Unconditional Love and Love at First Sight
Today I would like to talk to you about 2 intriguing things: unconditional love and love at first sight. We will talk about the love that is praised in songs, movies, and novels. Is it real or is it a myth?
People can be divided into 2 categories: those who believe in love at first sight and those who don’t. Half of the people who don’t, in reality, deep inside, hope that love at first sight exists but they are just too afraid to admit it.
So, there are about 75% of people who are looking for that magical magnificent Mr. Right or Ms. Right, who can make them truly happy.
Does love at 1st sight exist?
People who are seeking unconditional love and looking for magical love at first sight often don’t realize that there is no such person, and there is no other half.
In reality, these people are looking for the unconditional love that they didn’t receive in their childhood.
Being adults, they have unfulfilled cravings for being accepted, approved of, loved, and cared for by another person unconditionally. They want to be loved just the way they are, without judgment and without comparison.
For the purpose of simplicity in this video, I will talk about a woman who is looking for unconditional love, but this concept applies to men, and to the same-gender couples as well.
Imagine a woman, let’s call her Mary. She meets Robert. He compliments her smile. He jokes and acts like a gentleman. It is their first date, and Robert shows his best side, as most of us do on the 1st date.
Marry feels attracted to him. There are butterflies in her stomach. She can’t stop smiling and thinking about Robert. Maybe he is the one. This thought grows in her mind so fast, that shortly she thinks that she is head over heels in love.
If Robert is a nice guy, and he also falls in love with her, then everything is fine.
But what if he finds Mary sexually attractive and just wants to have fun with her without any commitment.
Sexual Attraction vs Unconditional Love
Marry also finds Robert sexually attractive, but the problem here is that she is mistaking her sexual desire for being in love. We are human but we are also animals. We were born with a desire for pleasure. We are driven by pleasure.
For example, sweets also bring us pleasure that is difficult to reject. Sexual energy creates a much stronger desire than food. As an example, people often fall in love and lose weight. People in love can forget about food. Sexual pleasure raises emotions that overwhelm everything else.
So, Mary is overwhelmed by her sexual feelings toward Robert. She believes that he is her Mr. Right. To her, this is love at first sight, the truly unconditional love that she was looking for.
Therefore, she tends to ignore any red flags. If Robert acts disrespectfully or disappears for some time, she can easily find explanations to justify his behavior. If Robert invites her on a date and at the last moment cancels it because of a family emergency, Mary will believe him right away. If Robert doesn’t reply to her text messages saying that he is busy at work all day, Mary would accept his explanation too.
If Robert doesn’t give any explanation for his bad behavior, Mary would come up with her own, and keep believing that he is the one. Mary truly believes that she loves Robert. Pretty soon Mary would tell stories that it was love at first sight. She would love Robert unconditionally closing her eyes to his bad behavior.
Sexual attraction doesn’t equal love. Mary was raised by emotionally unavailable parents or a parent. Maybe her parents were nice people but emotionally they’ve never connected with Mary. They didn’t really know what was happening inside of her. They didn’t ask about her feelings. They didn’t tell her how wonderful she is. They didn’t teach her to appreciate herself. So, Mary doesn’t know what love really is. This is why she mistakes her sexual attraction for true love.
She can say something like, “I felt it, right away. Just when I saw him. I’ve never felt it with anyone else. I have strong feelings toward this guy. This must be love”.
Unconditional Love vs Desire to Be Loved
The 2nd problem here is that Marry mistook Robert’s desire to make a good first impression for the belief that he is falling for her too.
Marry makes this mistake because in her life, specifically in her childhood, she was not appreciated enough. Her parents didn’t give her any compliments. She was an independent girl, who did NOT want to bother her parents with her problems. She kept her emotions inside.
She didn’t receive enough words of admiration from her parents. All her life she was trying to prove that she is worthy. She was actually trying to prove that to herself.
Here is Robert. He gave her all that she was craving for. He gave it all on their first date.
Marry didn’t even realize how empty she was inside. A small compliment, a nice smile, and a spark in Robert’s eye made her feel so good. She just couldn’t help but fall in love with him.
Just to be clear, from the 1st date, we can’t really say if Robert is a good guy or a bad guy. Maybe he is a nice man, who treats women with respect. Or maybe he is a player, who knows how to act to make a woman fall in love with him.
The problem here is that Marry took Robert’s nice behavior as a green light to fall in love with him. She didn’t give herself enough time to know Robert for who he really is.
Let’s say that Robert is a nice guy. He finds Mary attractive and kind, but he doesn’t love her. He sees that Marry wants a serious relationship. Because he is a gentleman, he wants to be honest with Mary and he breaks up with her. He says that it’s not about her, it’s just him.
Marry feels a sharp pain. She can’t believe it. All signs were telling her differently. She thinks that she must have said or done something wrong. She doesn’t accept Robert’s explanation. She is trying to fix things and doesn’t want to let go of Robert.
She thinks about him day and night, replaying their dates, their talks, and blaming herself for doing something wrong.
Let’s go back to Mary’s childhood. Her dad was working a lot and always kept his emotions to himself. Being a kid, Mary loved her father very much but didn’t receive enough attention, love, and care from him.
She felt rejected by her father for many years. She truly loved and still loves her father. But she didn’t receive the same love, and admiration back. Her dad has never expressed his feelings to her.
Being an adult, Mary fell in love with Robert. And now, she is being rejected by the man that she loves. Yet again. At first, it was a rejection from her father, and now she is rejected by her incredible Mr. Right.
Her childhood trauma blinded her. She fell in love because of her unfulfilled cravings for love. She fell in love after a couple of compliments and a few nice dates. Now, she is devastated by the breakup. Her current feelings are so intense because the breakup subconsciously reminds her of the same pain she experienced in her childhood. For years.
It will take some time until she will be able to fall in love again. And probably she will repeat the same cycle again.
Does Unconditional Love Exist?
When Mary accepts that the love with Robert is a myth, that she created in her own head, only then she will have a chance to find another person with whom she can create a healthy relationship and experience true love.
Let me explain.
When Mary accepts the fact that she fell in love quickly because of her childhood trauma, she will have a chance to break out of this detrimental cycle.
Mary needs to realize that no one will ever give her the love that she didn’t receive in her childhood. She needs to grieve the fact that she didn’t have loving, caring, and supportive parents. She needs to own the responsibility for her own happiness. She is the only one who can truly care for herself, who can understand herself, accept and love herself, unconditionally.
When Mary learns how to love herself unconditionally, it will be no problem for her to see the difference between sexual attraction and love. She will appreciate it when people compliment her but she will not take it as love at first sight. She will not allow others to lie, disrespect, or cross her boundaries. She will be able to see people for who they are without looking for excuses to justify their behavior.
Self-love is the key to a happy relationship. Self-love and self-appreciation together are the foundation of creating a healthy, loving, caring, and profound relationship with another person.
Only when you love yourself, you can truly love and care for somebody else. If you respect yourself, you will not fall in love with a toxic person.
If you love yourself unconditionally, you are not going to be selfish. Selfishness is a sign of another childhood trauma that we can talk about in another article. Let me know in the comments your thoughts and your stories, please share your feedback. It is very important to me and to other people reading this article.
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