What if the Person's Good Qualities Diminish or Disappear, Then What?

Thank you, A.B.

I am so sorry to say, I am pretty confused.  How embarrassing! 

I get your first paragraph in its entirety.  After that, I'm pretty lost.  I will keep reading over the rest.  Lights will come on! 

When you say, "Does it make a difference if the object of one’s love is noble, kind, and cheerful or dishonest and angry? Of course. "  Well, what does that mean?  My husband is honest and in his own way, noble, but not so cheerful or kind.  I do enjoy many qualities about him, and try to overlook and not take personally the grumpy, surly, unkind moods.

What I meant about falling in love with others' good qualities being conditional, is that sometimes  those qualities diminish or disappear, then what?  If my husband isn't as fun or funny as he used to be, I still love him. I would like to think I was not just in love with that pleasant trait, but rather, his "essence" or core self. 

My husband's affection for me seems very dependent upon my being and saying and doing all the "right" things at the right times.  He loses patience with me so often over such trivial matters, that I often wonder, "Can't you just love me?  Must I jump through hoops to win your love? I can't be perfect. I will make mistakes. I can't change my spots into stripes." G.

Dear G

It is human nature to be attracted to people because of their good qualities. I guess it’s a case of the good, the true and the beautiful are all one absolute source, and as people reflect some of this absolute source in their personal qualities, we are drawn to them with admiration and yes, love. It is our destiny, as we continue to raise our consciousness, to join with the good, the true and the beautiful. I think we approximate, or presage, that destiny sometimes in our relationships.

So what I meant is that our admiration and love for the qualities is unconditional. Now as for the love for the person, to the extent that the person has these qualities is “non-different” from the good, the true, and the beautiful, we love them to the extent that our heart is free to open to love, truth and beauty. What happens when the person doesn’t display these qualities periodically, or loses them over time, is a human predicament that is part of the human struggle. 

We would also suffer some loss, would go through some mourning of that loss, and would have to make something out of our relationship based on what remains. And were we to lose the person entirely through death or some kind of separation, the same is true. We would suffer and mourn our loss and begin to make something out of our lives based upon what remains to us, and in what creative manner we are still able to, sooner or later,“find a connection” to the one we have lost.

I think men, in general, are more dependent upon their woman doing what the men want in order to inspire their capacity to love us. The danger for us women is in betraying our principles (betraying the good the true and the beautiful) by “doing for” our men out of fear of something  (losing the relationship) rather than out of love of something (our guiding principles). The way to avoid this dilemma is to make sure that whatever we do is out of love for something and then our behavior will have the best chance of being appropriate. A. B. Curtiss