When there is no scoreboard because you are on the same team and not on opposing teams. You will know it is wholehearted love when both people are willing to enter with their whole heart. To give wholehearted love, you must love your partner and yourself wholly. Wholehearted love also acknowledges and prioritizes the wholeness of both the people. Offering our love in this way means that we give it because it feels good to give it and not because we expect a particular outcome. Wholehearted loving means leaning into the vulnerability of offering our love because we want to offer it. If it's easier, consider instead the idea of wholehearted love. The word unconditional can sometimes create confusion or lead us to place unrealistic expectations on ourselves and the way we love. It also is the type of love that allows us to continually reassess the relationship and decide, over time, if it is still working for us and if we are still able to give our love so freely. You owe me nothing in return." When we love this way, we are offering true love-the type of love that allows others to be who they are. It means, "The love I am giving you right now is yours to keep. Unconditional love means offering love without conditions in that moment. In this case, you offered your love freely as long as you could, and then in the moment you needed to care for yourself, you set healthy boundaries. This doesn't mean your love hasn't been unconditional. When that changes, you can choose to put boundaries in place or distance yourself. And then, that changes-one person goes through something and begins to treat their partner with disrespect or cruelty. ![]() Unconditional love means "right now, I offer you this love, and you are not indebted to me." It does not mean "I offer you this love, exactly in this way, forever, even if you start to harm me."įor example, let's take a healthy relationship in which a couple is offering each other the basic and necessary expectations in a relationship-kindness, respect, and safety. Unconditional love gets muddied when we believe that we have to continually offer that love even when basic relational expectations are no longer being fulfilled. RELATED: How Do You Overcome Codependency? A Therapist's Guide If you are enabling the person in a way that negatively affects your well-being, that isn't unconditional love-it's unhealthy, codependent love. This is especially true if you have tried to communicate clearly and still see no change. If you find that the relationship has devolved into behavior that lacks kindness and respect, then it's likely that a boundary needs to be set. If someone has harmed you and they are not willing to repair it, then you need to set a limit for your own well-being. ![]() The latter becomes apparent when the relationship is no longer offering the basic needs of a relationship. There's a distinct line between loving someone through the hardships vs. Again, this leads us to a place of unbalanced power and control rather than into a place of truly connected love in which we offer each person an opportunity to be responsible for their behavior with us. In codependent relationships, we are so set on maintaining the dynamics in the relationships that we excuse or enable unacceptable behavior. Sometimes, we ignore these needs for boundaries in the name of "unconditional love." However, in those moments, we are not offering unconditional love. If we do not let our partners, parents, children, and friends know where we stand in terms of how we expect and need to be treated, then we will not have an equal voice in the relationship. Love without boundaries can lead to unhappiness at least and abuse at worst 1. One of the most beautiful experiences in human life is learning to lean into the tension of those challenges by offering connection, love, and understanding and by accepting influence, creating compromise, and moving forward in a way in which both people win. And we also show our own quirks and flaws and challenges. ![]() When we enter relationships with other people, we are entering relationships with another human being-a person full of quirks and flaws and challenges. In fact, it is what every meaningful, lasting relationship is made of. Unconditional love means loving someone through hardships, mistakes, and frustrations. ![]() Otherwise, we are offering love with "strings attached." This creates power and control imbalances. It is important to offer this type of unconditional love in our relationships. It means, "I offer you my love freely without condition." This means that when we offer our love, we offer it without expectation of repayment. The term unconditional love does not mean love without limits or bounds.
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