The concept of love

Yesterday I was talking to my best guy friend (who I knew for so many years and who is someone very important in my life) about this topic which is love. And I was thinking about it for quite sometimes before I fell asleep. There is nothing particular to do with my current feelings and don’t misunderstand that I am having relationship problems. No No. Haha. Definitely I’m not feeling blue or down. Just wanna know more about this subject from other’s point of view.

You know love the concept on its own is thrown around a lot and there’s a lot that I think we all agree is very superficial and overused but when it comes to unconditional love, it is even more of a sensitive subject because when people find someone they really love, they start to tell each other things like: “I love you unconditionally. You know that’s how I feel about you, I love you unconditionally.” I’m gonna put together a slightly controversial case right now and the case I wanna put forward is that within intimate relationship, unconditional love doesn’t really exist. Opps. I think some people reading this gonna disagree with me and don’t wish to continue reading this. Don’t be mad. It’s just some sharing.

Unconditional love doesn’t exist. Let me explain why I think so. I’m not just someone who thinks that it doesn’t exist. I actually don’t want to believe that unconditional love exists. I’m actually the kind of people that think if unconditional love exists; it would be a terrible thing. The reason I say that is because the whole point have an intimate relationship is spending your life with someone that you have an unbelievable connection with and someone who really tries for you, a teammate that to me is love. My idea of relationship is teamwork; it’s two people that cover each other, it’s two people that nurture each other, it’s two people that there for each other, it’s a team. It’s the best team in the world, it’s an unstoppable team, it’s two people that can count on each other every day. To me that doesn’t fit with the idea of unconditional love.

Unconditional love appears to suggest that no matter what someone does to you, you still love them, you’ll still be in the same place with them, and you’ll still be committed to them. I don’t know many relationships I've ever heard of like that. I’d challenge you to name one. I challenge you to name a relationship where the love was sweet absolutely 100 percent unconditional when no matter what those two people did to each other, they stay together. And there are two ways I look at this.

Firstly, if someone leaves… some people say: “well, I left the person because I couldn’t be with him but I still love him”. Well… Okay, this is a kind of a conditional love because you left them and oh well… I’m one of them chose to leave because of some reasons but nothing to do with cheating back to that time. Hmm… okay, back to the topic. Alright, you might still love them underneath but you didn’t love them enough to stay because they weren’t treating you right, they weren’t doing the right things. If someone cheats on you every day for the rest of your life, could you unconditionally love them? Would you still be there? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s unconditional love in that sense, it seems like an awful prison. No matter what someone does to you still have to remain there. You know unconditional love fades away quite quickly when you talk to someone about abusive marriage. You know if the man was abusive towards the woman, would you expect her to unconditionally love him? Nope! But what if she said I unconditionally love you? It was quite quickly turn from something romantic into this horrible masochistic tendency to stay in something that was truly harmful.

See… to me, unconditional love is an extremely dangerous concept, it makes people feel guilty in situations where they shouldn't feel guilty when they should feel entitled to leave, where they should feel entitled to say: “You know what. You don’t care about me. You don’t do enough for me. You’re not trying this relationship anymore. I can’t be here.” It makes people feel bad for leaving because they feel like the real notion of romance is unconditional love. I don’t believe that’s romantic. To me what romantic is two people who try for each other. To me what romantic is a relationship where two people never stop trying to impress each other. That’s to me is beautiful and I’d think that’s the key to a relationship.

By the way, never stop trying to impress your partner. Wake up every morning and say what am I doing for my partner today? How am I surprising them? How am I being slightly unpredictable today? How am I giving to them today? How am I helping them grow today? The answer to those questions should always be something you can come up with and by the way you should always be able to answer Yes to some of those questions for your partner.

When you say what’s my partner doing to impress me tonight? What’s my partner doing to surprise me tonight? What’s my partner doing today to show me they’re trying? What’s my partner tonight contribute towards my good? What’s my partner doing to contribute towards the growth about relationship today? If the answer is nothing, if the answer is No to too many of those questions, too many days in a row. That’s not a relationship you should be in.

We all know that we have days that we are not on form. We all know that some relationship, there are weeks or even months where you go through a patch. You know relationships go through seasons. But if you asked the question every morning what is my partner doing to contribute towards my happiness and the answer is nothing every day for too many days in a row then that’s not a relationship that you should be in. and certainly not one you should apply this concept unconditional love to.

The truth is… let’s turn this argument on its head, when you first meet someone, what makes you love them? Do you go in just loving them unconditionally the moment you see them suddenly you say: “I love you unconditionally.” No. Why do you decide you wanna love them unconditionally? Because they do things. There are certain things they do, there are certain traits they have, there are certain ways they are being that makes you say I love this person. In that sense you already based your unconditional love for that person on conditions you saw in the first place. So the only way unconditional love works is if it was unconditional to begin with. I f it is based on conditions, well what happens if they lose those conditions? What if they lose those traits? What if they stopped doing those things for you that made you love them unconditionally?

The whole point is between people who meet each other and who have a relationship, love is conditional. That’s the whole point we stay there because we know every day we make a decision to stay there, every day we know that on some level that person makes our life better. And the moment that’s not true, and the moment that person isn’t contributing to your life and that relationship isn’t making you happy, I think that we’re in a prison when we align ourselves with to that concept about unconditional love and it prevents us from demanding what we actually deserve.

Let me know what you think. Let me know if you agree. Let me know if you disagree. I would love to hear your thoughts. ❤️