Unconditional Love – GOOD or BAD?
You may have been wondering – is unconditional Love – GOOD or BAD?
If you’ve read or heard what many of the world’s spiritual leaders – both in the past and in the present – have said – you’ll know they teach that practising unconditional love for yourself and others is the only way to have true happiness and successful relationships.
Yet other very successful relationship therapists state that this concept is not only ridiculous and impossible, but is in fact a bad thing to strive for – and damages rather than helps relationships.
The truth is that though it seems these two groups are totally opposed in their views – they are actually in agreement. Let me explain.
Just for a moment think about what happens between most parents and children.
Though you would like your children to be perfect they do not always do things you like or approve of. But however much you disapprove of your children’s behaviour – as a parent – you continue to love them. You might feel sometimes that you don’t, because you’re angry or hurt or disappointed – but at some level deep inside you still love them and know they are really better than the behaviour they’ve shown – even if while you’re upset you don’t want them to know that!
This is unconditional love – it comes naturally – you don’t make yourself do it deliberately – you are disapproving of your child’s behaviour – but at the same time you are loving the real person you know is there deep inside beneath the behaviour. The point to remember is that all human beings do the best they can, with the knowledge and the resources they have at any time in any situation. This is not an excuse – simply an explanation. With better resources or knowledge or both each of us might choose to behave differently in certain circumstances.
The important thing to remember is that – as a good parent – you show your love not by standing by and allowing your child to behave in ways you believe are harmful to themselves or to others – but by pointing out how you feel about their behaviour – giving them the knowledge they might not have had previously and also the opportunity to find alternative resources – and so to make different decisions, find alternative responses and behaviours and so to grow.
If this isn’t yet making total sense to you – let me give you an example of how this applies in your adult world.
If you’ve being physically or mentally abused by your partner – putting up with that abuse is not showing love, respect or caring either to yourself or to your partner. While you don’t stop the abuse you are in fact abandoning both yourself and the person abusing you.
To show your love both for yourself and for the other person means establishing boundaries – refusing to accept abuse even if that means leaving the person or ending the relationship. You are actually showing more love by ending the relationship than by staying with the abuse.
Its even possible the other person may learn from your response that its OK to care about and to look after yourself and to say no to being hurt. Abusers usually hurt others because they have been hurt badly themselves and are afraid of getting hurt again. In fact – as with all our programmed behaviours – their abusive actions or words bring them the results they most fear – they unconsciously make sure their own fears and expectations are manifested in their lives.
Its important to remember when you leave someone – or ask them to leave – you can continue to love the person you’ve left, without loving the unaccepable behaviour you’ve left behind. And though they may not accept it at a conscious level – you’ve actually shown true caring – not only for yourself – but for them too by saying no.
Of course there may still be more you can do to understand and change the unconscious programming in your own mind that led you to attract that abuse – so that in future you make sure you attract only real caring and respect, but the fact that you’ve allowed yourself to say no now and acted out of caring and respect for yourself by leaving that abuse behind will already be having a huge impact on changing your previous programming.
So unconditional love is a GOOD thing – as long as you understand that the unconditional love is for the true inner person and not for their behaviour.
