Years ago, a very good friend of mine told me this.. “When you’re thinking about having a partner in your life, you must find the one who will give you an unconditional love..” And that time I thought, “Hhmm.. I think it won’t be so hard to find one..”
Years gone by..
And I repeatedly fell into the “other category”.. (read: conditional love)
I have to say that loving itself is already hard.. and loving someone unconditionally is even harder.. Don’t you believe me? Let me show you then..
So please think about your past relationships, or your present, while reading this..
I said that loving itself is already hard.. Consider people that cannot feel the feeling of love for others. Yes, there are people who are suffering because they can’t feel love. Mostly happens because of these “unlucky” people experience trauma from their childhood. And most of them usually avoiding close relationships and afraid to say “I love you…”. And for these people, it will take some time to finally feel love. It’s also up to their decision whether they want to feel it or not. Moreover, some people need therapy in order to cure their childhood trauma and then learn to love others.
So how about loving unconditionally? Loving unconditionally means loving freely inside out.. It is when people say, “I care how you feel..” instead of “I like how you make me feel..”.
Then how do we distinguish between unconditional love (or sometimes called ‘real love’) and conditional love?
According to Dr. Baer, the author of The Truth About Relationships, there are two reliable signs that love is not genuine: disappointment and anger. If we’re giving and receiving conditional love, we will eventually feel empty, unhappy, and frustrated. So when we frown, sigh with disappointment, speak harshly, or in any way express our anger at other people, we’re communicating that we’re not getting what we want. At least in that moment, we are not caring for our partner’s happiness, but only for our own. Our partner then senses our selfishness and feels disconnected from us and alone, no matter what we say or do.
Another article I recently read gives a great explanation about the conditional love.. (I believe that by understanding the nature of conditional love, we will have a perspective on the unconditional love..)
So, here’s the core of the article I read. Please read it carefully..
Conditional love sends out messages like this: “I have done so much for you, so now you should do this for me.”Or “I need your attention, your sympathy, your consent, your time, your presence, your love.” Or “I want you to live your life according to my beliefs and ideas.” And “I need you to need me, and to look after me exactly the way I have in mind, and if you don’t do that, I will fall ill or become very unhappy.”
(Ring a bell already, anyone? Hehehe.. Let me continue then…)
What will happen to people in this kind of “possessive” relationships? Well, this kind of relationship is psychologically suffocating, and can be even physically suffocating, for the person(s) it concerns. it doesn’t allow personal space to the other one. The path the other one has chosen for his/her life is deliberately surpassed for the sake of someone’s purposes.
The claiming people show a great example of compensation, simply because they have difficulty with experiencing self-love or self-acceptance. And most of them didn’t realize it.. But their behavior shows exactly what they are lacked of. So these people need affirmation, confirmation, and domination of the persons in their near surroundings. They want us to listen patiently to twenty times their story and sometimes show no interest in one time our story. They need us to agree with their viewpoint and to act in accordance with their moral ideas about life. They will hold on tightly to present relationships and show difficulty in living its own adult life or marrying a partner. They can lay strong demands on us taking care of their “physical and psychological” health even daily. They may obtrude their help upon us, in return for our time and gratitude. And it will never be enough..
They may use subtle methods that speak to our heart. Here are some examples: they are willing to help us, support us financially, their loneliness after having lost partner, their worries about our well-being, their dependence on us, sometimes use ill health to draw our attention, or give us hints and advices.
The writer said that all of these also sometimes belong to a normal relationship, but in a possessive one they are used to make us do what they want. And if we somehow show and want to act independent, they will let us know with great self-pity or anger that we misbehave, and that we are their source of unhappiness. We of course will feel guilty and that becomes their weapon to fight our freedom and progress.
So what to do? The writer gives some suggestions to deal with this issue as follows..
First, it is important for us to understand the psychology of the situation. No matter how loving you wish to be, you can’t live somebody else’s life. It is your responsibility to do something useful with the gift of your life, and your level of happiness will let you know in as far you are aligned with your heart. Unhappiness, illness, and energy drains will show you that something is wrong. No one besides you can find your aim for this life. Calmly bur persistently insist on your personal space. Saying ‘no’ to a loved one does not mean that you have stopped loving that person. The possessive person needs to learn that relationships flower in love and freedom. Love is happily giving without thinking about receiving. There’s no trading for anything.. Someone else can never meet one’s expectations, therefore please learn to let things and people be. Work with affirmations like “I put faith in myself” and “I am love”.
After I read this article, I was quite shocked.. It’s as if I have a lump in my throat.. This is the kind of relationships I fell into many many times.. And I think some of you now think so too about your own relationships..
Then I continue to read some of Dr. Baer’s excerpts from his book..
He specifically stated this, “If you’re unhappy, don’t look to your partner for the cause. You’re unhappy because you don’t feel unconditionally loved yourself and because you’re not sufficiently unconditionally loving toward others. Both conditions have existed for a long time, usually from early childhood. Because your parents are responsible for the love you received as a child, and because any child who does not receive sufficient “real love” is necessarily filled with emptiness and fear, your parents are certainly responsible, to a large extent, for they way you feel and function as an adult. But you need to understand that as an adult you have become increasingly responsible for your own happiness. And so, exactly how much can you hold your parents accountable for your present condition? That would be impossible to quantify. But no matter what the exact extent of your parents’ responsibility, it is definitely not productive to blame them for your present unhappiness – while it is useful to understand their role in your life. Understanding is simple, realistic assessment of how things are, but blame implies anger, which can only be harmful to both yourself and others.”
(Hhhmm.. He surely knows about what he’s talking about..)
In addition to the statements above, another writer stated this, “Many of us also experienced the physically and/or emotionally absent father, who may have felt love for us, but from whom we often did not receive the feeling of love.. As a result, we grow with a huge hole inside of our heart that’s wanting to be loved more and more and more.. Then, to fulfill the need of being loved, we string up conditional type of love toward others.”
(And I thought.. Hmmm… probably that’s why…) Now back to Dr. Baer’s again..
Further more, he stated that even our own friends liked us more when we did what they liked. In fact, that’s what made us their friend. And that pattern of conditional approval has continued through our lives. People continue to give their approval more often when we do what they want, and so we do what it takes to earn it..
Now we begin to think about our friendship with others.. Are we giving and taking that kind of conditional approval with our friends? I also wonder…
So, being unconditional means actively caring for another and accepting the other as they are. And this type of love is a decision. Segal (1970) stated that the true practitioner of this type of love can honestly give their loved ones the Love Story message, “Love means not ever having to say you’re sorry..”
Wow.. It is very hard to love someone unconditionally.. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t..
We will need some time to look deep inside ourselves first and realize whether we are a person that love others conditionally or unconditionally.. Then we decide what kind of person we want to be.. And then afterward, we decide whether we want to be in a conditional relationship or in an unconditional one..
I have made my choice. What about you?? 🙂
– cheers –
What is dream . . . ?
TO BEÂ in this life (because I think it’s the most important)… I cannot share mine right now because I’m also still in the process of deciding and thinking about this and that (which I think I already ‘overthink’, hehehe…)
angelastri 