True love should be unconditional. You hear this often enough. If you don’t get told by your parents as a child, then maybe later by your own partner. The unconditional love is considered to be the only true and real love.
But do you really have to love unconditionally in a relationship? Can you do that at all?
What does unconditional love mean?
Unconditional love is what parents in particular speak of Relationship with your children describe. But the term is also used in partnerships. Those who cannot love unconditionally do not really love at all, it is often said. Love is not a trade, which can be immediately cancelled when someone makes a mistake. And that is true. To tie the love for a person to certain conditions is probably not a recipe for success for a stable relationship. A partnership is not about re-educating someone so that he or she better fits your own ideas. It’s also about Acceptance and about accepting someone as they are, including all their quirks and problems. From this point of view, unconditional love is probably the basic recipe for a happy relationship. It keeps you from taking every behavior of your partner as an impulse to withdraw love from them.
How important is unconditional love for a partnership?
Who would not like to be loved unconditionally? A constant love gives us security and self-confidence. John Amodeo of Psychology Today warns, however, that the Not letting cravings for unconditional love get out of hand. For example, you can’t expect to be loved in a relationship, regardless of how you treat your partner. Conversely dangerous to put up with everything from your partner. Love means being respectful of the other person’s feelings as well as your own. In love you should take the needs of the other person seriously and make the partner happy as long as it does not affect your own happiness. So demanding unconditional love can be very unfair. It is easier to say "that’s just the way I am" than to work on one’s own problems.
Apart from that, there are reasons why you love a person. So the nature of love is already conditional on being the person your partner also falls in love with. This does not mean that a person cannot change. Often you change together or grow from problems, that arise within a relationship. In order not to break at these problems, it is important to draw personal borders.
Love knows limits
A strong partnership consists of Acceptance and generosity. But this must be lived by both partners. Because if the love is only one-sided and one person demands unconditional love without doing anything for it, the partnership is probably not made for eternity. The limits of love run where one’s emotional and physical health is endangered. A relationship therefore consists of giving as well as taking. It is quite legitimate to demand something from your partner. Because only if both work on the relationship, it is possible to maintain the love.