And certainly, true love can transform into unconditional love over time. Both true love and unconditional love are wonderful in their own right - and come with a flood of incredibly rewarding feelings. “The closest you can come to healthy unconditional love is to try to understand and love your partner for who they are while making sure you set healthy limits on what they do.” “If you love them unconditionally, they don't have much motivation to change their behavior to salvage your relationship,” she adds. In other words, it's important to love yourself unconditionally first. So, to be clear, unconditional love only means continuing a relationship regardless of your partner's shortcomings if those shortcomings aren't threatening your well-being. Otherwise, if your SO was treating you poorly - say, by perpetually cheating or lying - you might feel obligated to stay with them due to your unconditional love. Susan Edelman notes that it’s imperative to set boundaries and prioritize self-love to ensure that the relationship remains healthy for both partners. You can certainly have both, but it is the unconditional love that endures.”īoard-certified psychiatrist Dr. Unconditional love tends to be much stronger and more enduring than romantic love. “You can also love someone for who they are as a person, but realize that as much as you may love them, that it may not be a good fit. “You can fall out of true love at any time during a relationship,” Dr. The best way to sum up the difference between the two is this: True love is a (sometimes fleeting) feeling, whereas unconditional love is an active choice to continue loving with no expectations or rewards.īeyond how they develop, what further sets true love and unconditional love apart is their resilience. “A wedding vow reflects unconditional love.” “Unconditional love says, (aside from abuse), ‘No matter what, I am devoted to you in good times in bad, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer,’” Dr. Unconditional love, meanwhile, can sometimes be expressed early on in a relationship as well, but typically takes time to set in.

Whether or not the ‘falling in love’ stage leads to something more is another story.” “We all enjoy them, but at some point, they are going to naturally diminish and after we come down from that initial high, the reality of being in a relationship and everything that comes with it begins to emerge - including the good and the bad.

Romantic love sets in when you first start falling for someone - and it can be euphoric, but it doesn’t last forever. Gary Brown, a prominent couple’s therapist in Los Angeles, one factor that separates the two is how they develop.

True love and unconditional love are both incredibly powerful experiences, but they do have some crucial differences.

While our society may not have names for all of those different kinds of love, on the whole, many of us do accept that there are different forms - and some are built to last more than others. The Greeks regarded agape as the highest and purest form of love because it is unbound by selfish desires - it is accepting, forgiving, and endures regardless of your loved one’s flaws. These included p hilia, or affectionate love (the platonic kind you feel for your besties) s torge, or familial love (typically between parents and children) l udus, or playful love typically found in the early stages of infatuation (think flirting and teasing) mania, or obsessive love that can drive jealousy and possessiveness pragma, or enduring and practical love (like an old married couple has) and philautia, or self-love.īut the two types that will likely sound most familiar are eros, which most closely resembles our notion of romantic love, and is associated with primal passion and sexual desire as well as agape, which is essentially unconditional love. While we have just one word to express the feeling of love, the Ancient Greeks had eight, which they devised based on philosophical readings from Aristotle and Pluto. But still, there are some important distinctions to know that can help you to assess the strength - and lasting power - of your love. The difference between true love and unconditional love may not be obvious - after all, they share many of the same qualities. And while you may think that love is love, there are actually multiple kinds: true love (romantic love) and unconditional love. We listen to songs about it, we read books about it, we watch rom-coms about it, and we eagerly chat with our squad about it. Listen to the lyrics on the radio, tune into the latest season of The Bachelor, or swipe through the countless prospects on your dating apps, and you’ll come to one glaring conclusion: Our society is obsessed with finding love.

Unconditional love synonyms