29. The Truth behind Unconditional Love

Unconditional love after betrayal might sound impossible. When someone’s broken your trust, it’s only natural to feel resentment, anger or hurt. But what if love, true love, was never about what they did or didn’t do? What if it was something you could still choose, for your own peace?

In this episode, I unpack what unconditional love really means, especially in the context of infidelity and emotional pain. You’ll discover how our thoughts shape our feelings, and why continuing to love doesn’t mean tolerating poor behaviour. Learn how love, even when relationships end, can be a gift you give yourself.

Key Takeaways:

• Why love is always a choice and how you can reclaim it, even after betrayal.

• The surprising truth about how our thoughts create emotions like anger or resentment.

• How withholding love often hurts you more than the person you're trying to punish.

• Why unconditional love is not the same as unconditional allowing.

• The role of personal responsibility in healing, growth, and moving forward.

💬 Reflection question:

Have you ever withheld love to protect yourself, but only ended up feeling worse?

Connect with Luke:

• Website: www.lifecoachluke.com

• Instagram: @mylifecoachluke

• Email: luke@lifecoachluke.com

Join the After the Affair community at www.facebook.com/groups/aftertheaffaircommunity

Episode Transcript:

The After The Affair podcast with me Luke Shillings is here to help you process, decide and move forward on purpose following infidelity. Together we'll explore what's required to rebuild trust not only in yourself but also with others. Whether you stay or leave I can help and no matter what your story there will be something here for you.

Let's go. Hello and welcome to episode number 29 of the After The Affair podcast with myself Luke Shillings where today I'll be exploring the topic of unconditional love, specifically with reference to betrayal and infidelity. Love is an emotion that most of us desire yet we often find ourselves feeling negative emotions instead.

In this episode we'll discuss why we make these choices, how our thoughts and emotions are intertwined and uncover the power behind choosing unconditional love. So let's get started. Choosing to feel love, does that sound strange when you hear me say that? Does it make sense to think that love is in fact a choice? Well of course love is an emotion like any other emotion and if you've been listening to what I've been saying over these last 29 episodes you'll understand that it is our thinking that creates our feeling.

Therefore by definition the love we experience is coming from thoughts that we're having about another person. It's our thoughts that are creating that emotion of love and from both my own experience and that of the people I've spoken to, when asked what would be your preferred emotion to feel towards another person then love is always at the top of that list. So why would we choose to feel anything different? The reality is we often do choose to feel different things.

We choose feelings like disappointment, anger, frustration, bitterness, resentment and jealousy when people don't meet our expectations. We have an idea of how that person should show up, how that person should behave and when they don't we feel a negative emotion because we've given them the power to do so. We pretend that we've got no control over how we feel towards others but that just simply isn't true.

Our thoughts about other people's actions determine how we feel and choosing negative thoughts always leads to negative emotions. Before we go any further what exactly is unconditional love? It can be summarised as a selfless act. It's loving somebody without any expectation of anything in return.

They don't have to show up in a particular way, they don't have to do anything in a particular way, they can be exactly who they are authentically and you love them anyway. It's with full acceptance, something we'd commonly expect to see between parent and child or perhaps one of the best examples that we see in our lives is what we get from our pets and in particular dogs. Dogs seem to display a genuine kind of unconditional love.

They're always so joyous, always so happy to see you. Even if you've had a bad day it doesn't really matter what emotional state you're in, they're still excited and motivated to see you. It could be argued that this is because we're fulfilling their needs but on the basis of what we witness there is something to aspire to in terms of how we feel about other people.

Now it's important to recognise that unconditional love doesn't mean walking around blindly, allowing people to just get away with whatever they want because we love them and it doesn't mean we allow people in our lives to take advantage of us, to manipulate us, to abuse us. But we still get to love that person. We can just choose not to be around that person and that's the difference.

