I blame Disney...

OK, so that was a joke, but in all fairness most popular fiction portrayals of love is conditional, that is, men (mostly) are trained that they have to earn a woman's (mostly) love... it isn't just freely given for its own sake.

A few years back I was at a retreat and one of the workshop presenters (a woman) was precisely using the public models of love we're presented as a "teaching moment" in pointing out how repeatedly what we admire involves a hero who has to "do great deeds" for the heroine, in order to be "worthy" of her love. Which, of course, addresses the psyches of both men and women.