Loving

[lissalysikan]

An online friend of mine (Kikue) has an interesting blog/journal on another service where she writes about her journey of self analysis and improvement (and random other stuff- for some reason all my friends tend to be a little random :D ). Recently she wrote a post about love, regarding the "conditional" love that seems to be the common type. I had written before about a very similar situation as she uses for an example – one partner in a relationship has put conditions on his love for the other. The second one is expected to do certain things and/or behave in a certain manner and/or look a certain way etc. Kikue does a better job of beating on the idea that if there is a condition on it, is it really love than I did. She also brings in the "stop depending on others to make you happy" concept that I hadn't connected to the topic previously. I agree, and have made a similar statement in the past, but I hadn't connected it to the "conditional love" topic before. It seems an obvious connection now, though. I have to add it to my arguments when someone starts saying how they love someone else 'but'... There is no but. You love them or you don't. If you do then you accept them for who they are. If they need a change for their own well-being (i.e. smoker needing to stop to preserve health) then yes, pushing for it is in accord with loving them. If you just think they need a change to make you happy or because something about them seems wrong to you or rubs you the wrong way or embarrasses you – you're the one that's wrong and you need to examine yourself to find out where you got the idea that they should conform to your expectations and get rid of it. That's enough deep thinking for now – I'm supposed to be working, not thinking. :D

Bye for now.