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Closed How to Love Unconditionally part one

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kline achxyl

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Love is hard to define. From poets to psychologists to everyday people, the endless effort to explain what love is and means beyond “you know it when you feel it” has led to innumerable results. Making things even trickier is the concept of unconditional love, which some say is the only true kind of love, while others call it impossible. To believe in unconditional love, and to actually love unconditionally, requires a great deal of thought, action, and faith. Only you can decide if and how you can (or should) love unconditionally, but the following article will hopefully assist you on that path.

Defining Unconditional Love
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Consider the types of love that exist.The ancient Greeks did so, and defined four variations, as identified in this article.
Of the four, the term agape most closely equates to unconditional love. Agape love is a choice, a decision made to love regardless of circumstances or disappointments.
  • Thus, unconditional love means loving another in his or her essence, as he or she is, no matter what he or she does or fails to do. People with children usually seem to understand this notion best of all.
  • It is also learned and practiced. You must choose to love unconditionally.
  • Parents might counter that they had no choice but to love their children from the moment they laid eyes on them, but that initial flush of attachment is, perhaps imperceptibly, replaced by an ongoing decision to love the child regardless of circumstances.
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Realize that unconditional love is not being “blinded” by love. A person who has newly fallen in love with another is often in this state, where he/she does not see the other person’s full reality, faults and all.
  • Such a state of love is (or at least should be) temporary, and needs to be replaced by a longer-term, “eyes wide open” type of love if the love is to last.
  • To love someone without conditions you need to be aware of the conditions, good and bad.
  • "Unconditional Love is not the case of being blinded by love but rather the resolution that nothing is more important than love." - Talidari
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Consider whether romantic love can be unconditional. Some say no, because romantic love must function conditionally, as a partnership based on feelings, actions, and expectations. In this view, you can never love your spouse in the same unconditional manner as your child.
  • However, love is not the same thing as a relationship. Relationships are conditional, a “working partnership.” An unconditional relationship is a recipe for one-sided domination.
  • Thus, a relationship can end because the partnership does not function properly, and yet unconditional love toward the other person can remain. Sometimes ending a relationship can be the way to love unconditionally.
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Think of unconditional love as an action more than a feeling. We usually consider love to be a feeling, but feelings are a response to something we “get” from someone or something. Therefore, feelings are conditional.
  • Unconditional love is the action, the choice to strive for the well-being of another. The feeling you derive from acting with love is your reward, the return you “get” from your own action.
  • To love unconditionally is to act with love under all conditions.
  • If you have to do something, or be a certain way, in order to receive love, that love is conditional. If it is given to you freely and without reservation, it is unconditional.
 

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