Hello Sapnap,

The title of your post caught my attention, because my credo is “Unconditional Peace.” I’m trying to figure out what the relationship between unconditional peace and unconditional love might be.

So you live in Ireland? It was that great Irish author, James Joyce, who wrote, “Love loves to love love.” One of my favorite quotes. I think what he was trying to say was that love exists for its own purposes. You don’t have to explain why you love someone, you just do. We make up all kinds of excuses why not to love others: “you don’t have the same hobbies I do,” “you don’t listen to the same kind of music I do,” “you don’t like going to the market with me,” etc. No one falls in love with someone because of these things, and so no one should reject anyone for these reasons either.

I think you need more time to decide what the future for you and your boyfriend will be. We should neither fall in love with someone nor reject someone because of a gut feeling. As time goes by, you will either naturally grow closer together or grow apart. Maybe you will love each other so much that the fact that he doesn’t like going to the market with you, or the fact that he doesn’t make much money, will seem unimportant. Or maybe those differences will prove to be symptoms of a larger problem that keeps you apart. I agree with jewels07 that love is not just loving actions. You will figure out in time whether you really love him or whether you are just going through the motions.

As to your last question, love becomes unconditional when you decide it is. All it took for me to accept peace unconditionally was to say, “I am at peace,” and believe it. I’m sure all it took for you to love yourself unconditionally was to say, “I love myself,” and believe it. And that will be all it takes for you to decide to love someone else, too. Sometimes believing what we tell ourselves can seem hard, but it isn’t always.

I think you may have hit on something in your last sentence. Maybe we love others not in spite of their imperfections, but because of them. Are you and your boyfriend imperfect in similar ways? If so, that can be a source of empathy between the two of you. I don’t know, maybe…