How do you know if a man truly loves you? Forget the five love languages. They're nice and all but useless for predicting love. It has zero predictive value. Want to know the ultimate predictor of love? Welcome to the concept of- Relative Expense At its core, Relative Expense is a contextual ethics of giving. It asserts that the value of any act of love or devotion is not absolute, but is relative to the giver’s resources, limitations, and capacities. It's a situated metric, meaning it doesn’t just ask, “What did he give?” but, “What did it cost him to give that?” It's actually really simple to understand with a few examples. First, think of one of the five love languages. Let's just take gifting, for example. Here's a question for you: Does your man love you if he bought you a Ferrari? The answer is you don't know, because I have given you incomplete information. Now let's change the question. Does Elon Musk love you if he bought you a Ferrari? HA! Absolutely not. Why? Because the cost of a Ferrari is insignificant to him. Relative to his net worth, buying you a Ferrari is, to him, the equivalent of taking you to McDonald's. It is of low proportional cost to him because he's using a resource that is completely abundant. So relative expense for him in that example is low. But let's say a rich and powerful man gives you an entire week of his undivided attention, with no cell phones, no meetings, no calls... now that is worth something! Why? Because time is his biggest scarcity. Take another example- Let's say your boyfriend doesn't make a lot of money, and he has a lot of free time. Does it mean he loves you if he spends an entire day with you? No. Because his time is cheap. But what is a lot more meaningful is.. let's say he only makes 50k a year, and he spends 49.99k on you. That is love. Obviously, whether or not that's enough for you personally, that's a whole different story, but unmistakably, that is love. Another example: "I love you." "You mean everything to me!" and other words of affirmation coming from someone who's a sales guy... it is literally worth less than a meme coin coming from him. But an "I love you" coming from an introverted, stoic guy, who barely talks and very rarely expresses his emotions? That is a huge relative cost. How about sexual loyalty from a man in his 20's? That is a good predictor of love from him because sex is so important to him at that age. For him to give up 100% of his sexual access to other women for you? That is a high relative expense. Would it mean as much coming from a 65-year-old man with a much lower sex drive? Not. Even. Close. Now, it is a given that he should give you his already abundant resource. But it is the scarce resource, the one that has a high relative expense, that is the true measure of his love for you. The reason I like this is because: 1. It centers effort, not aesthetics. Most mainstream ideas of love focus on the form of the gesture (flowers, vacations, texts), not the cost of the gesture to the giver. That’s performative. This framework instead asks, “What did it cost him, personally, emotionally, materially, to offer this to you?” This helps you see through: Grand gestures that were easy for him Minimal gestures that were huge sacrifices 2. It’s emotionally intelligent. You're recognizing that not everyone starts from the same emotional baseline. A compliment from someone emotionally fluent? Easy. That same compliment from someone who struggles to express love? Monumental. You're not measuring love through volume, you’re measuring it through difficulty and effort. 3. It resists manipulation. It protects against the classic traps: “But he did all this stuff for you!” “He said he loves you every day!” “He gave you everything!” Relative Expense asks: Was that actually hard for him? Did it cost him anything emotionally, socially, financially, personally? If not, it may have just been love theater. 4. It respects individuality. It accounts for personality types, social context, neurodivergence, income, emotional bandwidth. That’s key in any realistic model of love. It allows you to say: “He didn’t say much, but for him, that meant everything.” “He bought me something huge, but for him, it cost nothing.” You’re evaluating sincerity relative to capacity, not conformity to a template. 5. It reframes loyalty, attention, and emotional availability as gifts. Especially in dating and relationships, people often treat time, monogamy, and presence as givens, or as optional. This model frames them as offerings, and shows that when someone gives up something that’s scarce to them (e.g., their solitude, their attention, their financial comfort), that’s real love. The only caveat: Relative Expense doesn’t tell you if a relationship is healthy or sustainable. It tells you if the love is real, not whether it’s enough to build a life on. Someone can love you deeply, but still be a bad fit, or unstable, or unable to meet your needs. Relative Expense clarifies how much they gave, not whether you should stay. A Bene Gesserit gives no allegiance to illusions. She does not hunger for scraps when she is the feast. She does not beg for effort. She observes it. You must be the first to honor yourself. Guard your time, your softness, your spirit. Because love that costs you everything while costing him nothing is not love. It is theft. Choose yourself first. Always. Then choose only what chooses you back, at a cost that reveals it's sincerity.
