Why Our Relationships Need to Be Based On Unconditional Love to Thrive

Real (unconditional) love is rare. Very few people have experienced it in their own lives but most people believe they know what love is and it is this belief which keeps people trapped in the endless cycle of chasing a feeling of being 'wanted' or 'needed'.

Real love is 'caring about the happiness of another without wanting anything in return'. Unfortunately most of us were brought up on conditional love, believing we had to 'earn the approval' of other people. When you earn enough approval and you approve of another to an equal level, you believe that you are 'in love' and that this is happiness.

But this kind of happiness is fleeting. You have to work jolly hard to maintain the feeling and so does your spouse. However without actually ever experiencing any other sort of 'love' or happiness, why would you believe there was another way?

Imagine that you've lived in Antarctica for your entire life, so all you've ever known is temperatures between -20°C and -60°C. One day, however, the temperature rises from -40°C to 0°C. Compared to what you've known all your life, you'd think that was warm, but how could you possibly know what genuine warmth was? How could you know what it could be like to bask on a beach in Grand Cayman, where the temperatures might vary between 30°C and 35°C in the afternoon?

So it is with real love. It is impossible to describe unless we've experienced it for ourselves, but once we do, all forms of 'imitation love', including marital affairs, pale in comparison.

Once you have experienced the feeling of real love for the first time will have a huge effect on all aspects of your life. Loving, positive relationships that would previously have seemed impossible will become effortless, and the pain caused by having an affair will soon be a fading memory. It will also have a very positive effect on your working relationships, social and family relationships too as you learn to give people what they are missing in their lives. The feeling generated goes beyond anything you will ever have experienced before.

So how possible is it to be truly unconditionally loving to our spouse?

Well when we don't feel unconditionally loved or accepted ourselves then we are always going to be trying to 'get' something from our partner to make us feel better, even if that is only a short buzz of power when we 'win' an argument. The key is to feel unconditionally loved first, by someone capable of giving it, and then learning to offer it to your spouse.

By Nikki M Uglow