That's a good question, actually. As a parent, I think it's easier to show our children unconditional love than it is to show, say, a spouse. Why is that?
I was talking to Nic just today about life and relationships. I tell him almost constantly, "A smart man learns from his mistakes; a wise man learns from other peoples mistakes." I asked him today if he understood what that meant. He said yes. I then went on to tell him that I hoped that by sharing some of my life experiences he could live a life that was less complicated than mine was. Realizing of course that he will have to make mistakes of his own, I hope that he takes the lessons and stories that I share with him and is able to use them to his advantage.
Nic has a girlfriend. They celebrated their 4 month anniversary just recently. I told him that I hoped they were still together at the end of the summer. Not that I want them to break up, but they will be apart this summer: he is going to Catalina to work the summer boy scout camp, and she is going to Europe for a few weeks. I told him this would be a good test for them, for their hearts, because absence can make the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. If they can survive the summer, and find that they still love each other (if indeed they do love each other) and both stay faithful to the other, then they could have a lasting relationship. Nic seemed to understand that.
I and my estranged husband will be filing for divorce this year. It was inevitable. We knew it was coming. The only reason we never filed the paperwork was because of the insurance. As soon as the divorce were to become final, Nic and I would be taken off of his insurance. But now that he's been laid off and is losing the insurance, there will be no reason to stay married. But I'm okay with it. While I did love him once (very much so), that love is no longer there. Don't get me wrong; I still have love for him in my heart. He is, after all, the father of two of my children. But I'm not "in love" with him anymore. I asked him recently if he felt the same and he acknowledged that he did. He still felt something for me, as the mother to his children, but the feeling is no longer the same that he had when we were first married.
Why does that love die? I think it's because of the actions of the person, or persons, in the relationship. Love, I have discovered, is not an emotion but a choice. That being the case, if we can decided to fall in love, then we can decide to fall out of love. With my first marriage, I was more in love with the idea of getting married than I was in love with the man I was marrying. Obviously, there was some kind of love there; otherwise, I never would have married him. But that love had to grow over time. He asked me to marry him after we'd been together for a very short time - less than 2 or 3 months, I believe. I told him no in the beginning. I said no because when I asked him why he wanted to marry me, he said it was because he thought it would work. The words, "Because I love you," never came out of his mouth. So, I suggested living together instead. In less than a year of living together, love grew inside of me. But it wasn't the same kind of love that I experienced when I met my 2nd husband. At the time, of course, I didn't realize that I wasn't truly in love with the man: I wouldn't know that for a long time after the divorce. But I was young and a romantic and in love with the idea of falling in love. So, naturally, I thought I had found it. But it didn't take long to figure out that while he thought we could work, it wasn't working. And once it stopped working, I stopped working. Every relationship, whether it be a spousal relationship or a friendship, requires a certain amount of work from both parties in order to succeed. If I haven't learned anything else, I have learned that over the years.
So I divorced number one, and moved to Vegas where I met number two. I can't say the love I felt for him was instantaneous, but it presented itself really early on. Within a week, I knew that this was the man with whom I was supposed to share my life. I didn't know for how long: I just knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was supposed to be with him. We were married 6 weeks after our first date. We had a bumpy, tumultuous relationship from the word go. This one required a lot of work. But we were both willing to put in the effort and it worked. For about 8 years. Then something changed. He changed. For some unknown reason, he decided he didn't want to work anymore at the relationship. Once that happened, it was over. I tried. Lord knows I tried. But he just gave up. So I left. To this day, I still don't know why he stopped working at it. I don't think he knows himself. It was just one of those things. But while I was still trying to get it to work, I remember I was so frustrated because he was making my life miserable, but I was still in love with him. It was that love that kept me there so long. I should have left much earlier than I did... but I was still in love with the asshole. (And believe me, he was - and still is - an asshole.)
After I left, it didn't take long for that love to die. Some of that is attributed to his attitude and treatment of me during those first six months after I left. Some of it is because I just didn't want to be in love with him anymore. I was tired of being treated like shit. I was tired of being stepped on. So, I killed that love that kept us together for 9 years. It was much easier dealing with him without that love hanging onto my heart.
So then, what is unconditional love? After having gone through both marriages, and now two divorces, I can say that I have experienced unconditional love. It's when you love the person with whom you are with unequivocally, through and through, without conditions. You accept them for who they are, flaws and all, without complaint, without trying to change them. You accept everything about them and everything they give you without question and without complaint. The second you add any of the negatives into the equation (the opposites of everything that I have just mentioned i.e., you start finding fault in everything they do; you question every decision and then complain about every little thing; you put conditions on your love), you know that the unconditional love is gone and that relationship is no longer the same. If you've never felt any of the positives, then you've never experienced unconditional love.
How do I know I have experienced unconditional love? Because I married an alcoholic. In the beginning of our marriage, I tried to get him to stop drinking. When that didn't work, I had to figure out if I loved him enough to learn how to live with his condition, or if I was going to leave. For the first year, I tried to get him to quit... the more I tried, the more he drank. Once I accepted that his alcoholism was a disease and he had no control over it, and I accepted him for who he was without condition, his drinking slowed to a minimum. Because I showed him a love that he had not ever felt before, he worked at making our lives more tolerable. (BTW, that wasn't the reason I left him.)
With Valentine's Day coming up, I realize that I sometimes miss that feeling of being in love. But I'm too old now to go looking for new love. New love is addicting, I'll grant you that. But with new love also comes complication and drama. At 43, I know that I no longer want complication and drama in my life. Right now, I'm comfortable with who I am, where I am, and how I live my life. If I were to go find new love, all of that would change. Upheaval and compromise, and everything that goes with being in a relationship..... No thank you.
What I really want is someone with whom I can spend some quality time... someone with whom I have something in common... someone who has his own residence and will take me out once in a while and then go home without expectations, without conditions, without drama, without complication. Will I ever find that? I seriously doubt it. So, I'll settle for a fuck buddy! LOL
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