For years I have struggled to understand what love is. I grew up in a household that felt devoid of love and I have always wondered what was missing.
This weekend I had a realization. There are two kinds of love.
Unconditional love is the act of doing something to bring someone joy without any expectation of praise. Your intention is to create joy, The act itself brings you great happiness. It is an action that comes from your soul. It feels good to both the person giving it and the person receiving it.
Conditional love is the act of doing something to bring someone joy with the expectation of receiving praise. Your intention is to feel good about yourself. The act causes someone else to bring you happiness with their appreciation of you. It is an action that comes from your ego. It feels a little bit good but it is not real and it is not lasting.
When I think back to my childhood I received a ton of conditional love. My parents made me feel loved when I received good grades and my teachers told them what good parents they were. My parents made me feel loved when I got the lead role in the school play and other parents told them how adorable I was. I felt loved when I kept my room neat for guests to see or mastered a recipe for company or got into college early and was in the newspaper. I felt loved when I was praised for my restaurant behavior or when I was outside weeding the lawn for all the neighbors to see or when I sacrificed going out with friends to stay home with my parents.
I can't ever remember feeling loved for just being. I can't ever remember my parents doing anything with or for me just to make me happy. It was always because they wanted a thank you or they wanted me to learn something new to impress someone. They loved me ... on the condition that what they gave to me returned a feeling of happiness to them.
Interestingly this goes hand and hand with another lesson of my childhood which was to not do something for nothing! There always had to be a reward! So not only did I learn to receive conditional love, I learned to give it as well. We never put others first, unless it was so we could feel like a martyr.
Having found comfort in this sort of behavior I am pretty sure I spent the rest of my life seeking out relationships with others that were also based on the giving and receiving of conditional love.
But now that I recognize this, I can toss this limiting belief aside.
And I am looking forward to the happiness I know embracing unconditional love will bring.