence become another way of saying, I learned nobody was coming?
Did making everyone proud become so important that disappointing them felt dangerous?
That's where the conversation changes.
We're not trying to turn every good quality into evidence of damage. We're asking whether somewhere along the way, who you were became tangled up with what you believed you had to do to stay loved, accepted or secure.
IDENTITY
Maybe Your Version Looked Different
There’s a strange thing that can happen when you finally recognize a pattern in yourself. You immediately want to know how to stop doing it.
How do I stop people-pleasing? How do I stop needing approval? How do I set better boundaries? How do I stop caring what everybody thinks?
Those are fair questions. We’ll get there. But sometimes rushing to fix a pattern keeps us from understanding what it has been doing for us. Because if being agreeable helped you stay connected, telling yourself to “just say no” doesn't address what saying no still feels like it could cost you.
If achievement became one of the ways you knew you were doing okay, telling yourself that your worth isn't tied to productivity doesn't automatically make resting feel safe.
If asking for less helped you avoid disappointment, deciding that you deserve more doesn't mean you'll suddenly feel comfortable asking for it.
These patterns didn't necessarily stick around because you weren't strong enough to change them. Some of them stuck around because, somewhere along the way, they made sense.
So before we ask ourselves to stop, maybe there's another question worth asking first:
What am I afraid could happen if I stopped doing this?
If I stopped explaining myself, what am I afraid someone would think about me?
If I stopped being the person who always says yes, what am I afraid would change?
If I asked for what I actually needed, what response am I preparing myself for?
If I disappointed someone and didn't immediately try to make it better, what would that bring up in me?
If I stopped proving that I'm worthy of my place, would I still believe I belonged there?
You don't have to answer all of that today. And you definitely don't have to turn every realization into another assignment to become a better version of yourself. For now, we're noticing. We're getting curious about the rules we've been following and what we believe those rules have protected us from.
Seeing the pattern doesn't mean we're responsible for fixing it immediately. It means we're finally beginning to see the rule clearly enough to decide what we want to do with it.
THE SHIFT
You Don’t Have to Fix It Yet
THIS POST’S WORK
The Approval Inventory
You’ve spent this Post noticing where approval may have gotten tangled up with love, belonging and worth.
Now, let’s make it personal.
The Approval Inventory isn’t a test, a score or a diagnosis. It’s a place to slow down and look at what you may have learned you had to be, do, give, hide, achieve, tolerate—or not need—to feel secure in love.
You’ll have space to notice where those rules may have come from, where they’re still showing up now, and what you imagine could happen if you stopped following them.
You don’t need to change every answer.
You don’t even need to like every answer.
Right now, we’re just telling ourselves the truth.
Join LRTK for access to the Approval Inventory and the growing collection of reflection tools inside the Reflection Room.
BEFORE WE GO…
You Were Never Supposed to Audition for Love
Maybe you recognized yourself in one sign. Maybe it was six. Maybe none of the signs fit perfectly, but something underneath them felt familiar.
You don't have to leave this Post knowing exactly where it started or how you're going to change it.
For now, it may be enough to notice the places where you learned to make yourself easier to love.
The places where you became useful, agreeable, successful, quiet, needed, independent or undemanding because some part of you believed those things helped secure your place.
And maybe the work isn't becoming the opposite of who you learned to be.
Maybe it's learning that you can still be generous without giving yourself away. You can be successful without making achievement the price of your worth. You can care about people without becoming responsible for their emotions. You can be independent and still need somebody. You can love deeply without shrinking to make yourself easier to keep.
Some of those old rules may have helped you once.
But you get to decide whether they still belong in the life you're building now.
You don't have to prove anything here.