But what are the true benefits of unconditional love? Unconditional love is a self-serving way to experience the feelings that we want to feel. It is not only for the likes of gods and saints and those prepared to sacrifice but literally anyone who wants to feel great, who wants to feel amazing. Every emotion is available to us at any time and this can be demonstrated simply by thinking of a time that you last experienced an emotion like that, then reliving that memory by describing that situation in detail in your mind.

You bring those thoughts to the forefront of your mind and before long you're experiencing that emotion as though you were there. Love is one of the best emotions that we can feel and it's always available to us in our relationships so we can choose to feel love rather than deny ourselves that feeling. A client once told me that he wanted to love his wife but he didn't think that she deserved it because she'd cheated on him.

He didn't think that she had the right to feel his love because of her betrayal. He was under the impression that if he loved her she would feel that love. I asked him how and he said well because I would do things that somebody who loves someone would do.

I would take care of her, I would do nice things for her like you know make a coffee for her in the morning, arrange for us to go on dates together and spend quality time together, pay attention to the things that she says so I can buy her thoughtful gifts. So I pointed out that although these things may have demonstrated his feelings for her, did he actually have to do any of those things for him to experience the emotion of love? When I asked him that he looked at me well gone out and he said well of course how else would she know that I loved her? And at that point it became very clear to me. His idea of love was his ability to demonstrate that love to somebody else and if he couldn't communicate that love in some way then he didn't believe that he was fulfilling his idea of what loving somebody meant.

To help him see how his thinking around the situation was flawed I asked him if he'd ever idolised anybody, particularly when he was growing up. Did he have posters on his bedroom wall of famous sports heroes, movie stars or singers? And he said yeah actually I did and I said well how did you feel about that person? He said well I admired them, I probably put them on a pedestal, it felt good. So it would be fair to say that you cared about them? You had some emotional connection to them? Some emotional feeling for them? Yeah I suppose I do he said.

Well did this person ever know you? Did they ever meet you? No. If you feel good about this person and have positive feelings for them and yet that person doesn't even know you exist, to them you're one of possibly a hundred thousand teenage boys with a poster of their idol on their bedroom wall. How can withholding love from your wife hurt her? When she doesn't even have to know whether you love her or not? In this situation you're telling yourself this belief that she doesn't deserve the love.

But who's that really hurting? After all you're the only person experiencing the emotion. She doesn't get to experience your feeling of love, only you get to feel that. And it was at this point that I could see the penny drop.

Something just happened at that moment and all of a sudden this illogical story that he had been telling himself probably for most of his life didn't make sense anymore. His reasoning for wanting to withhold love from his wife was flawed and now he could see it. It doesn't matter what his wife had done, he still gets to love her anyway.

There's nothing that she could possibly do that could stop him from loving her no matter what happened. He could always choose to feel loved towards her and the ability to feel loved no matter what is an option that we all have available to us. So how do we choose unconditional love to begin with? We can accept that it is in fact a choice.

If I were to ask you how do you want to feel about the situation, then most people will usually say something like, well what do you mean? What do you mean how do I want to feel about it? It's not me that's done anything wrong, I want them to change. They're going to have to fix this for me to feel better. Them fixing this to make you feel better is dependent on them fixing this.

So straight away you're at the mercy of an other person's actions. So let me ask the question again, how do you want to feel? People come up with things like, I want to feel content or I want to feel neutral and this always reminds me of something my teacher said. Of all the emotions available on the planet, of every single one that's available to you, you are choosing, I want to feel neutral.

Wow I can't wait to feel neutral. Look, I recognise that in some cases going from a very negative emotion to a very positive emotion is too much of a leap. I've spoken about this before.

It's not a case of trying to get from A all the way to Z in one go. It's about taking steps. But there's still an end goal.

There's still this how I would like to feel even if I don't believe that for me right now. I would like to feel better. I would like to feel love.

I would like to feel desire. I want to feel understanding and compassion and care and all of these beautiful emotions that are available to me, which have been available to me the whole time. It's key to remember that we cannot rely on the other person changing.

