Real Love vs. Conditional Affection
{Written by Jason}
“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.” — Osho
Everything is a perfect mirror in your life. Everyone you choose to have in your life will show you some very important things about yourself, should you choose to notice them. Which can be absolutely maddening, especially if you feel frustrated, hurt, wounded, or abandoned by someone.
Yet, if you can cultivate true, loving awareness in those moments, you may be able to see a part of yourself in the other person who is triggering you. There’s a psychological theory that the triggers in your closest relationships are showing you the deepest, unresolved parts of yourself that need more, love, attention, acceptance, and healing. Truly, your most intimate relationships can be your greatest teachers (if you can interpret and integrate the lessons!)
How Our Love Became Subverted As Adults
As little children, we intuitively knew how to unconditionally love. How to open our hearts and our circles of compassion to all beings, regardless of their race, skin color, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, economic class, gender, or species.
Somewhere along the way, however, we started to gradually lose this natural, innate ability to accept and love others unconditionally.
Through no fault of our own, we started to observe our parents, teachers, society, the media — who showed us their definition of “love”. Most of these definitions are not love at all — they are actually conditional affection masquerading as love.
Conditional affection is when you say that you love someone, but the truth is that the moment they do something you don’t like, you don’t approve of, you don’t expect, you don’t condone — you say,
“I don’t love you anymore.”
This isn’t real love. It’s lip service. It’s the illusion that music, movies, and the media have fed us about what THEY think love should be.
It’s conditional, it’s limited, it has no foundation of acceptance — it’s the exact opposite of love, in fact, because its foundation is fear.
The moment you judge, disapprove or hate someone else, love goes right out the window, doesn’t it? Can you see how completely insane this behavior is?
We claim to deeply love someone, yet the moment things don’t go the way we want them to, we withdraw our affections from them. Expectations, assumptions, and demands are all pure illusions.
They have no connection to reality at all. This is very tricky in relationships because we allow ourselves to be so vulnerable. We share our innermost desires, fears, heartbreaks, and hopes with another person.
It’s easy to allow our minds and hearts to buy into the expectation that our love, our focus, our commitment, and care will be reciprocated. But this is a dangerous trap we lay for ourselves because we cannot know how a person will respond to our energy. We have no idea what the next moment will bring or if someone will change their mind about how they feel.
Being in a sane relationship means that we are clear that NOTHING is guaranteed, and we have the choice to show up fully, unconditionally loving in full acceptance of ourselves and full acceptance of the other person.
The reality is that unconditional love is the true nature of our Being. We knew it — experienced it fully — as small children and our ability to cultivate it, practice it and experience it has not been lost.
It’s just going to require a LOT of unlearning, a lot of patience, a lot of compassion, and a lot of letting go. The more we can let go of our expectations, our assumptions and ideas about how things “should be”… the more we let go of trying to control our loved ones… of trying to hold on to the past or our attachments of the future — the freer, more loving and more open we will be.
This is some of the most challenging and often painful work we can do for ourselves.
Yet, your willingness to go into the dark cave uncovers the greatest treasures of our lives.
We must learn to let go. We must learn to accept what is.
We must learn to love unconditionally and without expectations or demands.
The result is a state of Being that can heal our hearts, heal our relationships, and ultimately, heal our planet.
Start with High-Quality (and Uncomfortable) Questions
Ask yourself where you are holding back the love in your life — from yourself or your loved ones. If you are withholding your love, ask yourself why.
It is because you’re afraid of being hurt, being seen, or being truly vulnerable?
Are you afraid of your love not being returned or reciprocated to you?
Is it because you are in judgment and haven’t accepted yourself fully?
Identify the roadblocks you have placed between you and unconditional love — and then work to dissolve them. You can dissolve them through radical acceptance of what is, letting go of expectations, assumptions, and demands, and working to heal your pain, trauma, and fear (I recommend a therapist or coach to support you with this!)
And remember this: your heart and mind are like parachutes. Once opened and expanded, can never return to their original dimensions.
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Originally published at https://www.wellevatr.com.
