Love is Conditional

There is no such thing as unconditional love among adults. Dogs love you unconditionally just as much as they would if they had another owner. They love everyone, without condition; they don’t love you for who you are or the things you do. Humans love others for who they are. This is easily proven by observing dating life: single people will maintain their appearance and try to look nice because those are the conditions of their date to at least like them. Why should this change after marriage? Spouses love their spouse (who they are and what they do) not because they will inherently love unconditionally. People who believe they are unconditionally loved do not maintain or improve themselves because they know their spouse won’t leave someone they unconditionally love! This belief is selfish and harbors degradation of self and relationship.

See Dennis Prager – Men’s Sexual Nature for more on the subject.

To a girl:

Hey, I dig you, wouldn’t mind seeing you again, but I’m not sure what’s going on, how you feel or what you’re trying to tell me. I probably didn’t catch any of your signs. Maybe I’m dumb and naïve for not interpreting plain words to mean something else. I trust people. When you told me you were busy, I didn’t think it had another meaning. It meant that you were busy, and couldn’t spend time with me at that particular moment. I believed everything you told me, I took your words for face value, and I still do. Honesty and boldness is the gentlest way you can let someone down, not by dropping hints, which I’m clearly unable to interpret anyway. You won’t hurt my feelings, I’m not heartbroken thinking about you, I just don’t want to waste any more time. So please, be straight up, tell me now, do you want to go on another date or not?

No.

Hey, no worries. Thanks for being honest. For the sake of another guy that you find unsuitable, please just tell thim how you feel. Don’t wait, don’t drop hints, just tell him to take a hike. For him, It’s the nicest thing you can do.

It’s like what happened to me in the mission field. We’d knock a door, get a smile and a kind hello, deliver our message, ask for a return appointment, and assume their answer to be how they truly felt. In the case of, “Yeah, come back tomorrow evening,” and they actually are home the next day, halleluiah . In the case of, “You know, I’m not really interested, sorry,” stated in complete honesty and respect, halleluiah, let’s go find someone else. In the case of, “Yeah, you can come back,” stated with no real intention to let us in, or even worse, “Yes, 7:00 tomorrow would be great,” stated with the intention to be gone, curses! People were afraid to say, No, maybe because they were weak, afraid declining an invitation would look rude. Save me some grief and be gentle by telling me to go away if that’s how you truly feel.

(originally posted Saturday 2/9/08 12:37 AM)

The Fairer Sex

I have a great relationship with my younger sister, Deanna. She’s recently married and living in Kentucky now. I don’t see her much, but I talk to her on the phone quite often, a lot of times about nothing else but girls/relationships. Today she helped me come to some realizations. It’s kind of funny how sometimes, with some girls, you just move too slow, and with others you move way too fast. It’s really quite difficult to make the right move at the right time. Deanna also reminded me of the advice that I gave to her prior to her marriage, which is of course, that you are only able to control half of the total membership of any two person relationship which you belong to. In any relationship, you are the determining factor of that relationship’s success or it’s undoing. There never was a failed relationship that could not have been saved if but one of it’s members were to stop trying to change their partner, and start changing themselves.

(originally posted Saturday 11/3/07 4:04 PM)