Unconditional love means loving someone through hardships, mistakes, and frustrations. In fact, it is what every meaningful, lasting relationship is made of. When we enter relationships with other people, we are entering relationships with another human being—a person full of quirks and flaws and challenges. And we also show our own quirks and flaws and challenges. One of the most beautiful experiences in human life is learning to lean into the tension of those challenges by offering connection, love, and understanding and by accepting influence, creating compromise, and moving forward in a way in which both people win. This “conditional love” might sound like: It is not healthy to offer love without boundaries. Our relationships require basic expectations to be fulfilled—kindness, respect, and safety. When these are not fulfilled, we might have to set hard boundaries. These boundaries might look like distancing oneself or cutting off entirely. If you do cut off, it does not mean that you offered your love with conditions. Remember, your love did not make them indebted to you. They do not owe you anything. But you do owe yourself safety, respect, and kindness. You can walk away from people that you’ve loved very much in order to take care of your own needs and safety. Sometimes, we ignore these needs for boundaries in the name of “unconditional love.” However, in those moments, we are not offering unconditional love. We are offering codependent love. In codependent relationships, we are so set on maintaining the dynamics in the relationships that we excuse or enable unacceptable behavior. Again, this leads us to a place of unbalanced power and control rather than into a place of truly connected love in which we offer each person an opportunity to be responsible for their behavior with us. There’s a distinct line between loving someone through the hardships vs. accepting unacceptable behavior. The latter becomes apparent when the relationship is no longer offering the basic needs of a relationship. If someone has harmed you and they are not willing to repair it, then you need to set a limit for your own well-being. If you find that the relationship has devolved into behavior that lacks kindness and respect, then it’s likely that a boundary needs to be set. This is especially true if you have tried to communicate clearly and still see no change. If you are enabling the person in a way that negatively affects your well-being, that isn’t unconditional love—it’s unhealthy, codependent love. Unconditional love with healthy boundaries might look like: For example, let’s take a healthy relationship in which a couple is offering each other the basic and necessary expectations in a relationship—kindness, respect, and safety. And then, that changes—one person goes through something and begins to treat their partner with disrespect or cruelty. When that changes, you can choose to put boundaries in place or distance yourself. This doesn’t mean your love hasn’t been unconditional. In this case, you offered your love freely as long as you could, and then in the moment you needed to care for yourself, you set healthy boundaries. Unconditional love means offering love without conditions in that moment. It does not necessarily mean forever. It means, “The love I am giving you right now is yours to keep. I am doing it of my own free will. You owe me nothing in return.” When we love this way, we are offering true love—the type of love that allows others to be who they are. It also is the type of love that allows us to continually reassess the relationship and decide, over time, if it is still working for us and if we are still able to give our love so freely. Offering our love in this way means that we give it because it feels good to give it and not because we expect a particular outcome. Wholehearted love also acknowledges and prioritizes the wholeness of both the people. To give wholehearted love, you must love your partner and yourself wholly. You will know it is wholehearted love when both people are willing to enter with their whole heart. When each person has a voice. When challenges are reflected upon. When growth happens. When there is no scoreboard because you are on the same team and not on opposing teams. You will know it is not wholehearted love if there are strings attached, debts owed, and boundaries violated. You will especially know when you find that the basic expectations of love, kindness, and safety are not being respected. If you’re wondering what that kind of love looks like in practice, here are a few ways to love wholeheartedly:
