The phrase “unconditional love” is a dangerous one in terms of forming a romantic relationship. Unconditional love is a promise to love your partner no matter what life throws at you. It completely ignores all of the factors, besides emotions, that create a successful relationship. What if your partner is abusive? What if they accept a job offer across the country? What if, what if, what if? Would you continue to love them then? Should you?
Put into the wrong hands, unconditional love could very easily be taken advantage of. Why put work into the relationship if your partner told you that they would love you no matter what?
Falling in love is impossibly easy. For proof, skim the New York Times. Its Modern Love column publishes personal essays on such topics as falling in love with a digital stranger after talking extensively on the popular smartphone app, Words with Friends, or the notable, “To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This,” in which the author falls in love with a stranger after following the steps lined out by psychologist Author Aron.
According to Dr. Aron, falling in love is as easy as completing a math equation: all you need to do is follow the steps. His procedure is as follows:
- Find a stranger
- Answer his 36 questions.
- Stare into each others’ eyes for four minutes
But, much like in math, following without working leads to a weak foundation.
I was never much of a math student. I could memorize formulas and apply them in a basic sense, but when asked to explain what I was doing or why I was lost. With the amount of effort I put into high school math, I was able to pass a calculus class relatively easily, but maybe if I spent time actually trying to understand what I was doing, I would be able to apply that information to functional physics problems. Maybe if I cared more about math, I could be an engineer instead of an English major.
In romantic relationships, falling in love is the easy part, but maintaining that love is what actually takes work. An average person is said to fall in love with between two and seven people in a lifetime. So what happens to that one to six lost lovers? They don’t just disappear; for one reason or another, partners decide that either the love is no longer there or that is it no longer worth maintaining. Dr. Aron’s formula may make people feel “love," whatever that means, but it does not guarantee a long-lasting, fulfilling relationship.
This brings us back to unconditional love.
Let’s say you have fallen in love with a stranger after following Dr. Aron’s steps. But that stranger lives in China. Are you still going to maintain that relationship?
You decide to stay with your new lover, but you find out that in China, your partner has been sleeping with other people after you had agreed on a monogamous relationship structure. Now, what?
OK, your partner said that they would stop fooling around with others, but they haven’t. Do you continue to foster your relationship after your partner broke your trust?
Healthy relationships have conditions. The threat of the relationship ending keeps a person in line. It keeps them motivated to want to impress their partner, to want to make compromises, to want to put their partner first.
Unconditional love erases any sort of liability your partner might have in working to create a successful relationship. Instead of love being a joint agreement, it becomes something that is done by one person and to another, which inherently takes away the beauty of feeling connected with someone.
A person can't control whom they fall in love with, but they can decide when to let go. With unconditional love, there is no letting go, even if there should be. The idea of "one true love" pressures people into staying in dying or dangerous relationships because of the fear of, "What if they were the one for me? or "What if no one else could love me?"
According to Dr. Aron, don't worry, someone else could love you. Someone else could love you with the conditions that you set to keep the relationship in check.
If somebody is lucky enough to be loved by you, they should know that that love doesn't have to be forever.
