Our world is governed by rules and from our childhood we were trained by the church and education system to adhere to rules. Therefore, we speak definitively and with certainty and confidence with regards to the rules we believe should govern all human relationships. However, we humans are very diverse.
Not even the personality tests that are intended to categorize us and guide our career and partner choices do this perfectly. I did the test 5 years ago and got INFP, then 5 years later I did the same test and got ENFJ. We grow, we evolve, we change as we gain new information that resonates with our hearts.
For this reason, we need to be flexible in our understanding of our partner as we progress through life together. We must repeatedly make the decision that we will love them no matter what. Marriage is intended to be lifelong. A lot can go right over a lifetime, but also a lot can go wrong. A lot can stay the same, also a lot can change. The true test of your love’s authenticity is how well it responds and stands when things take a turn for the worse.
Becoming less attached to our Criteria;
What are the conditions that influence your love now?
Does your woman have to be slim and sexy?
Or does she have to be thick in all the right places and able to cook?
Does your man have to be tall, dark and handsome?
Or does he have to make a lot of money and be good with his hands?
Does your woman need to love dancing?
Or does she need to be a freak in bed?
Does your man need to love children?
Or does he need to be an alpha male that dominates in all areas of his life, a true leader?
What are the criteria that we set in our minds that dictate to us whether we will love someone?
Our criteria help us to set boundaries and help us to choose who we believe would be most suitable for us. However, it is quite rare that any of us will pair up with someone that ticks all our boxes, and we tick all of theirs. Even if they tick all our boxes now. Will those boxes stay ticked as life progresses? Will we or our partner need to adjust as we come across new information that influences our attitudes and behaviours? Will the slim and sexy wife box stay ticked if your wife doesn’t watch her diet and doesn’t have a habit of consistent exercise? Will the ‘money maker’ box stay ticked if your husband decides to pursue a different career path? One in which he feels more fulfilled and purposeful even though he now earns much less. Will the wife who is a freak in bed box remain ticked if she became sick with cervical cancer? Not only do you no longer have the freak you have to care for her more intensely than you did before to see to it that she survives.
Life is filled with so many nuances that will challenge your definition of love if it is not unconditional. You want what you want. What you want may have been a dream of yours from you were a child, your heart is bound tightly to it. What if the partner you have chosen cannot give you that thing? Could you still stick with and love him/her? The man is supposed to provide for his family and the woman is to take care of the home and children, right? What if life forces a rule reversal? Can your love survive that? Or will it fail? If it fails, was it ever love? Because according to Corinthians 13:8 Love never fails.
You see how you define love will influence how you love. If your love is transactional; “I love him because he is warm and kind” or “I love her because she cooks for me” What will happen to your love if circumstances change? What happens if the once kind husband slips into depression and withdraws from you? Do you now leave him because you deserve better? What happens if your wife gets really exhausted because of work so she loses the desire and will to cook regularly? Do you leave her because she is no longer meeting your expectation?
Often in unconditional love someone is going to get the shitty end of the stick. But guess what, that’s what God intends. For us to love like Christ, we must experience some semblance of what Christ experienced. For you to love sacrificially you must sacrifice your deepest desires and your strongest criteria. To love unconditionally is to let go of all your lists and value nothing above your person. Unconditional love is beautiful its what takes us through our roughest storms when we receive it. But it is also a beast as it robs us of our very selves when we give it.
Growing Pains
Can you imagine doing your utmost best to love someone unconditionally who does not love you back in the same manner? Can you imagine extending grace to someone who comes at you with nothing but criticism and judgement? Can you fathom the pain you would feel if you forgave and gave second, third and fourth chances to someone who doesn’t do the same for you? If you can, then you have a good idea of why divorce happens. Both husband and wife must be on the same page regarding unconditional love or else one of them will always lose. It is the one who is always losing who will most likely be the one to leave. Or if they stay, they will be the more miserable of the two. This doesn’t make them a bad person. It just makes them human.
