One Sentence That Can Transform a Relationship

No matter what, my love for you won’t change.

Imagine yourself hearing and feeling that from someone close in your life. How does it feel? Notice the upliftment. Notice the warmth and sense of “everything is alright” that it generates — even if just a little.

In relationships, we learn to give love conditionally. For example, one of the greatest conditions is that the other person stays with us. Often we see resentment and bitterness form after someone’s relationship ends. It doesn’t have to be that way.

First of all, it doesn’t feel very good to hold onto resentment, bitterness, and judgement. Choosing to love unconditionally is what feels best and could be said to be a rather selfish choice — in the sense that it brings the greatest gain.

Then, the mind has this strange belief that unconditional love will strain the relationship. The mind says:

“If someone is loved unconditionally, what stops them from misbehaving in the relationship?”

Yet this very question indicates a lack of understanding of the nature of love and the essence of human nature.

The nature of love

We choose what we want and when we feel like we are being controlled or pressured, we automatically push back and resist the change.

Yet when we are loved and supported unconditionally, we find that we spontaneously want to support the one supporting us. That’s the power of love. It’s actually the best way to get people to support you and go along with what you’d like. The key is sincerity. If you love someone so that they do what you want, that’s no love — that’s control.

Love is not controlling. Love doesn’t want anything. Love doesn’t impose fear or shame on anyone. Yet love also is not something that is walked over.

One misunderstanding about unconditional love is to see it as passivity — letting the other person walk over your own integrity and wellbeing. That’s not love, that is passivity. Passivity is coming from a place of fear not one of love.

I was hosting a meetup about letting go a while back. Someone in the zoom session started getting off track. I could see that they were de-railing the conversation and going into their own story-loop. In that instance, love took the form of a compassionate yet assertive re-direct of the conversation. With a compassionate and assertive undertone, I said something along the lines of “Mary (made-up name) I feel that this is getting off-topic, let’s come back to the topic at hand.”

Love always considers the whole. That is its nature. Love is for all of life and can sense when something isn’t for the highest good of all. That seems to be a big misconception — if you are in a situation where you are being genuinely loving and treated disrespectfully back, then love stands for you also.

Sometimes, it’s best to love from a distance. We can hold someone in mind lovingly and at the same time, recognise that it is draining and disrespectful to ourselves to be physically in their presence.

If we are being loving and the person in the relationship is dis-respecting us or intentionally attempting to harm us — whether with words or actions — then it would not be loving to ourselves to remain with such a person. We can still love them, but we can do so from a distance. So in this way, love takes courage because it means that we start to look at our unconscious patterns and examine the deeper motivations of our life choices.

Often, this brings us face-to-face with parts of ourselves we wouldn’t like to admit or look at. So in this sense, aligning with love can actually bring up a lot of fear, shame, and guilt from within us. It takes courage to love.

A simple way to love

Love isn’t something we have to get but rather, something we can allow within ourselves. It takes so much energy not to love and yet love takes no energy — it generates energy.

This is because love is already within you. When you play with dogs, animals, or children, you likely experience this. Notice the ease and joy of play. Notice the gentle nature of it. The embracing nature of it. The fun of it. When we play, we are just being our most natural selves. When we play, we come from a place of loving-kindness.

Normally, we don’t recognise playing with dogs as being loving. We see love in a very limited way that constricts our recognition of it in daily life.

In movies, we associate “love” with romance. But there are plenty of romantic relationships devoid of love. We see love as an emotion that comes and goes. Something to get and hold onto.

Actually, love is a way of being in the world. It’s choosing kindness over bitterness. It’s choosing forgiveness over resentment. It’s being kindly curious instead of judgemental. It’s choosing to let go and trust. It’s serving life whilst looking for no gain – giving. Love is also discerning and can see through illusions of manipulation and twisting of the truth.

In our daily lives, we are already expressing love but just not recognising it. When we wash the dishes for someone. When we walk over the beetle lying on the ground. When we walk our pets. When we look someone in the eyes. When we stand with the truth.

With our partners, there are already areas in which we love them. However, often the love is conditional. So what we can do, is start to discover and simply let go of loving our partner conditionally – it’s just a choice.

In doing so, the whole relationship transforms in upliftment, grace, and enjoyment.

It’s a lot simpler than the kind makes it. Right now, could you simply be open to the possibility of loving your partner unconditionally now? It’s best to treat it as an experiment or a game – just to see what would happen.

Think of something you don’t like about your partner. Recognise that the thing in itself doesn’t generate the discomfort you feel. Rather, it is your own desire to change that thing about them that generates the discomfort you feel.

So, knowing that, could you allow yourself to let go of wanting to change something about your partner and love them for it instead?

Notice that it is an option. It is always an option to let go of disliking something and simply choose to welcome or even love it instead.

Likes and dislikes are arbitrary and based largely on social conditioning and environmental factors growing up. We then identify the learnt set of likes and dislikes as “me” and believe ourselves to be our likes and dislikes.

In relationships, this blocks loving-kindness. When we say “I am someone who doesn’t like this about my partner” then we solidify the dislike.

What we can do, is simply notice that we are not our likes and dislikes.

In recognising this, we can more easily choose to let go of disliking something and just love instead.

So again, bring to mind something you don’t like about your partner. Recognise that you are not the dislike but rather, that which is aware of it. This loosens up the identification with it.

Then, just to see what would happen, could you let go of disliking that about your partner and love them for it instead?

Could you love them as they are and let go of wanting to change anything about them?

Notice it is an option. Notice it is just a choice.

At the same time, you’ll likely find that resistance comes up to this.

That resistance is the very thing blocking you from experiencing a truly free and unconditionally supportive relationship.

It is up to you whether you believe the stories that tell you why you shouldn’t love unconditionally or whether you let go and just love.

As you allow love to deepen and grow, the relationship becomes more enjoyable than ever before.

If you’d like support with this, you can access the keys to extremely loving relationships here.

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Previously Published on medium

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