Learning To Love With Conditional Love vs Unconditional Love

Love is regarded as a grace we grant to one another. It is sometimes effortful, and not hinged on someone else’s efforts. Specifically, love happens when a human opens their hearts and allows the love that naturally occurs inside to flow forth. Love equally entails putting your heart on the line and it's recognized as a crazy feeling. Love – is a word that is frequently used by any language to express feeling and emotion that ranges from something as deeply significant as a mother to child to something as relatively trite.

There is a significant difference between conditional love and unconditional love. Conditional love is a diverged emotion, implying that it has an opposite emotion which is known as hatred. Conditional love comes from ego and specifically focuses on someone like a spouse, child, friend and parents to something like a job, a car and a house.  When you love a person with the condition, you will want them to look, think and act in a way that would fit your own expectations and paradigms.

Loving someone conditionally also requires holding others accountable for our expectations and if the person you love conditionally act in the manner at which you want them to act, an expression of approval is being granted. If these people act contrary to your desires and wishes, expression and acceptance of them are being withheld, usually in the form of anger. Mainly focused on control, conditional love ultimately results in a power play for every person involved. Furthermore, conditional love is regarded as love with the rules and it’s about setting reasonable limits as well.

On the other hand, unconditional love is regarded as a neutral love that has no opposite polarity. The ideal source of unconditional love is a spirit, hence it is available to every person without discernment and it does require something to qualify for unconditional love. This type of love comes through us from within, beginning with a level of self-acceptance, self- forgiveness as well as self-respect. When you make a conscious decision to decide on thoughts based on unconditional love, it does not imply that you agree with everything, it simply means you are consciously committing yourself to express respect, cooperation, kindness to everything in your environment and to everyone. Unconditional love is also a life force of energy that lives within every being and is ingrained in the cells of the human body.

We are – each one of us is a physical epitome of unconditional love, inasmuch God loves all humans unconditionally. Furthermore, unconditional love sounds very beautiful as it comes with no condition.  It is like the love of your dog to you. When you leave for hours every day, they panic and once you arrive back, they cover you up in kisses. They express their love towards you and don’t care what you have done or where you have been. They are never angry – this clear example of unconditional love.

In a sexual relationship, we always seek true and pure love from our spouse. A love so simple, filled with sincerity from both sides. But what if in your relationship you begin to feel insecure? Do you start having doubts for your partner? What if you began to feel if the love he/she has for you is real or pure? Then you might have to look at the detailed signs of conditional love:

The key to true love is recognized as selflessness. When you love somebody you will put that person before yourself and if your lover doesn’t place you before anything, you might have to question whether his love or her love is real or lie. If she/he places you behind other things and ignores many of your interests, it’s a sign of conditional love.

Yes! No being is born perfect; we are susceptible to making one mistake or the other and practically lose our temper due to one argument or the other. Your love has to love these sides of yours because loving someone implies embracing their negative sides, but if he/she acts badly and unwelcoming to your negative sides, his/her love for you is conditional.

Every person wants to see their spouse happy. Seeing our partner smiling rejoicing is happiness itself and if this doesn’t happen in your relationship, he/she doesn’t care about your happiness and most time doesn’t rejoice with you, it’s an indication of conditional love.  Bear in your heart that if you love someone, his/her happiness should be more important than yours, but if the reverse is the case, it is one of the worst signals of conditional love.

Any relationship between a man and a woman involves an equal right from both angle, this allows the relationship to move smoothly. However, if your spouse is dominant in the relationship, it is a clear sign that the relationship is in an unstable state.  If what matters to him/her is what he/she thinks and yours doesn’t matter, then it is a sign of conditional love. When you both go out for a date, he/she decides and most times takes you unserious, is another sign to be aware of.

The discussion centered around Ex is usually very sensitive in any relationship. If he/she continually reminds you of his/her ex or talks and compares you, he or she hasn’t really moved on. He/she doesn’t love you unconditionally and this means he/she has not truly accepted you.

However, other signs of conditional love include: Your spouse always seeking for more, he/she judges you quickly, expects you to be someone else, he/she doesn’t appreciate you the way you are, he/she criticizes you and make you less good, he/she loves you because of certain things, and he/she cheats on you bluntly.

Conditional love usually blames a person, expects a return and request for more. It is nothing compared to unconditional love which entails acceptance and sacrifices. If you and your spouse love each other conditionally, both of you will end up living like immature children and once the unconditional love is not in the marriage, any of the spouses might begin to look for it elsewhere. However, here are some tips on how to deal with conditional love:

• Talk through the issue.
• Love him/her deeply, without strings.
• Accept your spouse the way they are.
• Be supportive, even when the going gets tough.
• Have possible and realistic expectations.
• Trust your spouse and never create room for doubts.
• Assist in solving personal issues as if it’s your own personal problems.
• Give forgiveness when need be.
• Begin your day by asking your spouse what you can do for them
• Pray without ceasing.
• Keep the chemistry alive with your spouse, Hang tough.
• Keep no inappropriate secrets.

“If we have built on the fragile cornerstones of human wisdom, pride, and conditional love, things may look good for a while, but a weak foundation causes collapse when storms hit”.

Charles Stanley
 

“If my love is without sacrifice, it is selfish. Such love is barter, for there is an exchange of love and devotion in return for something. It is conditional love”.

Sadhu Vaswani

“Never settle for someone who makes you feel weird about how much you care”

Holly Riordan

“Love a person the way they need to be loved, not the way you want to love. It’s not about you. Love is selfless, not selfish”.

Tony Gaskins

“What is conditional love? Conditional love is an oxymoron. Conditional love is an imposter of love. Conditional love is something other than love because you cannot conditionalize the unconditional”

Donald I. Hicks

“If it is conditional, it does not love”

Jaggi Vasudev

“Love between two adults is always conditional. You can fall out of love because you are able to fall in love”

Bryan Cranston

The topic of conditional and unconditional love is widely addressed. Many people have suggested that if love is conditional, then it is not truly loved and if love is unconditional, then love truly exists. However, the height at which you love and accept yourself is the same height as you love others. Ask yourself, if you love your child or spouse conditionally because of their behavior or unconditionally. If you realize that you love conditionally, practice the aforementioned tips on how to handle conditional love.