Get the love part right: It's about knowing each other, sacrifice and sticking around on bad days

LONDON (AP) — Love and bacon hovered in the air of the Smalley house one sunny morning when Annie, 7, came to breakfast.

A “baconaholic,” according to her father, Annie spied the last remaining strips of the intoxicating salty meat on a plate. She could easily have inhaled them all. But incoming was Annie's sister, Murphy, 16, another bacon devotee. Annie paused and decided to offer one strip of crispy goodness to her sister. “Dad,” she declared, "“I just laid down my life for Murphy.”

Perhaps, Greg Smalley reminded his daughter, the pig had sacrificed more. But what struck him was the choice. The sisters had a history of generosity toward each other, but Annie had given up something important — a massive understatement for any bacon lover — for Murphy's delight. “Love," Smalley said by email, "is built on small, daily sacrifices that quietly say, 'You matter.'”

In doing so, Annie arguably had gotten the love part right — a universal goal that's been sought and debated across borders, politics and religions for as long as people have been writing things down.

Ahead of Valentine's Day 2026, with the card and chocolate industries eager to help, loving someone well — a romantic partner, a parent, a child, a pet and especially yourself — can seem as perplexing as ever. It depends on what you want, and don't, as well as what others want from you — now and in five minutes, relentlessly.

Across traditions and philosophies, love is generally defined as an ongoing moral choice that requires truthfulness and accountability. What it's not, those texts widely say: controlling, unconditional or abusive.

Aristotle wrote that to love, a person “wishes and does what is good, or seems to, for the sake of his friend.” St. Thomas Aquinas taught that, “to love is to will the good of the other.” The Old Testament includes a famous directive, translated roughly: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“Love,” wrote the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, “can be defined as a wish that others be happy.”

It's all pretty lofty-sounding, so The Associated Press asked people around the world how they got love part right in real, contemporary life. Here's what they said.

“Personally, I love gift-giving,” said Ally Fernandez of Las Vegas, a seamstress. “I make a lot of my items, and I love making something special and like custom to my person, and I do that for pretty much everybody."

For her husband, Fernandez said she did “some really cool, patchwork...It's just so unexpected when you get something that's handmade like that.”

Her husband, meanwhile, has paid close enough attention to know she loves surprises. One recent date night, he took her to Area15, an immersive entertainment experience in Las Vegas.

“You walk through it...and you can interact with all the things around you," she recalled. “I love things like that, like just things that are different and artsy.”

Back home in Budapest, Hungary, there are no Sephora stores. But there are multiples in Paris. So on a recent visit to the French capital, Lili Henzel, 25, couldn't stay away from the cosmetics giant — and her husband, Bulcsu Alkay, 23, went along for the ride. Again. And again.

“Yesterday, we went to Sephora for five times," Henzel said in an interview. “It’s not fun for him, obviously, so I appreciate that a lot.”

Alkay took it with good humor. “I guess it’s my second home, I would say,” he said. Turning to his wife, he empathized. “Because you have so much at Sephora and we don’t have it at home.”

They displayed admirable honesty, appreciation and clear communication.

“I love makeup, so we had to buy a lot of it,” Henzel explained.

“I’m not really interested in that kind of shopping,” Alkay said.

Replied Henzel: "Thanks again for that.”

Luis Mitre of Los Angeles says that “love is the most wonderful thing.” He tries to express how he feels to people, but his dogs seem to know automatically.

That might be because he takes them wherever he goes, even on travel. “They sense when you're sad, when you're happy, even when people don't," said Mitre, who also lives in Las Vegas, where he spoke to the AP. “I think they show their love in unexpected ways every single day."

Claudia Verdun and Francarlos Betancourt, French visitors to Rome's romantic Trevi Fountain, took a quick selfie and kissed — then talked about love.

“For me, it is a daily test," Verdun said. "Little attentions, respect, care for the other, to believe in the other pushing, for the best for him. I think that is important.”

Added Betancourt, love is “to help each other with some things, to always be together, starting with your differences — you have to love each other.

Yi Yi, a Beijing resident, thinks “no relationship is closer than that with oneself."

