Unconditional love, on the contrary, is a love that comes from the soul level, from who we truly are, from our essence. It is seeing into another person and into their challenges. It is understanding and it allows expansion as it allows us to connect back into who we truly are without shame or without needing to explain ourselves. It is a love that says: “You are ok as you are and I will continue loving you no matter what your behavior or no matter what you decide to do with your life”.

However, unconditional love doesn’t mean that you accept all behaviours and let people walk all over you. There is a distinct difference between still loving a person despite the bad or negative behavior and allowing that person to continue behaving with you in a way that is unrespectful or that doesn’t honor you. Some people are best loved at a distance because they cannot handle closeness with grace and/ or respect. Unconditional love does need to be applied to the self first before it can be applied to others.

Unconditional love doesn’t mean that you cannot have needs, wants and desires with regards to your relationships either. It just means that you are detached as to how these are going to be fulfilled. You don’t expect that the person in front of you is going to fulfill those needs, but rather make space for the person who will happily fulfill those needs to show up in your reality. Unconditional love is trusting that your needs will be met (unconditional love towards the self). It might be with the person you currently have a relationship with or it might be with a different person who is more aligned with who you truly are if your current partner is not willing and/ or ready to evolve, grow or expand with you.

For example, if you are in a relationship with somebody and you want intimacy but the person you are with is reluctant to give you what you want and need; conditional love might be to give the person an ultimatum (give me what I need otherwise I’ll withdraw my love as well as myself from the relationship), whereas unconditional love might look more like a conversation to see how everybody’s needs may be fulfilled and met. If an agreement that suits both people cannot be found then the relationship may be ended as it cannot be fulfilling to both partners. Unconditional love is more gentle and loving as you don’t threaten to withdraw love if the other person is not as you want them to be. It is less controlling, violent and manipulative than conditional love.

Conditional love can be painful as it may make us feel as if something is wrong with us when we cannot fulfill somebody’s need or when our expressed needs make the person in front of us feel discomfort, and they  then end up withdrawing their love because they cannot stand the discomfort.

Unconditional love shows acceptance. It doesn’t make us feel like something is wrong with us for having a specific need or for being a certain way. It embraces and celebrates who we truly are.

Unconditional love is first loving ourselves fully for who we truly are as well as accepting, embracing and integrating all of the different parts of ourselves (and that includes our shadow, all the parts of ourselves that we have pushed away from ourselves, separated ourselves from, denied, repressed, etc…). Once we fully and unconditionally love our own self, we can then extend that same level of love to the people around us.

With much love, light and gratitude,

Noëlie Ceyral