“Unconditional love is not so much about how we receive and endure each other, as it is about the deep vow to never, under any condition, stop bringing the flawed truth of who we are to each other.” – Mark Nepo, The Book Of Awakening.

I’ve struggled for a long time to come to terms with the idea of unconditional love, which I’ve never really understood. Dogs are supposed to love us unconditionally, people always talk about them that way.

But I don’t want unconditional love from dogs or people. I want to earn love and deserve it, not assume it or take it for granted.

If I don’t treat Maria well, and don’t support her in every way that I can, she need not love me, and I wouldn’t want a love like that.  I don’t believe Bud loved the sad man who abused him so savagely. I think he loves us because we treat him lovingly and gently, period.

Dogs are adaptable and dependent, but who knows what is in their hearts?

With people, I’ve always feared that unconditional love is all about complete and unwavering acceptance, turning the other cheek, no matter what. This might have worked for Jesus, but he was the son of God.

Turning the other cheek is not good advice for people who have been abused or abandoned or neglected. Just ask the victims of Harvey Weinstein.

It is certainly not good advice for me or my wife. If I abused Maria in any way, I would not be loved unconditionally; I would be out in the street with Zinnia (probably she’d keep Zinnia) in a flash. And rightfully so.

For me, unconditional love is earned every day, it does not demand a passive acceptance of whatever happens in life or in the name of love.

It means we show all that we are to one another in an honest and authentic way and never hide the broken parts of us from one another. Maria and I, like most people, have broken pieces and I’ve seen them and also her hurt and pain.

She is the first person in my life to whom I have shown my flawed truths, and my love has never been more profound for anyone.

If she lied to herself or hid herself from me, I can’t say I would love her no matter what. I have learned that I can’t love anyone who does that, nor can I be loved if I do it to anyone else.

I keep bringing dogs into this post because people so often talk about dogs loving them conditionally. I love my dogs, and I like to think they love me.

But I  believe dogs will love anyone who feeds them,  shelters them, and makes them comfortable. Millions of rehomed dogs prove that every day.

Dogs are remarkably adaptable animals, and it is impossible to know what they love out of instinct or out of consciousness.

They are, above all, among nature’s most durable survivors.

They don’t teach us how to love unconditionally; they teach us how to be gentle and loving and merciful, as Thomas Aquinas suggested.

Only people can show me what unconditional love is, or give it to me,  and in my life, only Maria and my daughter has taught me the meaning of that kind of love.

We humans are very different from dogs, and it is essential to learn from them rather than emotionalize or glorify them.

When Maria shows me her hurt and most profound fears and yearnings,  and she accepts that I am sometimes blind to those around me and distracted and closed, then we are learning to love each other.

Bud has no deepest fears and yearnings; he wants food, shelter, and compassion. I love him for that, but it is very conditional for me. He cannot consciously show me his damaged soul.

Here’s the boundary for me with people, with Maria.

We look deeply into one another, and she accepts my flaws, but not necessarily my behavior. I understand her hurt, but not automatically forgive her behavior. That is the middle ground through which we both draw closer to one another, the working space of our love.

We are both grateful for the freedom to be honest about ourselves and one another, this has always brought us closer, not farther apart. This is my idea about unconditional love (I can’t speak for Maria, she has her own blog.)

I think unconditional love is harder for men than for women because men like me do not grow up around men who reveal their flaws and hurt. I didn’t hear a man do that until I was more than 60 years old.

I never imagined that anyone could love me if they saw the deepest parts of me, love could come only if I hid myself and guarded my truths. It took a lot of beatings and pain for that to change.

So many of us have never seen this honesty and don’t instinctively or intuitively know how to do it. Love is a great motivator. If we want it, we have to learn and change.

Men like me often need to be tortured as children or humiliated as adults to have their hearts and souls broken open. Sadly, that is too often a path to unconditional love.

The best men I know have experienced both torture and humiliation, learning empathy and compassion and forgiveness the hard way,  and thus prepared to love unconditionally, but always uneasily.

Maria feared to reveal herself as much as I did, we both worked hard to break through those walls.

You have to have someone you trust, it makes all the difference. That’s the leap of faith, I think, the plunge into the icy water.

Bringing Maria my flawed truth will never be natural to me, or simple. But I will do it, and keep doing it.

Unconditional love is not the darkness but the light, not the black hole of the soul but the sun that shines day and night, every day of the year.