“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”
— Albert Ellis
— Albert Ellis
Romantic relationships are a common desire nearly every human being on the planet craves. Many spend most of their lives searching for what they consider "true love". Yet, its not all good. Many of us go trough many different relationships before we find the right one. Its typically an emotional journey and a lot of our worst memories are that of heart ache caused by ending a romantic relationship. Many eventually come to the conclusion that love is lie. Most of the reason im writing this blog now is because I want to kill that idea once and for all.
Love is not a lie, whats more likely is your idea of love is lie. Our idea of the ideal relationship has evolved over time. Back in the early 1700s it was about possession and status. You married not for love but for money or politics. Now we have finally reached a point in our development that most of us are free to marry for love. After ages of not doing so I will be the first to admit that its hard to define real love. What is real love? More importantly what is unconditional love?
The term “unconditional love” might imply that one does attempt to meet all of the needs of the other, to read their minds, to accept and overlook all of the partner’s behaviors and actions no matter how selfish or demanding but this is not unconditional love. This is co-dependent love. This where most of us go wrong. You can't just overlook someones faults. If you read my blogs a common theme is not ignoring your emotions. So if something irritates you about your partner and you try to ignore it you not loving yourself which is actually a big part of being able to be in a stable relationship.
Unconditional love in a relationship begins with oneself. To set the foundation for a lasting, healthy relationship, you must first have a strong sense of self-esteem and self-confidence. This doesn’t mean you never have emotional difficulties or don’t need support and extra attention at times. This simply means you stay true to yourself and put yourself first. This is not an easy skill to obtain. Most of us are taught early that love comes from others if you do what they want but this is obviously not a health practice in the long term. If you want a stable relationship with someone else you need to have a stable relationship with yourself. Truth is though I have yet to meet one person in this state. So what do you do, not date?
NO! absolutely not this just means that its extremely hard to make relationships work but we can make it easier with determination and persistence. Though some relationships do come to a point where neither person can ever come back together in a healthy way, good news is this is not common. Most relationships can be fixed, but both parties must be willing to work on themselves as much as each other. This begins with you both agreeing to honor your emotions.
When people get to that point their desperately trying to save a relationship and love unconditionally they will try to avoid the emotion. For example, say your partner went and spent a lot of money without telling you. Instead of expressing the emotion many try to invalidate the emotion by telling themselves, "oh maybe im being to controlling" or "this will just cause another fight if i bring it up." Thus we start taking less and get more frustrated until......explosion!!! The better way to deal with this is to talk.
Despite what we like to believe, very few of us actually talk to our partners about our emotions unless we are in that explosive state. To fix this you both need to practice expressing emotions in a no aggressive state. Maybe once a month set a date to have a discussion about how you both feel about the relationship. When you do get to that explosive state do not express the emotions. Your trying to retrain yourself so don't be surprised if at first you both have a hard time. Old habits are hard to break.
Love is very much real and so is the possibility of finding real lasting unconditional love. The most beautiful relationships are not easy they come out of years of hard work and dedication to each other. Unconditional love is more intricate and complicated than simply loving your partner “no matter what.”
Have a great day
-Jorden Brosze