she says that by not accepting her relationship i am not "loving unconditionally"

I agree about the unconditional love issue. I know that i love my wife with a great passion regardless of her decisions. I can't help that. However, I won't allow her to knowingly hurt me, my family, her family, anymore. In the same way that she bailed out after i hurt her, i think i may need to bail out now.

The irony is that if she lived according to her own definition of loving "unconditionally," we wouldn't be separated right now. Right?

I feel incredibly remorseful for our mutual love. I think that i am in a state of mourning for it actually.

Perhaps i should just bail our altogether. Perhaps that is the most respectful thing to do for myself and for her.

Damn straight. Your love IS and SHOULD BE conditional for your spouse. If they continue to disrespect you by betraying you, then you innately and systematically lose all love for them.

They are not your FOO, who you normally will love throughout your life unconditionally. Your wife is not your blood, therefore she is exempt from unconditional love from you.

She is wrong to think that yours or anyone's love for her as a spouse or partner will be "unconditional".

Jo

Perhaps you're definition is incomplete. "Being in love" is not unconditional love, nor is unconditional love based on anything we/they do, or do not.. Before you disclaim the existence of something, let's start first understanding the topic.

"Unconditional" - Without conditions or limitations; absolute
"Love" - A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness

Unconditional Love is "an absolute deep, tender affection and an absoulte sense of underlying oneness" with another person. Ponder that for a moment. You will see it has nothing to do with "being in love" but has much to do with "being love". "Being in love" denotes a stage of a particular evolution of an emotion. Unconditional love is a the goal of that evolution.




The conversation exposes the typical fallacy of argument regarding Unconditional Love - by 1. establishing conditions and 2. establishing an inability to perform within those conditions.

Unconditional love being subject to a condition .... is a contradiction. Creating a series of conditional tests to prove unconditional love proves nothing other than, as an example, if you call something black to be white, you end up with a confusion of what is color!

Second, your personal inability to actually perform unconditional love does not contradict its existence. It only demonstrates that you don't have it. You're inability to run 100yds in under 10secs by no fact dictates that running 100yds in under 10 secs is impossible. However, if you train for it, you might be able to do it. Same with Unconditional Love. If you practice it, you will obtain it.
....



And caring love? Is that incompatible with your version of romantic love? Is not one of the core goals of every human life is to receive and give love? Even those abandoned at birth, and grow up in hostile conditions still have the indelible command to receive and give love.



Indeed, Conditional Love requires an action to be performed of love BEFORE you respond with your love. Interestingly, who starts the process? and why? If the demand of conditional love insists on only a return of investment, how could you possible offer it without it being offered first? And if both of you act in this way, how do you ever get past the start?

Further, how does describing Conditional Love and its processes make a case against Unconditional Love?


"In Love", but not "Love" - indeed, with the focus upon conditions in return for love, love remains an illusion and illusive. It disappears as soon as a particular condition is not met. It is constantly dependent on some external factor, and instead of actually loving, you're trying to manage the external factors - of which, most are not in your control. And then one wonders why love is so hard to find, and harder to keep. You've pre-established all the condition of failure and the only condition of success is 100% not failing. 99.999999% isn't good enough.

And then people believe that Unconditional Love can only be dealt by God. Actually, only God could possibly manage Conditional Love, for it is that which requires perfection! Perhaps, we should contemplate even deeper why even God avoids conditional love.....


How can dependency upon another's actions create a "predictable, knowing and ... safe" feeling? Indeed, it causes the opposite. For all things outside of your control creates risk. Risk is unpredictable because it is unknown, and unpredictability creates an unsafe feeling.
Unconditional love creates the conditions of safety and predictability - because it simply is NOT based on the actions of another. Regardless of action, love is. Perfect predictability is achieved ONLY if the action causes no effect on the condition. And the safety of love only exists on that constant, unmoving trust that no matter what one does in their actions, the love remains unshaken, unstirred, and constant.


Again, you've described the fallacy of Conditional Love. By simply calling it Unconditional love is illogical. Unconditional love, by the very words of English, is UNCONDITIONAL. You've organized your philosophy based on a conditional basis for love, and simply, at the end, redefined the common English to call it unconditional. Indeed, I agree, Conditional love is a crock. It isn't love at all - it is an economic relationship - value given for value received, no more - no less. You are trading affection as if it was a commodity; and hence, have valued it as such. It may work for some, but it is unfulfilling to the human soul, because it was not LOVE but economics.


