Gunhild Archer, counselor

I have had an all-consuming thought process the last how-many-days-now… I think I’m going on almost a week, pondering the topic of unconditional love and oneness. The spiritual field emphasize how the ultimate goal is to take everyone as part of yourself. After all – everyone is you, we are all one. It only makes sense to treat all parts of yourself with love. I believed, or bought into I should say, these concepts for a long time, even though I never experienced them for myself.

The process started after a conversation with a friend. The story that was told is a very familiar story. She said; “I have been there for him through everything. I always put in an effort to understand him. I always came back to vulnerability so that we could make repair and keep the connection. Why does he keep hurting me? Why doesn’t he appreciate it? Why can’t he see my value?”

Such a familiar story. I’ve told it myself countless times throughout the years. I have heard friends tell the story too. It makes me feel deeply frustrated no matter who tells it. The last days my patience has been on zero as a result of the story reoccurring. I got upset with myself for not leaving a relationship I knew I had to leave, and while I was at it – I got upset with my friend too, for the same exact reason.

I hated how she kept trying to understand someone who kept showing up in ways that hurt her. I hated how she saw herself as good for being deeply committed to trying to understand him. “I love him”, she would say. “He deserves to have someone in his life who doesn’t leave, but instead chooses to work things through, someone who stays, who prioritize the connection above anything else.” The fire I felt burning inside my belly and my chest… It was intense.

“Loving without conditions, loving purely, that’s the ultimate goal”, I told myself, “no one can argue that without looking like a bad person”. I thought I had to show up in the same way as she did, always understanding the other, I had to be there no matter what… I had to give the other person “the missing experience” – to give what everyone who came before me failed to give, I could never walk away, I had to be ok with whatever got thrown my way (which would be part of giving the missing experience; “I should allow the other person to have whatever reaction they needed to experience and still love them, that’s what they never got, but always deserved”). As if I hadn’t added enough meaning to the term “unconditional love”, I started connecting the term “oneness”. I told myself that, because every living being is a part of me, I should treat them as I myself want to be treated. My meaning making expanded to include: never leave, always understand, always be patient, always be soft, never reject and never abandon. Basically, I should be totally completely perfectly accepting towards whatever behavior I encountered.

The extensive meaning I just described, there is not really room for ME. In a way, it is you at the expense of me. You see – I also get something out of it, or at least that is the underlying hope. Loving unconditionally had become the new way of getting love. If I love you unconditionally you can never reject me.

My friend emphasizing that her love was pure, brought up three main reactions. I felt frustrated, afraid and threatened.

I felt frustrated due to what I saw. I saw someone telling the story that they were good because they showed up from a place of unconditional love. Loving without conditions is the highest standard to hold oneself too in my opinion. And it’s what most people strive towards, at least in the spiritual field. If the spiritual community had a voice, I imagine it would say something like “We are all love at our core. Loving without conditions is simply you being in touch you’re your essence – your home, free of all the social conditioning”.

“Why does seeing this make me feel so deeply frustrated?”, I asked myself. The first thing that came to mind was: because it’s not real. In my reality I see what is at play at a deeper layer, and in their reality the deeper layer doesn’t exist, or it looks different. To stay connected I had to ignore what I was seeing and fully step into their reality. Doing so feels like an act, like I have to buy into something that’s not real (to me).

If I let myself go deeper to see if there is more to my feeling of frustration, I find two parts of myself. One is wanting to be seen and loved by my parents. She is standing in front of them, big eyes looking up at them, asking for them to connect. Her heart is fully open and she is so very vulnerable. My parents don’t understand the level of connection she is asking for. They just don’t and it’s not their fault. The other part can’t stand the pain of the forever-made-attempts to connect with mom and dad. She knows that it’s never going to change, something she has been trying to tell the first part, that she has to give up. Due to the first parts lack of willingness to give up, the second part feel powerless to the hurt that seems to have no end. “My pain is your fault”, she tells the first part. “You are the one who can’t give up, I hate you for needing them!”

As I make dialog with the second part, I learn that she is adept at seeing when connection is futile. I also learn more about her pain of never being able to escape the first parts’ never-ending attempts to connect. She tells me that she doesn’t think what the first part is doing is love, which is why she feels so frustrated by the fact that my friend keeps showing up, just to end up hurt, while calling it love. As I’m witnessing the second part share her perspective, another layer of understanding sinks in. We don’t want love to hurt. Yet, my friend understand love in this way. What does that mean for our relationship? Will I be rejected if I don’t want to love in the same way as her? I feel afraid of losing her. My thoughts keep wandering… Maybe we will stay friends, but she will forever have a superior position as a result of being able to love purely and unconditionally while I’m not capable of the same. That brings up shame. Will I be able to live with the shame, or will it eventually dissolve?

As I’m letting my thoughts continue to drift, I notice yet another belief. “If I love someone unconditionally it means that they can’t reject me.” It feels truly loaded with information and I’m instantly wanting to unpack it to see what’s there, yet my being needs a break. It will be a process for another day.