When Love Learns Its Value

I have been trying to understand and show myself and others unconditional love. It is quite difficult really and in the last year, I have learned a lot. I took some time off work to reset, support a friend and honestly examine some things in myself. I think we think unconditional love means giving without limits.

I have come to realize, it does not.

Love does not have to be earned, but access, trust and reciprocity are built, and love does need boundaries. I was struggling with that and it went way back to my childhood and even though I did not want to look at something else there, good God, I have looked at a ton, this was a big pattern that needed to be reworked using up-to-date knowledge and wisdom because it was causing me a lot of pain.

There comes a point when constantly giving love without requiring it to be met, respected, or cared for begins to change the value of what you are giving.

Not because your love is worth less. It is about those who can see the value in what you offer them and also see the value in you. You are a gift. I am a gift.

Because if you are giving love away while abandoning yourself in the process, and honestly, even though you give and get love freely, sometimes when there are no boundaries, the receiver might not see the value.

Let me give an example. When my mother died, I had her wedding rings. When I met my husband and we were going to get married, I melted down her rings and had a custom ring made for him with engraving on the inside. This was very special to me, I had taken the time to create it, and I wanted it to show my caring and love.

My then-husband did not value the ring. He left it at a friend’s house, the friend got upset with him and kept the ring hostage. I tried talking to the person to get it back, offered money, to no avail. My husband did not even attempt to get it back; he was stubborn and did not want to cave to the friend. The ring was caught in the crossfire. I got him several cheaper rings, and he lost every one of them. They did not matter to him or what they symbolized.

Needless to say, I never got the ring back. It had bothered me ever since. At the time, I was angry and upset that my husband did not attempt to compromise or work something out to get the ring back. The truth of the matter is that it hurt me deeply because it really was not about the ring, it was the fact that he did not value the love I had put into it or how much it mattered to me. It was not important to him for various reasons only he knew and this is how I see this event, through my own perception.

I did not see the lesson in it for me until recently. You see, sometimes you are not ready to give up patterns that have been running through your whole life. I had a blind spot here until recently. There was also the question of why I did not value myself enough to stop allowing that to happen.

You can see another person’s pain, understand why they behave the way they do, and you can give grace.

You can have compassion for their wounds and still say, this is where the line is, and it is not acceptable for you to cross it.

Seeing someone’s pain does not mean you have to allow them to hurt you. Sometimes in relationships, you get hurt. The point was the lack of acknowledgment of what the ring meant to me. That is where the value is.

Anyone can go buy a gift, but the true value is caring about another person and what they put into the gift you received. This is sometimes invisible. Some people show love and giving in different ways; if you care about someone, you learn and are curious about them.

Understanding someone does not require you to keep accepting behavior that costs you pieces of yourself. I had a hard time with this because I got all kinds of warning flags before and I ignored them. Unconditional love does not mean you allow abuse, neglect, or mistreatment. Relationships are challenging and love alone cannot fix everything, even though we would like to believe it will. Both parties have to show up and try to be better people, address their issues and do their own work; my then-husband did not attempt to do that with the ring or even see my side of the scenario. It is when you have multiple things like this happen in relationships that they become killers. Resentments stack up. Bitterness sits underneath the surface. You silence your voice. Nothing changes, so why bother. You don’t want to fight.

When I was younger, my dad was my hero. Of course. But my mom and dad had an issue, and my dad had a drinking problem. He ended up dying from that and my mom was very angry and bitter. It was very painful for me, and I have not realized until quite recently how much it affected the way I loved and allowed myself to receive love in return.

I blamed my mom for leaving him. At 12 years old, your understanding is not very logical, it is mostly emotion and I loved my Dad. In my mind, I thought if my Mom loved him enough or showed that she loved him, he would have gotten better, and I think I believed the same thing about myself. I took on the pain of thinking that if I had done something better, been better, that he would have stopped drinking. At that age, I had no understanding of all the dynamics between people or the issues they carried within themselves.

As an adult, I see this is not the case. As a child, when these patterns are formed, this became a blind spot. It all boils down to love and the fact I did not want to lose my dad, but in the end I did and it shaped me in lots of ways.

That is where I think I misunderstood unconditional love for a long time.

I thought loving someone deeply meant I should keep making room.

Keep understanding, forgiving, and giving but if I am offering unconditional love to everyone except myself, then it is not really unconditional love.

It is self-abandonment wearing love’s expensive clothes and it has no value to those that cannot see it.

Love has the highest value and part of learning that value is understanding that not everyone gets unlimited access to it just because you are capable of giving it.

You can love someone and still have a boundary.

You can understand them and still walk away.

You can forgive them and still decide something is no longer acceptable.

You can see their pain without making it your responsibility to heal it.

Maybe love does not learn its value by becoming harder or shutting down; maybe it learns by recognizing who appreciates and respects what you offer, who lights up with it and who it simply does not matter to. In turn, you learn to value yourself and what you continue to give your energy to.

Either way, it is a lesson. A hard one to learn. This follows on the heels of reciprocity.

This is just another way I am learning how to keep an open heart, learning Cin boundaries, asking for what I want and need, being compassionate and considering another person while not losing myself in the process in the name of love and care.

Welcome to Cin version 5.0, she is getting upgraded, again, just in time for my birthday. What a gift. HA!

Guess I need to figure out what I should wish for this year, eat cake and watch the candles glow and be grateful I have another year to live, love, learn and laugh.