Using Unconditional Love to Get Over a Breakup
Do you think you know how to love? You probably think so. After all, there are many people in your life with whom you maintain or have maintained an emotional bond. For instance, your parents, your siblings, your friends, your children if you have them, your partner, and even your ex-partners.
It’s perfectly natural to think that you’re able to love. That’s until you face a loss. Then, you run into a really different reality. That’s because your love is conditional. For this reason, we want to explain how to use unconditional love to overcome a breakup.
You might never have imagined that it’s love itself that can help you overcome an emotional loss.
When a relationship ends, you often feel that anger and resentment are the emotions that’ll motivate you to move on without that person. You may even see sadness or indifference as possible alternatives. However, unconditional love is the most direct and healthy way to overcome this situation.
Your love is conditional
The end of a relationship is especially painful for the person who’s left behind. Feelings of helplessness and a lack of control over the situation exacerbate the emotional discomfort that arises from the breakup. Even if you’re the one who ended the relationship, you might still feel devastated.
Feelings of anger, hatred, and resentment toward the other person can build-up by the second. You feel betrayed, abandoned, and cheated. That person who promised to love you, be with you, and work with you in your relationship together has broken their word and now you’re only able to feel rejection toward them
What’s happened inside you? How is it possible that all that affection you felt has turned into such an unpleasant emotion? The reality is, that, although you thought you loved them, you really didn’t. Or, at least, not unconditionally.
Don’t blame yourself. In fact, most human beings react the same way to loss. However, let’s explain why it isn’t the best path to take.
Unconditional love
Imagine that you’re walking through a field and you see a beautiful flower that you like. If you want that flower (for yourself), you simply pick it and take it with you. However, if you love the flower, you delight in its beauty and admire its growth without cutting it off simply because you want to possess it.
The same applies to people. Generally, you want others in your life because they fill in your gaps and cover up your deficiencies. In this way, if the relationship ends, they’re no longer useful to you and love turns into hatred and suffering.
Hence, the usefulness of unconditional love in overcoming a breakup. Because if you truly love someone, you love them even if their path is no longer shared with yours. Even if they can no longer offer you anything in return. In fact, attachment (which arose from your feeling of a lack of something) is transformed into genuine appreciation and respect for the other’s path.
Turn to unconditional love to get through a breakup
Needless to say, it’s not easy to make this change in perspective. Indeed, most of us grow up equating love with attachment and we have to make a conscious effort to reach the posture of unconditional love. However, applying the following guidelines will help you achieve this:
- Remember that the other person doesn’t belong to you. Establishing a relationship with someone doesn’t imply that they become your property or that they’re obliged to make you happy. That task is yours. When you understand this, you’ll stop perceiving the breakup as a betrayal and see that the other person has simply chosen to go their own way. Similarly, you can follow yours.
- Unconditional love to get over a breakup means loving yourself unconditionally. This requires that you stop judging yourself and you no longer look for the mistakes you made in the relationship. Loving yourself means remembering that you don’t depend on the presence of anyone to be worthy.
- Maybe your relationship was fantastic or maybe it was difficult. Whatever the case, you can extract a positive and enriching perspective from it that’ll help you grow. If your experiences with them made you happy, be grateful for the path you shared together. On the other hand, if the relationship made you miserable, appreciate the clarity it gave you about what you want and deserve.
Unconditional love allows you to get rid of hatred, resentment, and feelings of abandonment after a breakup. However, in addition, it helps you build (from now on) attachment-free relationships in which you’ll find much greater well-being.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
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- Riso, W. (2003). Amar o depender?: cómo superar el apego afectivo y hacer del amor una experiencia plena y saludable. Editorial Norma.
- Salzberg, S. (2014). Amor incondicional: La vía budista de las residencias celestiales que cambiará tu vida. Debolsillo.