Hi,

You know, we hear a lot about feelings these days, and how we need to respect each other’s feelings. One of the most intense feelings is LOVE. And of love, there are two kinds:

Conditional love and unconditional love. Of course, conditional love is NOT the kind of love you want to have. It means that you have to live up to some kind of standard before someone will love you. Like you have to jump through hoops or something. Or be someone you’re not.

Like be someone they expect you to be, whether you’re that person or not. And if you’re not, well…They’re just not going to love you. See…That’s a love based on conditions. It’s a IF ONLY kind of love. So if you’re wondering whether your love for your loved one is conditional or unconditional…Look at whether you have the words IF…THEN attached to it. In other words…If you think in terms of, say: IF you wouldn’t act that way…THEN I would love you more. Or something like that, that would be conditional love.

Now, I’m not saying that you would WANT to be that way, of course. Nobody wants to love conditionally. It’s just that that’s the way our nature naturally goes. It’s hard for us to naturally love someone else unconditionally. But think in terms of a newborn baby. That baby is easy to love unconditionally. Why? Because it doesn’t ask anything of us. And it offers so much unconditional love in return. And it is so perfect, isn’t it? But your loved one isn’t like that.

Your loved one isn’t so easy to love. Not like that newborn baby. Your loved one is imperfect.

Your loved one has a mental illness. Your loved one has bipolar disorder. Your loved one makes mistakes. Your loved one sometimes acts in ways that make it hard to love them. Your loved one may even sometimes hurt you by the way that they act when they’re in a bipolar episode, for example. Your loved one may say things sometimes that you wish they wouldn’t say. Your loved one may do things that you need to forgive them for because of their disorder.

But they still need you to love them unconditionally. That’s one thing you can do to help them get better. Because most (if not all) of these things they say or do they’re not saying or doing on purpose or to make you feel bad or to hurt you. They’re acting this way because of their bipolar

disorder.

And if you keep thinking things like: IF ONLY you didn’t have bipolar disorder…THEN I would love you more…You’re not going to be the best bipolar supporter you can be to them.

Because using IF…THEN type of thinking means that you’re still using conditional love.

Now I’m not saying that it’s easy to love someone unconditionally. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

It’s hard to love someone unconditionally. And it’s especially hard when someone has a mental illness like bipolar disorder. It’s especially hard with bipolar disorder, because sometimes they can get so caught up in themselves and their own head (their disorder and the things it makes them do) that they push you away, and don’t let you help them. So sometimes, even if you do try to show unconditional love towards them, they may push you away anyway. But the thing is…the way unconditional love works is that even if they do that…You still need to keep trying to show them that unconditional love anyway. You still show them unconditional love, whether

it is returned or not. And eventually, hopefully, it will be.

Well, I have to go!

Your Friend,

Dave