I like to think of unconditional love as a combination of compassion and respect. And indeed it is, I believe, the foundation for all healthy relationships. When we are compassionate, we react with kindness and understanding. When we respect others, we assume they have reasons behind their choices, which prevents us from futile attempts to control them. So more than just being kind (which is sometimes no small feat), when we practice unconditional love we “accept others fully for who they are”. Meaning, we either don’t feel the need or we resist the urge to change them.

Where it gets confusing, I think, is when we try to add this concept to other kinds of love, such as filial love, or romantic love. These “add-ons” are not, nor should they be unconditional. They are, if they are to be successful, based on a foundation of unconditional love. But you are under no obligation whatsoever to nuture romantic (or filial) love towards anyone who, after effective communication, doesn’t meet certain emotional needs or positive conditions.

On the one hand, it’s important to ask yourself, are you demonstrating unconditional love in your relationships? To what extent are you consistantly compassionate? In what ways do you disrespect your partners in these relationships by trying to change who they are? You can often gauge the potential success or failure of a relationship by the answers to these questions.

But, on the other hand, sometimes the only way you can demonstrate true unconditional regard towards someone is to change the nature of the relationship. In order to make it easier to accept this person fully for who he is, to not try to change her, to feel compassionate towards him and treat her with kindness,you can no longer be his lover. Or no longer be her friend. Or no longer associate at all.

If we want our relationships to be healthy and successful ones, we must make unconditional love the priority. We can measure our ability to love unconditionally by the yardsticks of compassion and respect. And if we come up short, it is either ourselves or the relationship itself that we must look to change.

     A strong argument can be made for “harmless flirtations”.  But I guess for me the answer is partly to be found in the question of why we flirt in the first place.  We flirt because it makes us feel good.  It makes us feel attractive, desirable, of interest to someone.  And I can see where, when you have your spouse within reach, this can actually be of some benefit to keeping the fires stoked in marriage – as long as you can always reconnect those feelings to your spouse.  The problem is that we are highly associative creatures.  When we experience certain emotions repeatedly in a certain set of circumstances, or related to a specific person or thing, those emotions become tied tightly to those circumstances, person or thing.  Simply put, having someone other than your spouse be the source of this good feeling is dangerous.  And when your spouse isn’t around to be the ultimate associated release of those feelings, the person with whom you continually act those feelings out, it is exponentially more dangerous.

     I’m trying not to be moralistic about it.  The fact is that moral beliefs have very little power over this very human experience.  It’s hard, though.  For me, I’d love to know that my husband was always behaving in ways I would be comfortable with if I were in the room, and so I try to always use that as a measure of my own behavior – how comfortable would my husband be with my behavior right now if he were able to see me?  This seems right and reasonable to me, and has built into it the idea that different people’s spouses would be comfortable with different things.  In the end, though, I think the more delicate and often overlooked issue isn’t whether our spouses would be ok with what we are doing, but whether we are subjecting ourselves to an unnecessary and painful psychological battle for the sake of feeling good in the moment. 

     I’ve written about this before, but I can’t impress upon…well, myself (apparently) enough – progress in relationships only happens in an environment that feels safe to both people.  That doesn’t mean you don’t stand up for what you need and deserve, nor does it mean you never speak up to offer a challenging point of view.  But had I really been listening, had a taken a moment to understand and appreciate what was behind the stance she had taken and the significance of it for her, I may have been able to make the important adjustments necessary to effectively communicate what I wanted to get across.  I may have been able to share my truth without posing an immediate threat to hers.  Then, perhaps, we both may have been heard and understood.  Instead, I wasn’t listening – not REALLY – and therefore she couldn’t listen either.

     Funny thing is, when I’m wearing my “Coach hat”, I don’t have trouble doing this.  But without the emotional distance that hat affords me, it becomes a lot more difficult.  So it follows that the more emotionally charged a conversation is, the harder it is.  It’s unfortunate – the higher the stakes, the more likely we are to do the damaging thing.  It’s understandable, it’s human, and it’d be great if we (I) could cut it out!

     So we bickered, incessantly.  It was a tug of war, with me trying desperately to get him to invest in what we were doing, and him seeming to try everything he could do to distract himself from what we were doing.  Until I finally took a minute to think about this man and who he really was.  A brilliant mind, idle.  This is a former Dean, a scientist and science professor, a man of mind.  A habitual thinker.  And it occurred to me that what was really getting in the way of his investment in what he was doing wasn’t so much a bad attitude, but that he didn’t know how to invest his MIND in the physical activity.  This man’s mind and body were very much two seperate entities to him, and while his body set about doing these uninteresting repetitions, his mind was searching desperately for something to occupy it.

     So I set about making sure I gave him clear directives for what to engage his mind with during each exercise – these are things you need to think about and why - and stressing the mental component explicitly, instead of simply asking him to focus.  I began to turn my attention towards actively focussing his mind instead of simply expecting him to.  In short, I stopped taking his behavior personally, I figured out what was in the way, and I actively helped him move the obstacle. 

     His work outs have improved tenfold, and we are getting along pretty famously. 

     How much better would all of my relationships be if I could remember to start with the assumption that people generally have good intentions and do the best they can unless there is something in the way?

