I didn’t set out to write a reflection on love.
But the more I peeled back the layers of my own story — of childhood, marriage, fatherhood, divorce — the more I realized that love had never left. It had just been misnamed. Misdirected. Sometimes even misused.
What I’ve come to learn — through rupture, responsibility, and raising two kids — is that the deepest kind of love doesn’t come wrapped in romance or security.
It comes through unlearning.
Through grief.
Through grace.
This is a story about that kind of love.
I. Remembering Love
Before I ever knew what love was, I felt it.
Not the version wrapped in vows or Valentine’s Day, but something quieter. Earlier.
A frequency you just know when you’re held without needing to earn it.
When your existence is enough.
That kind of love is where we all begin.
But somewhere along the way, we start forgetting.
We adapt. We perform. We adjust our volume to be heard, our softness to survive.
And what was once freely given starts feeling like something we have to prove.
By the time I was old enough to put words to love, I’d already learned to tie it to conditions:
Be useful. Be impressive. Be strong.
Don’t make things harder. Don’t make people uncomfortable. Don’t need too much.
Love, I thought, was earned through endurance.
And so I carried that version into everything — friendship, leadership, marriage, even faith.
Until life offered me a disruption big enough to unlearn it.
A divorce.
Two children.
And a chance to finally remember what love actually is.
II. How Love Becomes Conditional: The Work of the MAN
The MAN didn’t just shape the world I lived in.
He shaped how I learned to love.
Malice, Apathy, and Negligence — not just as behaviors, but as systems.
Invisible scaffolding that trained me to trade authenticity for approval.
Malice taught me to fear being too visible.
Apathy made me doubt whether my feelings mattered.
Negligence handed me silence when I needed language, and absence when I needed presence.
So I adapted.
I excelled.
I translated emotion into performance, care into currency, love into transaction.
That was how you survived.
In a world governed by the MAN, love isn’t a resting place.
It’s a ledger.
And every smile, sacrifice, or silence is a line item in a desperate attempt to stay safe and seen.
(If you’re curious about where this framing of “the MAN” comes from — and how he’s less a person than a pattern — I explore him in more depth in The Man We Choose to Forget. It’s a reflection on how malice, apathy, and negligence shaped not just relationships, but entire systems of survival.)
III. The Inheritance of Numbness
I didn’t realize I had inherited numbness until I tried to teach my children how to feel.
Until I sat across from them, trying to name their emotions with the same tongue I was once told to bite.
Numbness wasn’t a lack of love in my childhood.
It was the cost of survival.
My parents, and theirs before them, carried wounds so deep they passed on coping mechanisms instead of comfort.
We were taught to be grateful.
To be strong.
To move forward.
But no one taught us how to stay present — to stay feeling — when things fell apart.
So I grew up fluent in emotional withholding.
I could manage expectations, read a room, control outcomes.
But when it came to simply being with another human being in their truth… I had to teach myself from scratch.
(I write more about this legacy — what it meant to inherit numbness instead of emotional language — in The Inheritance of Numbness. That piece dives deeper into how silence, gratitude, and strength became survival code in my family.)
IV. Divorce: The Disruption and the Doorway
I didn’t plan for divorce.
But I needed what it revealed.
When the marriage ended, I wasn’t left with bitterness. I was left with a mirror.
A clear, unflinching look at the way I’d been taught to love — and the way I had passed that on.
I had two children to raise.
With someone I no longer wanted to live with.
But still had to walk alongside — for their sake.
That was the disruption.
And it became the doorway.
Co-parenting demanded a different kind of love.
Not romantic. Not possessive. Not performative.
It asked for clarity, respect, and grace — without the illusion of control.
It forced me to love beyond ego.
To love for something greater than comfort or convenience.
To love in the quiet, daily ways my kids could feel, not just witness.
There were moments she showed more grace than I did — and I carry those reminders with me, too.
V. What Unconditional Love Really Is
Unconditional love is not staying at all costs.
It’s not martyrdom. It’s not chaos disguised as passion.
It’s not a story you use to keep someone close when closeness no longer serves either of you.
It’s this:
The ability to remain rooted in care — even when the form of the relationship changes.
To speak with respect when it would be easier to blame.
To honor the good, without denying the harm.
To protect what’s sacred, even when it no longer looks like a partnership.
Unconditional love has boundaries.
But it doesn’t punish.
It tells the truth, without using truth as a weapon.
It lets go, without needing to be right.
It’s what I want my children to know love can be.
Because if they don’t inherit anything else from me,
I hope they inherit that.
VI. Grace: The Universal Teaching
Every tradition I’ve ever studied — every religion, every path of spirit — points back to this:
That we are loved not because we earned it,
but because we exist.
Christianity calls it grace.
Islam calls it mercy.
Hinduism calls it divine presence.
Buddhism calls it compassion.
Judaism calls it hesed — steadfast, loyal love.
It’s all the same song, sung in different tongues.
A reminder that unconditional love is not just a human practice.
It’s the language of the divine.
And we are all just trying to remember the lyrics.
VII. Practicing Love, Not Just Preaching It
I used to think love meant staying no matter what.
Now I know: sometimes the most loving thing you can do is leave with integrity — and then keep showing up, anyway.
For the kids.
For the new family shape.
For the next version of yourself who no longer confuses sacrifice with sincerity.
I didn’t learn unconditional love in my marriage.
I learned it in its aftermath.
When nothing was guaranteed, and everything had to be chosen — again and again.
I’m still learning.
Still practicing.
Still trying to raise two children who don’t have to unlearn what I did.
And maybe that’s what healing really is:
Not a return to perfection.
But a return to love — without conditions.