There was a time during my marriage when we were close to calling it quits, where I was wishing for unconditional love from him, because I felt like I was giving it. I would say to myself, “If he really loved me then he would….” I was seeking unconditional love but the truth is I was under the illusion I was giving it, but truthfully I wasn’t. Even what I was saying to myself had a condition to it “If he really loved me THEN…”
If you find yourself in the same predicament, where you are yearning for a love that is everlasting, pure, and completely understanding then you might have it framed incorrectly. Expecting unconditional love from your partner and yourself is an extremely high bar to set. The closest example in life of a relationship that displays unconditional love is a mother child connection. The other true exception is if you are enlightened, which would then mean you are not even of this world you are pure light and love. Most of us are not in this category, yet.
So, your expectations around providing and receiving unconditional love in your relationship may be the reason it isn’t working out so well. That fairy tale Disney story we bought into so early in our youth isn’t reality. Everything doesn’t just fall right into place just because we have found love. If that was the case then divorce rates wouldn’t be as high as they are.
50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.
I want to emphasize this point because our upbringing and our specific life experiences are going to clash with your partners (no matter what) because he has a whole other set of values from his upbringing and life experiences than you.
All of these experiences have created conditions and the clashing over time erodes away at a perfectly great foundation of love.
How do we avoid this, well it is all about you baby! I will keep drilling this message home.
As you can you see from the statistic above the divorce rate goes up after the first marriage.
Why does this happen?
The reason is because most of us think the stuff that is not working with our current partner can be solved by taking on a new one. The only thing that happens is you are probably solving some of the old issues but you are also swapping them out for some new ones. You might even look back and think “oh I guess the old issues weren’t that bad!”
The only way out and to find true everlasting, pure, understanding love is to find it in yourself first. To embrace your inner and outer workings, where you came from, who you have become, and where you are going. Until you can love yourself up in every way and find your inner bombshell, seeking love outside of you will never feel truly satisfying.
Once you love yourself up and make peace with your weaknesses that is when you can begin to forge a relationship that is lasting loving and oh so supportive.
When I let go of the unconditional love myth, and found my inner bombshell that is when my entire marriage shifted. So ask yourself and leave your comments below. In what way are you not satisfied with who you are and how can you shift that?
P.S. As a side bar for those that are interested in the deeper philosophy. Our very essence is unconditional love, but from the moment of birth onwards, your life experiences filled with hurt, pain, suffering, and on the opposite side pleasure and happiness (which is how you can identify pain and suffering and vice versa), pull us away from our inherent state of condition less love. So my goal from this article was to show you that if you drop the condition of having or giving unconditional love, then you will have more of a capacity to love yourself and others without boundaries.
In Love,
