Like most of us, I was raised in a household of conditions disguised as discipline and claiming to want the best for me. After years of therapy, relationships and applying what I have learnt towards life, I have learnt how detrimental conditional love is to anyone. It’s the kind of love that if you do for me, I love you and if you don’t, I hate you. It’s the kind of love that holds onto secrets and withholds the truth because we are afraid that if we are honest, we won’t be loved anymore.

I am grateful for every experience and I carry that same energy to my upbringing. I have been able to learn that love doesn’t start when I disagree with someone, that is when it begins. I haven’t always been the master of it and I am still learning this notion. But one quote about unconditional love by Maya Angelou has always stuck with me. It is, ‘Love liberates. It doesn’t hold. I love you whether you are in Tokyo or next to me.’

This doesn’t mean that I have to accept your behaviour or have you in my life to love you. Sometimes people are meant to be loved from afar.

Here are 3 redefinitions of unconditional love:

1. You are who you are meant to be, not by success standards but in creation.

I am a woman and as one, I can see that we have a lot to work on. Particularly about the need to make others just like us, or else we will not accept it. I noticed that I did this with a long-term relationship I was in with someone who was going through a divorce. I felt like he had to be in my life and act exactly how I needed him to, or I wouldn’t love him. I was loving him with conditions.

One day, I was crying in a park and wondering why he didn’t love me and having this deep need for him to love me. It hurt so much. I looked at a tree so peaceful and serene, and understood that I was creating my own suffering. I developed a thought in my mind that he will be who he is and I will always love him but I don’t have to hate him. It has taken years of practicing this about him but today I can say that I think so fondly of him and I wish him the best with his life. He doesn’t have to be in my life to love him. I love him anyway.

2. I am not the authority on how someone should live their life.

I have a secret fear of having children and raising them to think like me or I won’t love them, like I have been shown. I believe in individualism. I had a thought the other day that many parents run houses as the authority, which would appear to be correct. However, in that thinking, we can stifle a child’s potential.

Being a parent is not easy and I think one of the most challenging things to accept is that your child appears to be an extension of you but isn’t. They are their own person. We can teach our children our own ideals but, ultimately, it is up to them to learn and grow for themself. When we want people to think and act like us for our love, that is conditional love. Unconditional love says you think the way you do, you act the way that you want and you do what you want to do but I still love you. I don’t have to force you to be like me because I might not know everything and you might not either.

3. ‘Love is unconditional but relationships have conditions.’

I heard this quote this morning and I couldn’t agree more. I have recently decided to let go of some people in my life because I don’t feel like they are healthy for the growth and perpetuate the idea of one-sided communication. It is okay to have boundaries and once those are infringed upon, it is okay to no longer have that person if your life.’ But they deserve the benefit of the doubt beforehand and if you have tried and it doesn’t work, then free yourself of that situation.

Love is not a contract based on what you think, what you like or how you behave. A lot of people that I love I have many differences with. Some people I love I haven’t spoken to in years but that doesn’t mean that we need to be close to one another and force a fake relationship. We can love people and say that they are not healthy or good for us. Just because conditions are not set on love does not mean that they are not set for relationships. There is no need to be in a situation with someone who doesn’t respect you but there is no need to hate them either.

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