I can’t stress enough how important it is for unconditional love to be flowing both ways. It is the only way staying in a difficult relationship will make sense, because you and your partner will have a sense of confidence that you will both grow through the pain. As you dance and step on each other’s toes there will be pain. But if you believe that your partner didn’t intend to hurt you, and that they still love you despite the pain you caused them. That will accelerate the forgiveness process. Additionally, if you are both sorry and adjusting your movements as you both dance, there will gradually be less incidents of toe stepping.
Feelings of endearment grow even stronger after an unintended offence is forgiven. But if offence is not forgiven feelings of anxiety around making mistakes grow instead. This may cause the development of emotional distance between two people, as the offender now feels as if they can’t be their authentic selves flaws and all (This is key to Intimacy). They start to feel as if they are walking on eggshells once around their person and so will become more guarded and less open. This is done to avoid adding another offence to the pile of unforgiven offences.
True Love Forgives
The last part of 1st Corinthians 13:5 says, “Love keeps no record of wrongs.” So, simply put, your love is not authentic if it cannot forgive. Holding on to offences and bringing them up over and over from one argument to the next is one of the worst behaviours we humans are prone to in our relationships. Because we tend to want to show the other person that they are the main problem in the relationship, hence absolving ourselves of blame and accountability.
Doing this we create an aura of superiority around ourselves. This can make the relationship combative and competitive as the other person feels smaller and further and further away from the acceptable standard of human being, with each new offence added to the pile. The temptation will be to tell the other person that they need to go fix themselves and come back to the relationship a better person. While we feel as if there is nothing on our side that needs to be addressed because we are always right or always pointing out the grievances.
But being the one to always identify the ways your partner needs to change is in and of itself something you may need to change. It is not shame and criticism that will inspire change, that is more likely to harden your partner’s heart. Rather it is unconditional love and the art of gentle persuasion by way of example.
Unconditional love has power to save
1 Corinthians 7:12-14 Apostle Paul says, “If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband.”
The Bible here speaks about how the Christian member of the pair sanctifies the non-Christian. The action of sanctification is the process by which we become more and more like Christ. What Paul is saying here is that through the loving devotion of the believing spouse, the non-believing spouse will eventually come to see the light. When living in such proximity to a believer it is expected that the ways and the mindset of Christ will influence the non-believer over time.
It’s not the believer repeatedly criticising and pushing the non-believer to change that changes him/her. Rather it is the gentle art of persuasion as unconditional love washes over the wounds, the quirks, the hang ups and the apprehensions of the non- believer.
This instruction also applies to couples that comprise of two believers. The tendency that often befall Christian couples is the poor habit of having heightened expectations of your partner because they are Christian. This causes us to extend them less grace than we do to a non-believer. Because “they should know better” and the Holy Spirit should be controlling their every action and word. But is the Holy Spirit controlling your every action and word? If so, how is there room for resentment in your heart? Love your partner as a human full of flaws just like you.
Closing Remarks
Thank you for reading my article.
I hope I have been able to show you just how crucial unconditional love is to the sustenance of your relationship. It is foundational, having the foundation of unconditional love influences EVERYTHING ELSE.
How you talk to your spouse, the height of your expectations, how easily you forgive, how much you sacrifice, how you bounce back from painful experiences in your relationship, how patient you are with your partner, how you cope with lost hopes and dreams as you receive unconditional love from your partner. How feelings of endearment grow within your heart as you receive grace from your partner. The depth of the meaning and feelings within sex between you and your partner. How homely the relationship feels as time progresses is all influenced by the giving and receiving of UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. If you would like to watch me talk on this topic check out my podcast on YouTube by clicking the following video
There is no other love. Every other “love” is either a version of unconditional or fake. If your love is not unconditional it is by default transactional. Transactional love makes your relationship feel more like a business than a place to call home. In the next article I’ll be discussing intimacy as an important ingredient in the foundation of a healthy relationship. This is THE WORST RELATIONSHIP ADVICE EVER. You definitely should not take what I say to heart, unless it makes sense to you in some weird way.
Blessings to you and your family.
Darren O. Salmon
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