Insight of the Week: The Misconceptions of Unconditional Love

Unconditional love seems to be mired in misconceptions. When defined it says to love another despite their faults, shortcomings and circumstances and to love without expecting anything in return. And this in fact is correct, however, the interpretation of this definition is where the misconception lays.

Let’s see:

Where may you have learned that to love unconditionally meant you had to be a doormat, violate your boundaries or tolerate disrespect or abuse in the name of love?

Where did you learn that it meant disempowering yourself for another?

Where did you learn that it meant you constantly had to stand in front of the same firing squad over and over to prove that you love unconditionally?

Where are you doing any of these in your relationships?

Unconditional love requires none of these.

Loving another unconditionally begins with loving ourselves unconditionally and knowing our self-worth. It embodies honesty, self-awareness, acceptance, trust and forgiveness.  We are all Souls here learning our lessons and we make mistakes which stem from our woundings. We have patterns to unwind and shadows to heal. In this process, unconditional love empowers us in understanding our self-worth, extending forgiveness, setting boundaries without internalizing how the other person has hurt or offended us. It means that we love ourselves enough to take ourselves out of range of the firing squad with dignity and grace and hold space and compassion from a distance from those who are still healing their own wounds and acting them out. There’s a saying that says: “hurt people, hurt people” or as Neale Donald Walsch put it “what is it that hurts you so badly, that you need to hurt someone else in order to heal it?”  Understanding this is the key to unconditional love, for true soul love never dies but sometimes it must step back, aside or even out to allow another to step into their healing and you into your own self-love.

Therefore, check in with yourself, how have you interpreted the meaning of unconditional love?