Love With Out Conditions

One of the hardest things for us to do is love without conditions. Jesus loves everyone one of us unconditionally. As Human beings we tend to naturally place conditional stipulations on all of our relationships. Like, we expect that our friends, family, boyfriends, husbands, wife’s are going to do something to fail anyways. So we just say I Love(d) you but only until you mess up, which will happen, but until then we can love. Now come on. That’s just insane. People really do expect their relationships to fail before the relationship begins.

I have done it. I am mature enough to admit that I wasn’t able to love unconditionally. I think sometimes I struggle with this. I think that the way you learn to have an unconditional love for someone is to filter back through all of you failed relationships and discover what it was that went wrong. Then, knowing that you have faults you can accept the idea that no relationship will ever be perfect, thus leaving the theory “Something is going to go wrong anyways” behind. You are right something will go wrong every now and then…knowing how to repair the problem means you have decided to love without conditions.

Disclaimer: I told Kirt that I was going to do this list…. So don’t freak out. Besides the fact that I have always been open and honest with him about my past boyfriends. When we discussed this blog, we both agreed that God has a plan for everyone and there was a reason why each trial failed.

In High School I dated a guy who was older than me. I thought I was absolutely in love. I date him for 4 years and “loved” him unconditionally. Maybe when you are younger you are more capable of leaving the conditions behind. This relationship was thought by many, to be a forever lasting relationship. Then, I went to college. Still dating this guy, I began seeing several other guys.

The first guy was a football player. He was (still is) one of the nicest, kindest people you will ever meet. Looking back I didn’t break up with my boyfriend because I was afraid to lose a relationship if this new one didn’t work out. I really liked Mr. Football. He was in several of my classes. I ate lunch and dinner with him everyday. He had the most beautiful eyes you have ever gazed into. He was “perfect” and I couldn’t have him because I was afraid to fall. I don’t think he would have ever dropped me…but I wasn’t able to let go of the relationship I was in. Mr. Football, I am so sorry for not trusting you to catch me when I fall.

A year of hays, a broken relationship, and bad grades later - I moved home. I couldn’t live at home, it was driving me crazy so I moved to Albuquerque. That’s when I called off my 4 year relationship. While I was in ABQ I learned several lessons. The most important lesson was that you don’t have to be boyfriend and girlfriend to go on a date. This doesn’t make you a sleeze ball because you go out with different people.

I went to the movies a couple times with a student who was interning at Solaria. He would pick me up and we would go grab dinner, watch a movie and then I would go home. It was a lot like a friendship except we kissed goodnight….I don’t kiss my guy friends… so this was definitely dating.

I went bowling, and to a Mexican food restaurant which lead to the biggest epic fail ever. That was fun. Lesson was learned there. (story in a previous blog)

I dated a guy exclusively for a couple months. I really like him a lot. This was my hardest lesson in love. I have blogged about this previously. I fell “madly in love” with this guy. He was everything you ever wanted in someone. Gentle, loving, polite. He was much older (12 years older), and a lot more mature than I was. I would go to bed at night thinking that this was the man that I was supposed to marry. I know what went wrong… more than one thing…. But most importantly neither one of us started the relationship out telling the truth. The relationship may have been “perfect” because we lied to make it work.

So, the lessons I have learned thus far: Trust that you wont get hurt, and its ok to explore your options and go out with someone for dinner. But, if you have to pay all the time unless you go to his place of work where he gets a discount its probably a HUGE NO Bueno!! And finally, you have to start out having an honest relationship -

Well my mom became pregnant and I moved home in the late spring so that I could attend college closer. The plan was to attend OPSU so that I wasn’t too far from home. Over the summer I taught swimming lessons, saved money and began new relationships.

I formed a beautiful friendship with a guy who was a little younger then me, but so very mature for his age. I think that this relationship was amazing. There was so much passion and we never even went beyond kissing. You could just feel the unconditional love that surrounded this relationship. I can only speak for myself, but I think we both agreed that there was no way this relationship could work until we were both in college. We also knew that if we dated it would be incredibly hard to maintain a long distance relationship. We promised each other that we would wait for each other, we would finish college together and we would get married. Every dream we had we shared and we never once judged each other for their ambitions. I still care so deeply for this person. I don’t think he will ever know how much he still means to me.

Well, the plan was to go to OPSU. Over the summer I began talking to Kirt. I think our relationship took off like wild fire. We couldn’t go without seeing each other. We prayed for rain, so that he could have a day off from the long harvest hours. I couldn’t wait to see him. I would sneak over to Ashland to hang out even if it was only for an hour. We called things off about a month into dating. When I look back and really think about all of this I realize that Kirt never really officially asked me out … So he called things off after about a month of hanging out. I was devastated!! I knew that we would never be able to maintain a relationship from OPSU to NWOSU. I had applied and been accepted to NWOSU, and already intended on attending as a Ranger in the fall. Sometime after the fourth of July I remember Kirt asked if I would come hang out again. I did. It was amazing how not awkward it was even though I knew he didn’t want to have a relationship with me. It was too long after that we assumed we were dating I ended up attending NWOSU with my friend. He never asked me out. Our relationship took off quickly. I trusted that he wouldn’t ever hurt me again. I trusted that we were both honest to begin with, I knew that we could love with out worrying about long distances or bad dates. A friend of his wanted us to break up so badly. We got past that real quickly. Before he would ask me to be his wife. Yes, 6 short months of dating and he proposed. No surprise really. We were married 2 years after that.

I truly believe that my previous relationships were stepping stones toward a future relationship. I’m sure that for some people I was a great learning tool also. I believe that you cant form healthy relationships if you haven’t learned from your past mistakes. We have to learn to love unconditionally, without pre-game jitters, without stipulations, and without expectations. We have to learn to be vulnerable and leave assumptions behind.