“I think for many people, the most important is that you should really love yourself, fully accept yourself and accept your own vulnerability and shortcomings,” Yi said. “I think these are the most important aspects of love for oneself.”

“What we do," said Joel Stimpfig, 18, who visited Paris from Madrid, “is that we always have good communication and when we’re having a bad day, we always have a little moment to talk and discuss the relationship.”

Anke Verbeek, 40, and Jari Jacobs, 39, from Brussels, Belgium, “have difficult jobs.”

“She works late. I work early," said Verbeek. "So communication is key for being together, for doing things together and keep the relationship alive.”

Rafael Almeida thinks love has to do with solid planning for the future.

“We have already married, and to have children was our big dream together, and we are planning to expand our family,” he said in Rome, on a visit from his home in Brazil.. “We are planning and fighting for that.”

But love is also the daily practice of showing "the respect and admiration we have for each other every day.”

Erin Smalley wanted the bed made. Her husband, Greg Smalley (Annie’s dad), didn’t see why when he’d just have to climb back under the covers in a few hours. Decades of marriage, several children and co-hosting a podcast did little to resolve this ongoing dispute. Until, that is, Greg watched Erin hobble around with a recent foot injury as she made the bed herself.

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you,” Erin explained, “But I really like our bed made. It makes me feel good.”

“I finally got it,” Greg Smalley, a vice president at Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based Christian nonprofit, wrote in his email. “I realized that this was an opportunity to sacrifice a little bit of my time in the morning for my wife.”

These days, he says, he makes the bed every day.

Contributing to this story were AP journalists Zheng Liu and Wayne Zhang in Beijing, Trisha Thomas and Maria Grazia Murru in Rome, Alex Turnbull in Paris and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas.

A Valentine heart cushion is seen at a grocery store in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

FILE - A man walks holding flowers and balloons on Valentine's Day, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)

Colombia's Ambassador in the United States Daniel García-Peña, right, hands out flowers from Colombia to pedestrians outside the Longworth House Office Building ahead of Valentine's Day, as a symbol of the close partnership between Colombia and the United States, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Valentine's day Plush bears are displayed at a retail store in Lincolnshire, Ill., Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

FILE - A couple share a tender moment near a flower market celebrating International Women's Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, March 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov, File)

BANGKOK (AP) — One recent night, Youga was grateful when he finally slept in a bed, even though it had neither pillow nor blanket.

For two days, the African man said, he slept on the street after he reached Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, following his escape from a scam compound in O'Smach, which borders Thailand in the north. He had only $100 left to his name and wanted to save the money. So the Caritas shelter took him in.

The shelter, the only one of its kind that helps victims escaping from scam compounds, was funded previously by the United States. Today, it is stretched at the seams, working with a third of the staff and a fraction of the budget it previously had as the country faces an unprecedented surge of workers leaving scam compounds.

Now, overwhelmed, the shelter has had to turn away people in need, more than 300 of them. Mark Taylor, who works on human trafficking issues in Cambodia, said, “It's become triage.”

As of last week, the shelter had about 150 people. Many of the newest arrivals were sleeping in a common room and didn’t have more than the clothes on their backs. The shelter didn’t have enough pillows and blankets, said Youga, who spoke on condition that only his first name be used out of fear of his former bosses.

Cambodia is facing an unprecedented flood of workers leaving scam compounds. It comes weeks after the country extradited a suspected kingpin of the scam business who had played a prominent role in Cambodian society to China in January.

In recent years, online-based scams have become endemic to the region in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. Inside these buildings, scammers have built sophisticated operations, utilizing phone booths lined with foam for soundproofing, scripts in multiple languages, and even fake police booths of countries ranging from Brazil to China. In Cambodia, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights estimated that there were up to 100,000 workers alone in 2023.

After growing international pressure from countries like South Korea, the U.S. and China built up over the past several months, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet announced last month that “combating crime is a deliberate political priority” and specifically named cyberfraud. The Cambodian government said it deported 1,620 foreign nationals from 21 countries linked to scam operations in January.

