Love is one of the most powerful drugs in the universe.
Love is also the one emotion that can take you from the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows.
When you truly love something to the point to where you are ready to die for that thing without question, it changes the way you view everything else.
Whether it is a family member, a close friend, an animal, or someone you are seeing romantically, love is the strongest emotion but also the hardest emotion.
The reason why I say that love is hard because it is something you have to work for.
Relationships with people are different than relationships we may have with a pet like a dog.
A dog will love you unconditionally no matter what as long as you feed them and pay attention to them.
With people, love is slightly more complicated because unconditional love only exists under certain conditions.
When a man is truly in love with a woman, there is nothing that he wont do for her - he is ready to go to battle and die for her because her life is his responsibility.
When a woman is truly in love with a man, she looks up to him and follows his lead because she knows that he is the best bet for keeping her alive.
But when you look at love between people, it changes because there are conditions to be met.
If a woman is ever going to be in love with a man, there is something that he must be able to provide her to make her feel like he is the best choice for her - i.e. protector/provider.
If a man cannot live up to the conditions that a woman needs, she is never going to truly be in love with him.
On the other hand, if a man is ever going to be in love with a woman, there is a set of conditions under which she must be able to live up to if he is going to be ready to give his life for her.
When a man loves a woman, he expects more out of her, especially if he is a man that holds himself to a higher standard - this is work and what makes love hard.
It is hard to live up to higher standards, but it all starts with the self first.
You cannot be a man or a woman who expects their partner to live up to higher standards or expectations when you yourself cannot live up to those standards.
I believe this is where a lot of people get confused about love today.
It is very easy for someone to think they are in love, expect x, y, and z from someone, and do absolutely nothing to reciprocate it.
But this is why unconditional love between humans only exists under certain conditions.
In the Bible, it says to choose a partner you are ready to go into battle with and to me, this is unconditional love.
When you are truly ready to go to battle with someone, work out through the lowest of lows and enjoy the highest of highs together, there is nothing that the other person cannot do for you.
This is why when a man is driven, the most powerful force in his life that will drive him to be the best is the woman he chooses as a wife.
The love of a woman is one of the most powerful forces on the planet and when a woman is truly in love with a man, he is capable of doing anything.
As I stated above, unconditional love between humans only exists under conditions that are met on both sides.
To me, this is what makes love hard because you have expectations of one another and have to work every single day at being able to live up to those expectations.
If a man is with a woman and isn't inspiring her to be her very best every single day, then he does not love her.
When you choose someone you want to go to battle with with, you want them to be able to live up to the expectation and this is hard work.
While I am not married, this is how I think when it comes time for me to choose the kind of woman that I want in my life to share my time with.
Because the reality of it is, I hold myself to a higher standard, I set expectations for myself for things I want to achieve in my life, and whoever I choose to share that with, I am going to hold to that same standard.
This is hard work and I believe this is also why you don't see too many people who are actually in love these days.
Instead, you see men and women settling for whatever they can get because they are too lazy to do the work necessary to have genuine love.
You can say that you "love" someone all you want, but if you do not respect one another, then you are not truly ready to go to battle with them.
If you cannot live up to a higher standard and you do not expect that same standard from your partner, then how can you say you are truly in love with someone?
If you are texting other people behind your partners back and making them look stupid, then how you can you possibly sit there and tell them that you love them?
If you are entertaining other people in your DMs on social media, then how can you possibly sit there and tell someone that you love them?
Love is a commitment and it doesn't matter who it is with.
I would consider the love that a mother has for her newborn child as unconditional simply because there are no expectations that she has for the child because it is her and the man's responsibility to protect the child and raise it.
The woman will sacrifice so much of herself to keep a newborn child alive without any an conditions or expectations and to me, this is the closest thing to true unconditional love for humans.
Love is hard, but I believe that it is worth every ounce of the hard if one is committed to making themselves the best possible version of themselves.