What's Love?

So how do you define love?  Is it a feeling, an action, a thought, or somewhere between all three?  Can you feel love in the absence of growth?  Can love die simply from inaction?  If you truly love someone can that love truly ever die?  Can you love someone you dislike?  You think you know the answers to these questions?   Well maybe…..but what if everything you thought you knew was not reality?  What if your perception was slightly askew and what you thought unconditional love wasn’t in fact unconditional?  What if, unconditional love was something more, something greater than what you have yet experienced?  What if you never really have experienced such love, but found out how you could?

As children we are thought to receive unconditional love from our parents.  Ask yourself this, how dysfunctional was the household in which you grew up?  To some degree every household is dysfunctional, but depending upon the level of dysfunction determines the level of conditions placed on the amount of love received.  There is a level of trust and boundaries that get broken in childhood depending upon the parents’ healthy boundaries and mental/emotional functionality that sets the foundation for how those children will grow up and love, be loved, and choose love…How “conditional” the love they provide to others or receive from others.  An example would be parents who are boundaryless and invade their children’s emotions by dictating how the child should feel with the unspoken understanding that if the child didn’t adhere and shut down their natural feelings they would not be accepted and therefore loved.

As adults we find ourselves in relationships, whether friendships or love partnerships, that we would like to think are unconditional….but most of the time are not.  Ask yourself this, how many “pass/fail” requirements are in your relationships?  How quick are you to judge your friends or lovers if they say or perform for you?  Are your relationships one sided or go both ways?  An example would be a friend who you always know will be there for you, check on you, take care of you, but because your needs are met in the relationship it never occurs to you whether you are doing the same for the other person….Once that friend gets fed up with the one sided relationship stops their overfunctioning role and you get mad and question the friendship…never once really looking at the part you played in it. 

Conditions come in all shapes and sizes and in all forms of function or dysfunction.  Boundaries are important in all relationships at all ages and in fact are necessary to maintain a solid, healthy relationship.  Boundaries should be established and verbalized and maintained.  Boundaries are not however conditions of love but conditions of relationship.  Conditional love is a whole other ball of fun.  Someone having to perform certain acts in order to hold your love is not real love.