They're probably unlikely to change. The only thing that can change is how you feel. It's therefore essential to recognise that your feelings are always a choice and they're a choice because you get to choose how to think.

A common scenario that I see across many relationships, not just those that I work with but just relationships that I've witnessed throughout my life, is this belief that they want to leave their partner because they believe the grass is greener on the other side. They think that happiness will be discovered in a different relationship if they just get away from this relationship because it's this relationship that's making them miserable. It's their partner that's making them miserable.

However, happiness and love is found from within and as was once said, wherever you go, there you are and you will take those thoughts with you. So those negative experiences that you're having will just follow you along. They might look slightly different in one relationship compared to the next but if you don't get into a place where you can acknowledge and handle your own negative emotions before you choose to stay or leave your relationship, then you will almost certainly see those patterns play out again in future relationships.

Now there are exceptions, for example, I would not recommend remaining in a relationship that is abusive. Unconditional love is not a get-out clause for an abusive partner. But your ability to be happy isn't dependent on your partner.

You can blame them for all of your unhappiness, you can. You can be as miserable as you like but it doesn't make it true. You can leave them and then claim that you're happy when really all you did was decide to be happy once you'd left them.

You just chose. You're just using that as a reason. So take responsibility for all your unhappiness.

Take responsibility for how you feel and make a decision from there. In the early days of any relationship, when love starts to blossom, it's easy. It just comes so naturally and it's so much fun and you don't have to work at it.

It just sort of happens. There's that natural chemistry where you're both working with the same, at the very least, short-term objective. It's a wonderful experience.

As relationships develop, then true love can set in and at that point it will require some ongoing work. It does require effort. It requires effort from both people for the relationship to really flourish but it requires mostly on an individual level because it's your experience.

As I've already mentioned, you're the only one experiencing that emotion. People so often want to change their situation. They want to change their relationship and then justify it by saying, oh well I've just fallen out of love with her.

It just feels like it's too hard now. In those situations I would ask, well why are you choosing not to love her anymore? Why are you choosing not to love your wife? They think it's because of their wife's behaviour but it's not. It's because of the way they're thinking about it.

You see, when you get better control of how to change how you're feeling by choosing how to think, then you don't need to change the situation. You don't need to leave the relationship in order for it to get better. In fact, many relationships can be fixed when only one person works on the relationship.

That's true. Only one person needs to work on the relationship to make the relationship better because the only person that's experiencing the relationship is that one person. The other person is having their own experience which is separate to yours.

Yet we keep thinking that we're both having the shared experience but it's only your thoughts about the other person. It's only our thoughts about the situation that makes it feel shared. The reality is it's just still you.

You listening to this as you're hearing these words right now, only you are experiencing the relationship that you're in. Do you understand that? I don't know how to say it more clearly. I don't know how to put it into words that describe any better than that.

I'm passionate about this because I think it's so important. I see so many relationships fail because of these exact things that we're talking about here and now. This expectation that one has that their partner should meet all of their needs.

Let's try and wrap this up. In summary, feeling love is a choice that we often overlook and instead we tend to choose negative emotions such as anger, frustration and disappointment when people do not meet our expectations. Our thoughts about others actions determine our feelings and choosing negative thoughts leads to negative emotions.

It's crucial to understand that feelings are a choice. Thoughts are a choice and we have control over how we feel towards somebody even when it feels like we don't. Even when we dislike someone we choose to feel dislike.

Love is always available to us and it's one of the best emotions that we can feel. However we tend to deny ourselves these feelings by justifying why we should not feel love towards someone. Choosing not to feel love only hurts and it is a choice that we make.

As a final note, just remember that loving unconditionally doesn't mean unconditionally allowing, accepting, approving or condoning somebody else's behaviour. It doesn't mean that you don't take any action to protect yourself or that you shouldn't put boundaries in place or to not aim for the results that you desire in your life. It doesn't mean that you have to see someone all the time.

It just means that when you think about that particular person you get to feel love because love just feels better. So just do it. Alright, I'll talk to you all next week.