The easy part of love is love.

The hard part of love is people.

People come from all different types of families. People come with all types of communication styles. People come with baggage.

It’s not that love is difficult per say, but that great communicators are rare and disrespectful communicators far too common. This profoundly complicates relationships.

It leads to too many arguments, too many hurt feelings and too many issues.

It leads to ‘conditional’ rather than ‘unconditional’ love.

Let me repeat that.

The ingredients of a disrespectful communicator: control, ego, immaturity, defensiveness, insecurity and unaccountability result in conditional love. Unconditional love requires the exact opposite of these.

Even worse?

A relationship with either one or two disrespectful communicators sends an especially painful series of mixed messages. Why? Because instead of communicating well and resolving conflict, disrespectful arguments lead to frustration and people saying terrible things, such as name calling and personal character assassinations.

The worst part of this is that these series of mixed messages which alternate love and affection with name calling and personal judgements result in one tragic overall message…

“I love you, but I don’t like you.”

Nothing unconditional about that.

It is all so simple, yet so complicated.

The answer to unconditional love is embracing emotional growth, self-reflection and growing up. It is just hard for individuals to do. It requires the maturity to let go of ego and surrender to the fact that it is not threatening that we are different from one another. In fact, that type of evolution results in a confidence that can free one from needing to control another and make them live and see life as strictly they do. There will be no need for defensiveness because mature confidence acknowledges that being wrong at times is simply a fact of life and not an attack on ego.

Respectful good communication improves the likelihood of unconditional love and relationship success.

Disrespectful poor communication increases the likelihood of conditional love and relationship failure.

The easy part of love is love.

The hard part of love is people.

*Please note that this column is the third in a 3 Part Series:
The 1st Column is titled: The 6 Essential Ingredients of a Disrespectful Communicator
The 2nd Column is titled: 6 Signs a Person Is Capable of Loving You Unconditionally
The 3rd Column in this series is titled: Is the Person You Love Sending You Mixed Messages?


(Picture courtesy of Pexels)
Follow me on Facebook @Colleen Orme National Columnist
on Twitter @colleenorme
on Pinterest @colleensheehyorme
E-mail: Colleen.Sheehy.Orme@gmail.com
www.colleensheehyorme.com