“My love is unconditional” is a popular phrase people say to their loved ones. It’s beautiful, and it represents the person’s ability to love, care for and appreciate their partner. It signifies the most precious feeling on the planet: love.
However, I believe that your love should, in fact, have conditions. Today, I would like to elaborate on that.
The Reasoning
If you are someone who knows how to truly love — others won’t have any conditions for you. A person who understands the true meaning of love will never experience negative feedback from their partner. Love isn’t merely an emotion or feeling — it’s a combination of care, support, appreciation, value, loyalty, honesty, respect, protection, partnership, having your best interests in heart, being there for you during difficult times, understanding and being willing to learn, seeing you in their future, and planning your lives together.
What I described above are the basic conditions for loving someone. If they are not being met — it’s not love. If your significant other doesn’t care for you, doesn’t value or appreciate you — you should not be offering them unconditional love. The reason being, they may not actually love you, despite saying they do.
Love Should Be Conditioned on… Love
If you ask ten people to define love, you will hear ten different answers. Everyone’s perspective is different. In my opinion, care, loyalty, value and many other characteristics are what define loving someone. If those characteristics are not present in the relationship — it’s, possibly, not love.
Someone who truly loves you will never fail to value you. They will appreciate every moment with you; they will respect you, do their best to protect you, and plan your future. And you will do the same. Once two people like that meet — they have every chance of experiencing real love and building a strong, long-lasting relationship.
The only condition of love is love itself — apologies for the tautology. The concept of love, however, has a broader definition — and it’s different for everyone.
Look for Good Examples
Unfortunately, when you look around, you will see quite a few individuals in relationships, who are not happy with how the other person treats them. I don’t encourage judging or criticizing someone else’s love life — by the end of the day, it’s their business. Having that said, watching others can be a great way to learn from a distance. Instead of making your own mistakes, it might be a good idea to learn from others.
There are, fortunately, good examples of love as well. Probably everyone knows at least one couple who fits the definition of true love. Those are the people we should look up to, mimic their behavior, and use them as a comparison point. If you don’t have such individuals in your life — thank God for the Internet. You have access to countless examples, not to mention the learning tools, such as psychological and philosophical materials. Sometimes, even watching a few YouTube videos about happy, loving relationships can shape your views on love.
You Deserve to Be Loved
Not thinking they deserve love and happiness is one of the reasons people end up and choose to stay in unhappy and unloving relationships. There are a lot of reasons why this happens, but the point is, everyone should strive to build a happy partnership.
Don’t listen to those who tell you otherwise. Don’t look at the bad examples. Search for someone who knows what love is.
Conditions Are a Must
Don’t settle for someone who doesn’t genuinely love you. Conditioning your love is what will help you find the right person and reject those who only wish to take but not to give. Love conditioning allows you to reject one-sided relationships and seek a two-way one.
Run from those who say they look for unconditional love and someone who will love them no matter what; yet, they never mention what they are willing to give back and invest in the relationship. There is a difference between a person looking for love and giving their love back, and those who simply want to receive but never give back. That signifies using someone or exploiting them for emotional and physical affection.
Have conditions when it comes to love. This is what will help you find someone who truly loves you.
—
Previously published on “Hello, Love”, a Medium publication.
—
***
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want to join our calls on a regular basis, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
Talk to you soon.
—
Photo credit: Freepik