We’d all like to be loved unconditionally.
Unconditional love is the ultimate form of love, a kind of love in which your partner loves you no matter what. It’s the kind of love that we hear about in songs and movies.
Someone who loves you unconditionally will have your back no matter what. If you lose your job, get cancelled on social media or suffer a long-term illness, they’ll stand by you. Although let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
But what exactly does unconditional love look like? Good question.
Here are ten signs that your partner loves you unconditionally.
1) They support your goals
It’s normal (and healthy) for people in a relationship to have different interests. For example, I’m obsessed with reading and writing, while my partner prefers to make art and binge watch Netflix shows.
But a partner who loves you unconditionally will still support you with your interests, even when they don’t understand them. My girlfriend is my biggest supporter when I struggle through speaking French, even though she can’t speak a word of it herself.
That’s because when you love someone unconditionally, what’s important to them automatically becomes important to you. You want to see them succeed in their passions, which brings me on to my next point.
2) They celebrate your successes
A partner who loves you unconditionally will help you to celebrate your successes, even when they don’t understand them.
It’s one of the ways that they show their support. However, it builds on that and is all about them giving you the inspiration and motivation you need to build on that success and seek your next one.
They’ll also celebrate even the most minor of successes. We’re talking about things that you yourself might not have considered celebrating.
My girlfriend once gave me some flowers because I’d had a nice email from a client. That’s unconditional love right there.
3) They prioritize your happiness
When someone loves you unconditionally, your happiness will be the most important thing in the world for them.
This can occasionally be a problem, because it’s super easy to focus so much on your partner’s happiness that you forget about your own. I’ve been there before and it sucks, especially when that love isn’t returned.
The good news here is that a partner who loves you unconditionally can prioritize your happiness without putting their own happiness at stake. Better still, if the two of you love each other, you can each prioritize the other’s happiness and everybody wins.
4) They forgive you
A partner who loves you unconditionally will forgive you for any mistakes that you make.
In part, that’s because they’ll know that you didn’t mean anything by it. If you upset them somehow, the chances are that you weren’t doing it deliberately to hurt them – and if you were, that says more about you than about them.
We all make mistakes from time to time, and those mistakes sometimes affect our relationships. But if that happens to you and you upset your partner, you’ll know that they love you unconditionally if they forgive you for it.
Just make sure that you return the favor and practice forgiveness towards them.
5) They communicate with you
Communication is the most important factor in any relationship. There, I said it.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my own relationships and those of my friends and family, it’s that it’s the relationships which prioritize communication which are the happiest and which last the longest.
And so there’s an argument to be made that communication by itself doesn’t mean that your partner loves you unconditionally. With that said, it’s a good sign, and no unconditional love can take place without it.
It’s like making a cake. Just because you’re cooking with flour, it doesn’t mean you’re making a cake – but you can’t bake a cake without flour.
6) They don’t judge you
Sick of being judged by other people? Aren’t we all…
If you’re lucky enough to find someone who loves you unconditionally, though, you can say goodbye to being judged, at least at home. If you want to eat ketchup and ice cream, go ahead and do it.
Oh, sure, your partner might give you a funny look to begin with, but they’re not going to judge you for your decisions. They might poke a little fun, but they’ll also display a genuine desire to understand you.
In fact, they might even try a mouthful of that ketchup and ice cream.
7) They accept and embrace your flaws
When someone loves you unconditionally, it’s a kind of “warts and all” love where they accept that you’re flawed and love you anyway.
As much as we might like to tell our partners that they’re perfect, they’re not. Nobody is. Perfection doesn’t exist, and if we refuse to settle for anything less, we’ll go crazy.
Unconditional love, then, means accepting your partner for who they are, acknowledging that they’re not perfect and loving them anyway. In some cases, those flaws are what make them love you even more.
8) They go out of their way to solve conflicts
There’s conflict in every relationship. What’s important is the way that you address it.
Some people try to ignore conflicts and just agree not to talk about them, but that’s rarely a good idea. Ignoring conflict allows them to grow like tumors until they become a much bigger problem.
That’s why when someone loves you unconditionally, they’ll do everything they can to address and resolve any conflicts in your relationship. It might seem as though they’re finding problems, but if they are then it’s only so that they can be corrected.
They know that they love you unconditionally, and that facing those conflicts head on will only make your relationship stronger.
9) They’re not afraid to display affection
Some people are hesitant to display affection, but I find that when someone loves someone else unconditionally, they can’t help themselves.
Bear in mind here that there are two different types of affection – your regular affection, which takes place behind closed doors, and then the PDAs, or public displays of affection. No prizes for guessing where they take place.
Different people have different feeling towards PDAs, and you shouldn’t pressure your partner into public displays if they prefer to keep them private. However, if they don’t display affection at all, that’s not a good sign.
Remember that communication is key for any relationship, even when there’s unconditional love. If you’re unhappy with the level of affection in your relationship, talk about it.
10) They’re always there for you
This is the big one, and it’s the most important thing that you should expect of your partner.
Someone who loves you unconditionally will always be there for you, no matter what life brings your way. We’ve already talked about how they’ll celebrate your successes, but it’s equally important for them to stay with you when you feel like a failure.
We’re talking about a love so strong that if you get evicted from your house, they’ll live on the streets with you. And if you lose your job and can’t get another, they’ll support you financially.
When you’re loved this much, your journey through life is lighter, as though a weight has been lifted. You know that if all else fails, you still have each other.
Conclusion
There’s an Avett Brothers song that goes, “Now in the movies, they make it look so perfect, and in the background they’re always playing the right song, and in the ending there’s always a resolution, but real life is more than just two hours long.”
The lesson I take from that is that truly unconditional love doesn’t exist, except in the movies. And as the song goes, “In the movies, they’re not in love at all. They’re just saying their lines.”
There’s always something you can do that could push your partner past breaking point. I know that my girlfriend loves me, but I can also think of at least three things I could do which would make her leave me.
Still, the love we’re talking about today is the closest thing to unconditional love that there is, and the signs that we’ve talked about should help you to spot it.
Now the question is, does your partner love you unconditionally? And if they do, do you feel the same about them?
I hope so.