But your love for your wife was conditional. It has absolutely nothing to do with your wife. You placed the condition upon the love, not her. Re-read your sentence. You've established that SHE act, you've demanded from her that she love you regardless of your actions. How can you say this? How can you demand anything from someone else? You have no right to demand. You have only the control and management of yourself. You must provide the Unconditional Love to HER, not you demand it from her. Does God demand you love him unconditionally? Of course not, because that would invoke a condition and thus a contradiction - that is, before I unconditionally love you, you have to first, unconditionally love me!


You are correct. You never gave it, so it never was there - and you suddenly are surprised? You've simply established a moving target of conditions, and attempted to fulfill a moving target of conditions from her - settled upon a basis that neither of you are allowed to miss. And then you've called this arrangement "Love".

And you wonder why you've missed love.

You've spent 10 years with a woman trying to establish a mutual conditional relationship. It is possible to do so if neither of you grow, learn and adapt to new challenges. However, assuming that you're not dead, that's what both of you have done, you've grown as people, learned and dealt with a myriad of challenges over the last 10 years and each at different pace and in unique ways. Thus, you've altered your conditions for her, and she for you, and in some unspoken way, you've both expected to meet these moving targets flawlessly. Ooops. Missed.

Your discourse does a good job describing the problems with conditional love.

Unconditional Love is not that. There are no conditions in place for love to exist. It's given, anyway. It's not retracted by any action. Its not diminished by change, indeed it accepts change and most importantly, offers the predictable guidance for positive change. There is no threat. There is no sword at one's throat. You can separate and rejoin with no loss. Distance is irrelevant, as is time. Simply, there are no conditions.

If you really loved your wife, and her happiness was important, then her marrying another, and her being happy with that, should bring you happiness. You would love her just the same.

Freedom is the purest expression of unconditional love. Conditional love is a series of chains, of demands, of pressures. Unconditional love is freedom.

You and others have built conditions within your relationship that for whatever reason, your partner has found it impossible to live with. No one leaves unconditional love. Where can you find more love, than where all that you want, without condition, without price, already exists!

If you truly want your love back, then you must offer yours unconditionally. She leaves you, love her anyway. She runs, love her anyway. She cries, love her anyway. She has flaws, love her anyway. Refuse the false desire to require a condition - ignore her conditions, and love her anyway.

When we rediscovered our love for each other, I said to my faithful wife, "You can stay or you can go - but I will be the same person I am here. I will not change." She first felt that it was a statement that I did not care for her feelings, but later she understood that my feelings would not change based on her decision. I would still love her as much as I would if she stayed, even if she left. She stayed.

Many believe only God can practice unconditional love. This is not true. Only God can practice PERFECT unconditional love. We humans have to work at it. Only God can establish the perfect peace. Do we as humans then dismiss the concept of peace, simply because we are not able to accomplish it perfectly? No. We work hard and constantly work to achieve a lasting peace, and fail. But that does not detract or impugn the concept of peace whatsoever, nor in our own small world practice peaceful actions with those in our direct contact.



And (sarcastically) thus should be avoided at all costs by humans.......

All things come from God. To dismiss practice of unconditional love because you are not able to do so perfectly, dismisses all things from God as equally.

I doubt that is the condition you wish to place upon yourself.


Aren't we all, if we see another day?

I'm not sure that the issue is really about love for most betrayed spouses. I'll always love my wife wholeheartedly whether she hurts me more or not. I can't help that.

The real question is how long are you willing to wait for a forgiveness that will never come?

How long are you willing to wait for "healing" to occur?

How long before you have to turn off the source of hurt by suppressing that love.

I love my wife period.

I would swim through sharks for one chance at reconciliation.

The problem is that if i love her unconditionally and stand in her corner while she continues a hurtful affair then i'm not loving myself very much am i?

This opinion is not going to be very popular here, but I have some personal experience with this and I want to share it.

Repeated lack of support during miscarriages can permanently harm a relationship in a way well beyond "not meeting emotional needs." I know everyone here thinks that adultery is the worst thing going, but a good friend of mine had 6 mis-carriages and through them all her husband was distant and absent with no empathy or support for her greiving processs.

She is as harmed and bitter towards him as any BS I've met or read about. After years of trying to get him to go to counseling, she finally worked through the grief herself. Then she left.

After she left, he went to counseling and claims to have an epiphany. But you know what... just like some people cannot get over being cheated on -- she can't get over being abandoned for all those deaths. Period.

She's been gone for years now and is completely at peace with that decision. He's in agony.

Now your wife's affair is not the right way to leave, but you may have done permanent harm. And having seen how rough this was for my friend, I wanted to put out the idea that your betrayal of the marriage vow by ignoring your wife through the death of your three children is bad enough that you all may be done.

Best of luck to both of you.

I wanted to put out the idea that your betrayal of the marriage vow by ignoring your wife through the death of your three children is bad enough that you all may be done.