What if You Unconditionally Love Your Partner Like Your Dog Loves You?

You just returned home from a shitty day, and it was made worse by paying $53 for an Uber to and from work because you had a dead battery. As you walk into your apartment, your dog is there to greet you with a wagging tail. He can sense your distress and gets closer with excitement; he wants to hold you. But he does the next best thing, he jumps up and puts his paws around you.

You go over and sit in your chair; he jumps up in your lap and licks your face with excitement. He stops, looks away, takes a deep breath, and slowly exhales. He turns to you and looks into your eyes. He feels your frustration.

He doesn’t care you got upset with him last week because he tore up your favorite pillow. He doesn’t care you yelled at him the other night because he wouldn’t quit barking. He understands you, but on a different level.

Pet’s love unconditionally, but they won’t love unconditionally if they are abused deliberately.

He doesn’t care if he isn’t fed on time, he doesn’t care if he is adequately groomed, he doesn’t care if he has water in his bowl; he understands. He understands you are human and have shit going on in the outside world that doesn’t revolve around him. Are you following? No one is perfect.

As long as you don’t instill fear and anxiety in him, he will be your forever friend. You can count on him to comfort you in times of need.

Dogs and even cats are like that. They want to love and support you; I believe it’s an animal instinct to love and nurture, as it is in most humans. But the problem with humans is we take shit too personally. Most of the time, what our partner has going on in life has nothing to do with us and everything to do with them. But we personalize it and miss the opportunity to give our partner what they need at times, unconditional love.

The most vital part is to know when your support becomes enabling of abusive behavior. Abuse of any kind should never be tolerated, just like animals. You will know if an animal loves you are not. They show it with physical signs, the same with humans.

What if you treated your partner like your dog or cat treats you? Animals never intentionally hurt you, they might fuck up, but it isn’t intentional. And as long as you are never emotionally, physically or violently abusive towards your animal, they will have your back. The same should go for a loving partner.

A lot of people confuse unconditional love with abuse. Usually, abuse is justified by the abuser as needing to accept them and their behavior with love unconditionally. Fuck that, abuse is abuse, and if you love someone, you don’t abuse them in any form. And if you do a time or two, you own that shit and correct it.

Unconditional love and abuse go hand in hand in today’s society.

“Till death do us part.”

Isn’t that what they say?

We all have issues we are working on, but why not become your dog and support your partner as long as they aren’t dishing out unlimited helpings of abuse?

I know it isn’t very easy.

The attachment formed from the continuous push and pull of the good times and bad in a relationship can be so damn confusing and damaging! That is not love! We love to confuse that loving a person is putting up with abuse, when in fact it is trauma bond.

If your partner loves you, you know deep in your soul that you have that god-given intuition where you “just know.” When we “know,” we fight against the “know.” Does that make sense? And sometimes we ignore the “know.”

Same with animals. When they are abused and know their owner is flawed, they will slowly approach them head down, wagging their tail. They aren’t sure which person will show up “this time,” so they approach with caution.

They are waiting for the abuse. Sometimes they receive what they expect, and sometimes they get the reward they are searching for. I believe we can learn a lot from animals, it sounds crazy, but it’s true.

How do you treat your partner?

Do you love them?

Are you abusing them, or are you the one accepting the abuse?

Those are the important questions.

If your partner is deserving, become your animal for a day. Give them what they need and love them unconditionally. Sometimes that’s all a person needs to initiate change.

If you are being abused, don’t confuse it with unconditional love. Plan for an exit and stick to it; make it happen.

That’s one good thing about not being an animal; you can choose who you keep in your life, they can’t.

Love, don’t hate.

The world is full of the latter.