Compounds have been letting people go en masse in recent days, according to 15 videos and images on social media verified by Amnesty International. The organization also interviewed 35 victims, who described a “chaotic and dangerous” situation in trying to leave, although many noted a lack of involvement from Cambodian authorities in the mass exodus.

The departures from scamming compounds have created a humanitarian crisis on the streets that, activists say, is being ignored by the Cambodian government. In scenes of chaos and suffering, thousands of traumatized survivors are being left to fend for themselves with no state support,” Montse Ferrer, regional research director for Amnesty International, said in a statement.

“The Royal Government of Cambodia rejects claims that it is failing trafficking victims or tolerating abuse linked to scam compounds,” said Neth Pheaktra, Minister of Information Cambodia in response to the claims. “All individuals are screened to separate victims from perpetrators, with victims receiving protection, shelter, medical care, and assistance for safe return.”

Li Ling, a rescuer, said she had a list of 223 people, mostly from Uganda and Kenya who had come out from compounds in Cambodia asking for help to get home. She and her partner had spent at least $1000 of their own money to shelter some of the most desperate cases, but cannot sustain that beyond another week.

As of last week, some had gone back to work in the compounds, she added. It was that or face sleeping on the streets.

“When international organizations based in Cambodia are continuing to tell victims to go to their embassies, but the embassies tell us frankly, they don’t have a clear path or process, the responsibility is being shoved back and forth, creating a closed loop with no exit,” she said. “This is not a one-off failure, but a systemic breakdown.”

Those victims waited for hours outside the Phnom Penh office of the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. agency, she said, but were told the Caritas shelter, which IOM works, with is full.

Youga, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said he was beaten often while inside a compound because he refused to work. He was determined to get out and escaped on his own as the mass releases began.

The Associated Press was not able to independently verify all of his journey but saw messages of his pleas for help to IOM. The agency said they could not comment on individual cases.

While the shelter is still operating, of most immediate concern in the coming weeks is the budget for food, Taylor said. “It’s hand to mouth.”

The Caritas shelter received financial support from Winrock International, USAID’s partner in Cambodia, according to Taylor who oversaw the funding. It was due to receive $1.4 million from USAID from September 2023 through the first part of 2026. That source of funding went away after U.S. foreign assistance was suspended and USAID was dismantled in early 2025.

The shelter was also partially funded by IOM, which was largely funded by the U.S. and has also seen its funding cut.

Although many anti-trafficking organizations are registered in Cambodia, the Caritas shelter is the only one who takes in victims of scam compounds in an increasingly repressive environment. Under government pressure, independent media have shut down and a prominent journalist known for reporting on scam compounds was arrested and detained for a month.

“Given the deeply repressive environment in Cambodia that emerges from the scam industry's role as a dominant source of ruling party elite rent seeking, there are an extremely small number of formal organizations willing to respond to the issue on the ground," said Jacob Daniel Sims, a visiting fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center who has worked in countertrafficking in Cambodia.

Rescuers say many who do not make it to the shelter can end up in immigration detention, stuck and pushed for bribes from officials. Others are now booking hotel rooms in groups if they have the funds. Those with embassies in the country are able to get help, such as Indonesians or Filipinos.

Youga cannot return home. He is from the Banyamulenge ethnic group, which has been the target of attacks by armed groups. Nor does he have an embassy in the region that can assist him.

He was lured into a scam compound in Cambodia in November after his family sent him to neighboring Burundi. He said he wasn't looking for a job, but someone he didn't know messaged him on his phone and then emailed him about a job, all expenses paid. He said no, but the recruiter still went ahead.

Youga said he was a university student before and wanted to continue. For now, he only hopes for a safe place. “I want," he said, "to rebuild my life with dignity.”

FILE - South Koreans, walking in the line at center, who are allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia, arrive at the Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea, Jan. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

FILE - A Thai soldier inspects a work station with wooden phone booths lined with foam for soundproofing, inside a scam compound in O'Smach, Cambodia, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)

FILE - A Thai soldier keeps guard outside a scam center in O'Smach, Cambodia, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)

Youga stands at an undisclosed location in Cambodia, on Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo)