As an online divorce review site, we hear a lot of opinions on what a marriage “should” be, and one of the most common phrases that we hear repeated is “unconditional love.” The idea that for two people to be married and happy, unconditional love must exist, is a popular one. However, is it really possible to love someone who is not your flesh and blood unconditionally? A recent post from the Divorced Moms website thinks no.
The blogger writes:
“I believe the existence of unconditional love between a husband and wife is a fallacy. He or she should love me just the way I am. I’m the same person on the inside. Looks don’t matter. You know what? If you were the same person on the inside as you were when you first met your spouse, but now you are out of shape or unkempt, you most certainly are not the same person you were. People who value themselves take care of themselves. So if you have deliberately let yourself go, something has most definitely changed on the inside to make you no longer care what you look like on the outside. And that’s what makes people fall out of love. Love is not unconditional; it is conditioned on the fact that in order for someone else to love us, we must first love ourselves.”
While the idea that unconditional love cannot exist between two people is certainly controversial, we see where the writer of this piece is coming from. When two people agree to spend the rest of their lives together, “for better or worse, till death do us part,” they do so with the implied and often spoken understanding that they will live for each other. When one person is constantly trying to better themselves and the relationship and they’re getting no help at all from the other person, it’s easy to see how the bond of love can be severed. In this sense, unconditional love is not real because it goes away as the conditions of the marriage change.
In other words, love — even so-called “unconditional love” — requires work and commitment if it is to be successful. For those of you here looking at our online divorce reviews to help you with your divorce, what do you think about the concept of unconditional love?
[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]