     I couldn’t figure out what bugged me about this.  First of all, I absolutely agree with her about the material she had been given on the show.  I used to be an avid fan of the show, but stopped watching sometime last season for that very reason – I felt the writing had gotten really poor.  And I can even see her making an argument that her material was particularly bad – I had begun to despise ”Izzy” despite liking the actress and the character very much through several seasons.  And I’m all about honesty.  She was asked the question, and she answered it.  I felt that I should be applauding her in respect for her judgment about the material, and for her willingness to tell the truth even if it meant she would have to leave the show.  Clearly she ought to leave if she is feeling that way, and wanted to leave if she was making these kinds of statements publicly.

     But I found myself siding with the producers on this one.  And though of course it made sense to me that they would be offended and looking to relieve her of her contract, I couldn’t figure out why my sympathies seemed to lie with them.  But then I realized, the Emmy was for “Best Featured Actress”.  The Emmy was NOT for “Best Writing” or “Best Material”.  And though I fully understand the connection between the quality of the performance and the quality of the material, I have also seen many examples of actors rising above crappy material to deliver a stellar performance.  In fact, those performances may be even MORE worthy of award.  If she felt that her acting suffered for the material, that’s fair – I’ve certainly felt that way in my life.  But then let’s be honest about why we aren’t worthy of an Emmy.  Say, “I failed to make it work”, or “the work wasn’t good enough”.  But Heigl withdrew not because she didn’t feel she deserved the Emmy, but because she wanted to make a statement about the material she was being handed on the show.  It was a passive-aggressive decision involving third parties.  And that’s why it seemed an unnecessary and unsavory “throwing under the bus” of the writers.

     What has this got to do with relationships?  This was a private conversation that went public and has destroyed a relationship.  Perhaps because she felt inhibited from having this conversation straight up with the people directly involved (or because of the failure of those conversations), Heigl acted out in a way that ruins any chance for real understanding and a win-win solution without bad feelings, or at least of getting out quietly without residual public negativity.  This is the price of passive-aggression for Heigl, and it may end up having resonating negative affects on her career. 

     Honesty is the best policy…as long as you are being honest to the appropriate parties, and as long as you are being honest to yourself about the role you are playing in any challenging situation.

     As any of us who have been in a truly confusing situation with a romantic interest know, it just isn’t that simple.  There are a lot of reasons someone may be giving you mixed signals, and many of them have little or nothing to do with you or their feelings for you.  A guy can be crazy about you, but when he thinks about it working out, he gets completely freaked out about what he feels that would require of him.  A woman may be intrigued, but may be concerned about what she sees as a major incompatibility issue.   It can be about rent, religion or readiness…and yes, it can be that they just aren’t sure how they feel about you.  But the fact of the matter is, and I guess this is what the book was getting at, is that anywhere on this continuum of reasons to excuses, the truth remains – whatever is in the way is bigger than his/her feelings for you.  He’s just not THAT into you, as in, he’s not into you ENOUGH.  And you know what, he (or she) should be.  For it to work, his feelings for you need to be bigger than just about anything else.  And really – don’t you want them to be?  Why would you want to try to make it work with someone whose feelings for you are “LESS than”?

     And if you are on the other end of this, you may do well to ask yourself, doesn’t this person deserve that – someone who feels unequivocally for them?  And if you can’t give it to him (or her), what the hell are you doin?  Get out of the way!

     I’ve had it done to me, and I’ve done that to someone, and I’ll tell you something – those times someone did it to me don’t touch me at all anymore – in fact, I thank them every day for letting me go so I could find the man I was meant to be with.  But I am afraid I will always be somewhat haunted by the time I did it to someone else, and the damage that did both of us. 

     My husband and I were together about three months when we found ourselves talking about moving in.  The question came up because his lease was up and he had gotten a new job, so he was going to be moving.  I was on a month-to-month, and we both knew I wasn’t happy there.  But we were trying so hard to be smart.  “My lease is up” is NOT a good reason to move in together, nor is “I hate where I am living”.  We both seemed to have a sense that this relationship was heading in a marriage direction, but it was clearly too soon to be talking about that, so clearly also too soon to be talking about moving in.  So for a while, we didn’t talk about it.  We talked about creating a situation with his move that would leave the door open to our making that decision “at some point”.  “At some point” meaning within a year, since the issue was about whether he should avoid signing a year lease so we are free to move in whenever we want, or get a big enough place for me to eventually join him, but then have to shoulder that bill until we decide to move forward.  And though neither one of these scenarios was ideal, they were also, in our opinion, not reasons to move in together.

     So we moved in anyway, and I’ll tell you why – because even with full knowledge of what a big step it was, even with complete understanding about what were the wrong reasons operating here, and what the consequences of the decision may be, we still just really wanted to do it.  Because even with the full foundation of wisdom we felt we had as adults, we still got REALLY EXCITED about “playing house”.

     If we leave a relationship as a resentful person, we enter the next relationship looking for a problem. If we leave a relationship as someone who is betrayed or taken advantage of, we enter the next relationship without trust. If we leave a relationship as someone who lacks understanding, we enter the next relationship unable to hear or know our partner. But if we can leave a relationship as someone who hears, understands, and acts out of compassion for both ourselves and our partners, we enter the next relationship ready for love.

     If we can use the challenges of the dissolution of a relationship to define ourselves this way, we can move on freely. If that is not possible (and sometimes it’s not), we can expect to have to use the next one to find that ideal version of ourselves, and be prepared to do the work. So be mindful of who you are being as you end your relationship – you take her with you.