Seems like the topic of the day here is about boundaries and unconditional love. This morning, I was talking with one of my Life Coaching clients about this. She was struggling with the concept of unconditional love, she was feeling it means there are no boundaries to be set. Love is Love, she said. I was talking about how Unconditional Love is always loving but also loving someone enough to create those boundaries , for we all need them in our relationships for them to be healthy. Loving is not allowing others complete free rein over us. It is about loving them enough to let them know appropriately where our own personal boundaries are, with loving kindness, sometimes with firm loving kindness. Occasionally, it takes a whole lotta love to set and maintain those boundaries, especially when the other person (or animal) is having hard time with it. I use my horse Rubicon, as an example here. He is coming off a one year layoff, he has not been ridden much during that time. So now that he is being worked regularly and is adjusting to his new (old) routine of being ridden again, he’s testing me and looking for some boundaries about who is in control, he likes the attention of being ridden but would like to stay on vacation, so to speak. So he resists being seriously worked ….he needs me to say, yes you do need to do this. This is our agreement, for you to be ridden one hour several times a week, the rest of your time you have to yourself and can do as you wish….. My part of the agreement is to care for him and further his training by riding him. He really needs to know I love him and honor him by setting the boundaries of our relationship , much as I would do in a relationship with another human, although the boundaries for a human relationship would have another flavor than the human -horse one does. So, how do you feel about unconditional love and boundaries?
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October 20, 2008 at 10:19 am
Leslie Richter
I have come to realize that loving yourself means having healthy boundaries and creating a clean exchange. To me unconditional love means love and respect. And that’s where I see boundaries coming in, you need to have love and respect for yourself to broaden your scope to others.
It’s taken me awhile to realize the disrespect of not having boundaries, in some ways you merge into another’s space by being so loving and giving it all and not being mindful of your own space. You are actually needy in a wierd way, let me love you to pieces and not have room for an exchange.
Unconditional love in a healthy way allows for a balance of give and take,
with nuetral divine timing.
Love Leslie
October 25, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Cindy
Great posts from you two. I agree about the need for boundaries to have successful loving relationships. (obviously true with my particular horse or I’d probably be stomped to pieces) However I just plain haven’t thought about UNCONDITIONAL love to that degree to comment. Unconditional sounds like a tremendous goal that is way out there somewhere. I suppose if unconditional love could mean at times chosing to not spend time with a person but still sending them love, then maybe I could picture that.
October 26, 2008 at 12:31 am
Mark Ferris
Well said Leslie, to me unconditional means loving all things (everything, the intrinsic nature (life force) in all things) including your self, if not mostly yourself. All things you do are ultimately for yourself. regardless of the fact if you are an altruist or a bodhisattva. Or a hedonistic glutton like myself (tongue in cheek).
Cheers, Mark
November 10, 2008 at 2:10 pm
nature soirit coach
When I wrote this post, my feeling of the definition for unconditional love is that it is a kind of Dalai-Lama sort of love, as in love for all things , more like a brother-sister love than a romantic love. I checked out some definitions of unconditional love ….one is “Love as God intended it, without conditions, exclusions, exceptions or limitations.” Another said “If you love someone unconditionally you will want whatever is best for them and always give them freedom to seek out the things that really give them happiness.”
Got any more ideas on this?