ARE YOU STUPID OR LOVING UNCONDITIONALLY?
By: Jeannie E. Javelosa

Poets and writers have written about LOVE as a madness, an obsession, an emotion of great fancy that makes people go beyond themselves and forget their very sanity. Love has brought people beyond their frail humanity to bid them fly to great heights of passion and inspiration. Love has moved mountains and reduced people to monsters. Oftentimes, love has made us look stupid, feel stupid and we don’t even care, oblivious as we are to the more practical, pragmatic way of living life. On the other side of the coin is the experience of loving unconditionally, beyond ones self for the good of the beloved. Yet, stupidity in love and loving unconditionally often has such a thin line that separates them. We may feel we love our partners unconditionally, yet are actually being stupid due to the choices we make within the relationship. Or while we may look stupid from the way the world sees what is happening to us, there may be a bigger picture being played out that only we can see and understand. So what now? What’s the demarcation line between the two that dividing line that tips us off closer to one or the other, between being stupid and being an ideal lover.

I begin my stories of unique relationships that are ironically, so common too. I’ve changed their names of course, but these are real people in real time. First is about Mona, a beautiful, intelligent mother of two children and wife to a husband who is a substance addict. For years, she would come to see me crying out her woes as, every visit, she came looking like a painting: black or blue or swollen, emotionally abused by a husband when he was in one of his insecure moments. But he loves me, she cried, as she returned to him, as always, to take whatever he would give her. Somedayhe will kill you, I told her, as we tried, through the years, to help build her self-esteem and make her see that the choice of staying on with him was breaking her spirit. Everyone told her to leave him. But she stayed on, living life a shadow of herself, afraid, withdrawn, beaten inside. Marriage is a commitment, she once whispered to me. Stupid? Or unconditional loving?

Then there is Francine. Married with one child, and with a good relationship with her husband & except that the husband is mid-lifing and facing all his own insecurities. The result? Husband flirting around with a bar manager for the sheer adventure of it all. Hubby is seemingly unmindful(lost as he is and confused) of the chaos it is doing to his loving, faithful wife and the potential of loosing a home (and his children to boot!). The wife, now in great pain, wants to leave, refuses to sit around waiting for him to make up his mind. Stop and wait, I tell her. In the balance of life with twelve years of marriage on one side, and a two month long flirtation on the other, its not justified that you leave! So she is struggling now, heartbreak and all, trying to love despite all his faults, trying to see if he would get out of his own midlife confusion. I am being so stupid, she cries in her pain. I think she is in middle of the lesson of learning to love unconditionally.

But what of Nina, who married right after high school and has six children. She has been married for over twenty years to the same man. He has outgrown her, having had many affairs during their marriage. She knows about them and chooses to keep quiet. Never once has she brought it up as an issue. But she has no option, being totally dependent financial on her husband. Nina has no professional skills save that of being a homemaker. The husband remains dutiful as a provider, recognizing his fullobligation to his children and her. He says he doesn’t know what love is anymore as there is no emotional connection, nor love between them. Everything is duty. And both have settled into a convenient marriage. In this case perhaps Nina has learned to love unconditionally, and perhaps too she is just being wise especially if she has no other option beyond her marriage and her role as mother.

And of course there is Malen, whose husband has had six affairs and for each time he owned up, she took him back. She thought she was trying to love unconditionally. But now, facing the fork of her mid-life, is beginning to question whether she has been stupid all along. And this does not happen just to women& I know to of men who have taken back philandering wives with the desire to rebuild their home and marriage.
Those who have found such men stupid are those who cannot understand what unconditional love is about.

So many nuances! And no real answers I guess. This is because what may seem stupid to one, may be another martyrs cause. Also, we cannot discount karma that universal force that brings back unfinished business from other lives into this present lifetime. Imbalances must be played out. A beaten wife now may have been a cruel tyrant in the past! Yes, so many nuances. And the solutions to the problems of each marriage/relationship are just as varied depending on the religious beliefs, dogma, family patterns or levels of consciousness and awareness of the people involved.

So when is a person being stupid? My personal opinion is that it is stupidity when a person allows her relationship/partner to make her loose her self respect or self-esteem. And she is totally broken and unable to grow. It is when there is stagnation of the inner spirit, of a death inside & yet the person is unwilling to make changes in her life (like leaving her husband). It is sheer stupidity not to stand up for ones values and beliefs. It is stupid when you allow another person to totally destroy your very being & and you hang on to your partner because of dependence or fear. When no positive growth is seen, when all else (unhappiness, pain, loneliness) is accepted as ones fate in life and that one cannot seem to plumb ones personal power & then there is some stupidity here.

I know too of two men who warm my heart in knowing their stories. Both remain faithful to their wives one of which is in coma, and another partly paralyzed. Both men have chosen to love unconditionally, and continue to be faithful to their wives to this day. What is it about them that make them embrace their marriages with such a passion for loving unconditionally? These are the people who see beyond their human nature and that of their partners. These are the people who have aligned theirspirits and souls to the greater spiritual journey which is Life.

I think they have picked up a secret here & as do many others who struggle to love unconditionally. To do so is a choice & a conscious choice. To love unconditionally is to invoke ones free will, that precious power God has given all of us. A person caught in the drama life, with the needs and wants of the ego just cannot love unconditionally. This is beyond them. To love unconditionally means that the Higher Ego, that Higher Self has been reached and aligned to. A clear commitment has been made to just love, despite all costs, despite the obstacles and the odds. But something mysterious happens when people love unconditionally. This Love overpowers them and raises them beyond their own small humanity, makes them experience the expansive part of the Divine Spirit, even if pain and heartbreak was part of the journey. It makes them realize that all this loving has a purpose beyond them. And they move towards wisdom and soul growth. By continuing to love unconditionally, positive changes happen and suddenly there is no more pain or mere acceptance. All this has been purified into that perfect energy of LOVE. Sometimes the erring husband returns to the relationship, changed. And this deepens the marriage. Sometimes the Love was so great to create real miracles as the love a man had for his wife and brought her out of a coma. It is a love that seeks to bring out only the positive, always the positive in the partners and the situation.

If you find yourself in pain as you struggle to learn the great PHD of Loving, ask yourself if your pain is because you are stupid, and full of fears in your comfort zone & or if you are taking a step closer to an understanding of a special nuance of loving. The greatest thing that you can do when loving unconditionally is to bring your partner back to himself, and making him whole & and in so doing, back to the relationship and to you. What is does to you is even greater. It has made you a vessel for the LOVE which the Masters, Teachers and sages of old have spoken of. You begin to embody the very best that is in you. You have become LOVE.