Love 2.0

Explore loving without constant conditions—and stop using another person's reaction to measure your worth.

What has to happen before you let yourself feel love?

Does someone need to behave exactly as you expected? Agree with you? Love you back in the way you want?

In this episode, I explore unconditional love as a skill and lovability as something you don't have to earn. Both ideas invite you to look at the conditions you place on yourself and other people.

Notice the conditions attached to love

Conditional love can sound like a rule: I will feel loving toward you as long as you do what I want.

When the person doesn't meet the rule, you may choose anger, resentment, or withholding instead. Notice who experiences those emotions. You do.

Ask whether the condition is helping you have the emotional experience you want. What are you trying to accomplish by withholding love?

You can examine that question without pretending you like every action another person takes.

Separate love from another person's behavior

Your feelings and actions belong in your model. Another person's thoughts, feelings, and actions belong in theirs.

If you love someone and they make a choice you don't want, your love did not make that choice for them. Their behavior remains their responsibility.

This distinction helps you avoid treating love as the cause of everything that happens in a relationship.

In the Self-Coaching Model, thoughts create feelings, which drive actions and results. Look at what your feeling of love encourages you to do, rather than mixing it with the other person's independent actions.

Allow love and a clear no to coexist

Loving someone doesn't require agreeing to every request or staying in every interaction.

You can say no honestly. You can set a boundary. You can choose the amount of contact you want to have.

Ask what a loving response would look like, including love for yourself. It may involve being truthful about what you are willing to do.

That is different from saying yes while silently resenting the person. Honest decisions can be part of how you express care.

Practice allowing people to be human

People have flaws. They make mistakes and don't always meet your expectations. So do you.

Notice whether you use imperfection as a reason to deny love. If you require flawless behavior, how often will you be willing to feel it?

Practicing love for imperfect people can also help you practice love for your imperfect self.

You don't need to claim that every behavior is acceptable. You can recognize someone's humanity while making thoughtful choices about the relationship.

Question the idea that you must become more lovable

Another person's inability or unwillingness to love you doesn't establish your worth.

They have their own capacity, thoughts, choices, and experience. You may not be able to change those by becoming more accommodating or more impressive.

Ask what you have been trying to do to earn love. Have you been reshaping yourself around someone else's approval?

In this episode, I teach that you are already lovable. You don't need to use another person's response as a score of how much you deserve love.

Bring more love into your own experience

If you want more love in your life, begin by examining your ability to feel and express it.

Choose one relationship where you have a long list of conditions. Write down the rules you think the person must meet. Then ask whether you want all of those rules guiding your feelings.

Try a thought that helps you recognize the person as human while keeping your decisions clear. Notice the action that thought supports.

Do the same for yourself. Where do you postpone self-love until you've achieved something or corrected a flaw?

You can keep learning, growing, and making choices while offering yourself love now. You don't have to wait until you have become a person with nothing left to work on.