Love, Heartbreak

After A Breakup, What Happens To Unconditional Love?

After A Breakup, What Happens To Unconditional Love?

Hoelscher continues, "Everyone's brain is wired to chemical respond to desire, romance, and attachment. This is what keeps the species reproducing. Love is not in the brain, it is in the heart and we often attribute 'love' to these chemical reactions. Once the cycle is complete, we fall out of love. This is the natural breaking of desire."

Carr echoes this sentiment: "This explains why when we 'fall in love' colors are brighter, food tastes better, and we need less sleep. Our whole system is operating at maximum efficiency. But wait: falling in love implies there is an object of that love which could go away or abandon us or betray us or hurt us or just plain let us down, right? So how is that unconditional? We only think the love we feel is coming from the object of our love (a spouse, for example), but it is really happening inside us. Objects of our love only trigger this love within us, and remind us of how it feels. But the feeling itself is something inside us we can recreate whether they are with us or not. It is an intrinsic capability within us, with or without them. Falling out of love rarely has anything to do with the other person, and has much more to do with ourselves, and what is going on inside us."

But there's no need to feel anxious about moving on and healing after a breakup, says Hoelscher: "You are that tree that will survive the fire of divorce and with some reflection, will be able to see the unconditional loving life force that is within you. Once all ties with your spouse are dissolved you will have to take responsibility for yourself. You will be forced to grow into a new life. All the activities you delegated to your spouse are now in your hands to either manifest or let go of. Unconditional love will help show you the right path to take."

Being strong may seem impossible, but it will help you heal, says Carr: "Emotional mastery is the capacity to meet any life situation with resilience, coming back to and sustaining your own internal coherence in love, or care, or appreciation or compassion. That is unconditional love, because you stabilize in yourself independent from conditions. It means marrying your own inner balance and poise first; marrying your own heart and its capacity for coherence. When you put that first and foremost, you then see others with greater clarity and compassion, which leads to love because you understand what motivates them without taking it personally."

Hoelscher ends with a positive look at the dissolution of relationships: "Another, more sobering way to look at it is that all marriages come to an end. It might not be a divorce, but eventually there is an end. Yours might have ended sooner (or not soon enough) but at some point all of our relationships have to face the fire of separation, and each and everyone is an opportunity to find and expand your ability to love unconditionally."

And, says Carr with an encouraging rally: "It is never too late to learn the recipe for unconditional love. Whether you are in a marriage that is on the rocks, a passionate newlywed afraid to lose the fire, or are grieving a bitter divorce, there is a sweet spot in your relationship where love can flow freely through you as the experience of inner security, passion, forgiveness, understanding, self-respect and compassion. 'Old flames' are not ex-lovers or spouses. They are capacities that light up within our own hearts. When they burn out, we can reignite them in both the presence and the loss of the people that have sparked our fire along our journey by tapping into the power and potential that lies within our own hearts."