Most people who claim to love someone don’t really love them, because they don’t know what love actually is.
What is love NOT?
- Possessiveness is not love
- Jealousy is not love
- Lust is not love
- Fear is not love
- Keeping people all to yourself is not love
- Expecting something from someone is not love
Real, true love is unconditional. All other “kinds” of love are not really love. Most parents and kids don’t love each other, most people in relationships don’t love each other, most people on the planet never experience unconditional love in their entire lives… or at least it sure looks that way.
To love someone unconditionally means that you love the person exactly as they are, exactly as they were before, and exactly as they will be in the future – because people change all the time, so if you love the person, you will love them even if they become something you disagree with. How many parents can say that about their kids? How many people can say that about their “lover”? Love is not about you or your pleasure or your amusement. It’s not about what you get out of it or what the other person can give to you. It’s not about having a trophy you can show off with and tell people “This is *MY* girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband/son/daughter/whatever”. You do not “own” anyone. It’s not about you feeling ‘proud’ to be with someone who always agrees with everything you say and do and never does anything you disagree with. Unconditional love means that the person can just live their life exactly as they choose and you will always be there for them no matter what.
So, how does unconditional love fit in with relationships and marriage and sex and all that stuff the whole world keeps going crazy over? It doesn’t, really. It doesn’t “fit” in anywhere. Relationships are like trying to put love into a box and keep it there, except love is infinitely sized, and the box is… well, there is no box large enough. And a normal, conventional marriage is quite possibly the worst possible way to show someone how much you love them.
Unconditional love is more of a spiritual thing. It’s not bound by physical things, like blood relations and the desire to procreate. It has nothing whatsoever to do with sex. Most people are in relationships because they’re horny and/or lonely, even if they genuinely think they love the other person. But if the person they “love” suddenly lost their “equipment” for whatever reason, would they still want to be with that person? Would they get jealous if the person they “love” wanted to spend time with other people as well? Relationships based on needs are not unconditional.In order to truly understand love, you must first forget everything you have ever learned about it from society and anyone else (including what I just said). You are the only person who can tell you what love is. The only reason I’m writing all this stuff is because people always try to fit “love” in with things like dating, relationships and marriage and all that. You can’t make any sense of it if you keep doing that. You have to get rid of everything you think you know first.
About my writing
I write about this because I have always been deeply bothered by society’s definitions of love and how most people talk about love, and everything they associate with it. I have given this topic years of thought, and always found it extremely hard to explain my thoughts in actual words. How do you explain something as abstract and unexplainable as love? Sometimes the topic comes up on forums and I always respond to people as best I can. At first I was terrible at getting my point across, but after enough attempts I actually started to make some sense to myself. Then one day I realized I had typed quite a lot, and I never seem to run out of steam on this topic, so why not write some full articles about it?
If you’ve been here before, you may have noticed that I moved from my old site to theguide2.com – I’m still the same person doing the writing though, so nothing has really changed except the address.
Q&A:
Q: Do you think any human being can ever love someone 100% unconditionally?
A: Probably not. It’s (probably) impossible to be perfect, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still worth it to try, just to see how close you can get.
A: Probably not. It’s (probably) impossible to be perfect, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still worth it to try, just to see how close you can get.
Q: Do you love anyone perfectly unconditionally without ever making any of the mistakes you talk about here?
A: Hell no. But I’ve improved a lot and I’m always working on it.
A: Hell no. But I’ve improved a lot and I’m always working on it.
Q: Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite?
A: If you want it to. In a way, I want my posts to provoke people because so many people get it horribly wrong. And yes, I am actually this hard on myself as well. I’ve done my fair share of stupid things and have beaten myself up over it a million times. But I guess that’s how I had to learn… the hard way. At least now I know what I was doing wrong, and how it feels to be wrong, so I can understand better when other people do it.
A: If you want it to. In a way, I want my posts to provoke people because so many people get it horribly wrong. And yes, I am actually this hard on myself as well. I’ve done my fair share of stupid things and have beaten myself up over it a million times. But I guess that’s how I had to learn… the hard way. At least now I know what I was doing wrong, and how it feels to be wrong, so I can understand better when other people do it.
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