Article and Photograph by Make The Days Count Contributor Ann Wilkinson

We often joke that our kids are born to us without an instruction manual.  Although we have nine months before they are born to be alternatively elated and terrified, we usually know when they are born that we will love them forever and no matter what the future brings.

When your child does something that doesn’t meet your expectations, do you dwell on it for a long time?  Do you constantly go over and over this piece of bad behavior?  Most of us may be disappointed for a brief period, but as time goes on, we naturally start to forget their transgression (sometimes only to be surprised once more when it’s repeated).  But we love our children unconditionally, and we never lose sight of that with them.  We see them on their journey towards adulthood, and we are their guardian for that time, never letting site of that goal and loving them no matter what.

What happens with your chosen life partner?  When we take those marriage vows, we promise to love, honor and cherish for better or for worse.  Have you considered those five words “for better or for worse” may actually be code words for a commitment to love our partner unconditionally?

What does that feel like?  Our marriage vows continue to assign certain conditions to our love – in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, until death do us part - but isn’t it just as important for us to make the active decision to love our partner unconditionally?   Isn’t it important to view our chosen loved one without a score card?

Loving a partner unconditionally should have its limits of course.  It is never right to live with or accept dangerous or life-threatening behavior, but would it make it easier to let certain things go?  You know what those things are: the various displeasures you have about your partner that can drive you crazy, if you let them.  They are the things you cannot change.  You can choose not to get upset about them time and time again.  You can decide not to have a grousing session with your best friends about the “things your partner does that drive you crazy.”

You can choose to live more freely and fully when you stop dwelling on the various things that annoy you.  You can decide that in the grand scheme of things on this earth, you can start to forget these things – and start to see your partner for what attracted them to you in the first place.

And you can and should expect the same consideration in return from your partner.

We repeated the statement that we’d love for better or worse, and then we assigned certain conditions to it.  Perhaps if we focused on the unconditional aspects of love, we’d be happier in our day-to-day lives and better able to nurture our most important relationships.

“Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.”

-Wayne Dwyer

Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.

It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

-I Corinthians 13:4-8

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