Here are five ways that unconditional love helps grow and strengthen great relationships:
1. The best relationships give space for what is needed.
“The trick with unconditional love is to focus on the authenticity of a person; seeing their inner beauty and strength without getting caught up in on what they say or do.
If you don’t agree or like what your loved one says or does, you don’t take your ultimate love away and you don’t take it personally.
And if you have to let them go, you can let them go in love.”
2. Partners choose who they want to be — and when.
“Unconditional love in the real world involves accepting your partner for the flawed, flesh and blood person they are, not the idealized version you might want them to be.
It means accepting their feelings, perceptions, experiences, and viewpoints at face value without the need for them to defend or justify them because they are different from yours.
Unconditional love can include making requests for changes in their behavior but being able to graciously adjust if the answer is ‘no’.”
3. Unconditional love means understanding that there’s a difference between feelings and reality.
“Unconditional love is being able to witness the anger, the sadness, the shame or guilt that arises in your partner and yet remain focused on the core of who they really are.
Gaze upon your partner, see through their personality characteristics and focus upon their divine love within.
When we witness the divine in another, we bring that part of us to the forefront, and from this place comes the capacity for unconditional love.”
4. Partners realize the value of staying present in the moment, and think before speaking.
“First connect, then act. What if we pause for a moment, turn to the present moment, feel the heart and connect with each other for real before we speak or take action?
Even the most challenging issues can be taken care of — if we give precedence to truly meet each other first. It is simple, feels natural, but connecting takes practice.
For, when we feel in touch with the pulse of life and each other, love emerges and shows a way, one you may not have seen before.”
5. Both partners understand that there’s room for ‘we’ and ‘I’.
“Intimacy is essential to a healthy relationship but clinging not so much. Paradoxically, the joy of being together is enhanced by the necessity of having time apart.
Love in its authenticity understands that each partner is not dependent but interdependent. The need to be constantly connected to one’s partner is more about fear, whether known or unknown than it is about love.
Love transcends space, so partners truly in love understand the power of their love regardless of their physical proximity at any moment.”