When a couple seek therapy for ongoing conflict between them, each of them tends to believe that it is what is happening between them is the problem. Their hope is that the therapist will provide the magic wand that will restore harmony between them. Of course, there is no magic formula but there is a wonderful opportunity to explore the creativity of the conflict between them that is masking more serious disconnections within each of them. It is in this sense that there is double trouble when a couple are at loggerheads and that what is crying out for resolution is not what is happening between them but what is happening within each of them. It is a clever projection on each of their parts to put the focus on what is occurring between them because what is within them is a much more challenging task.

A colleague of mine was telling me that when she made an approach to a company offering to look at the quality of relationships and management within the organisation she was met with the response: ‘there is only one product here and all our focus and energies are on the manufacturing and marketing of that product’.  Given what has happened to the economy, such a response is deeply worrying.  It was the depersonalising of employees and customers and a target-fixated mentality devoid of ethical values and trust that were responsible for much of the economic chaos we are experiencing.  We have seen how the nature of work and consumerism diminished and oppressed the self.  Our society has worshipped at the altar of functionalism and, sadly, contributed to the suffocation of individuality.

The essence of our nature is unconditional love and there is a drive within us to want to circulate that love back and forth, without putting limiting conditions on that intimacy. Love in its deepest essence knows nothing of conditions and is absolutely logical and reasonable – contrary to what many people believe. Unconditional love does not confuse the person with their behaviour and it seeks to understand how it is that a person needs to engage in behaviours that can either be threatening to one Self or to others. In seeking to under-stand, to get below the defensive stand of oneself or another, the person is not only unconditionally loving of the person but also, is unconditionally and, thereby, non-judgementally, responsive to the threatening responses of another, for example, verbal aggression, violence, sulking, blaming, judgement, controlling, passivity, manipulation. What is important here is that the person who experiences the other’s behaviour as threatening will seek to provide opportunities for that person to seek and resolve the sources of his or her defensive behaviours.

Unconditional love is one’s deepest need and each one of us intuitively recognises at our core the essential value of it. I experience the greatest joy in loving when I can open to another without reservation and judgement and fully hold the other just for who he or she is. Equally, I feel unconditionally loved when others are unreservedly open and appreciate me for being me. Such love has unbelievable power, bringing to consciousness a larger presence within each of us that allows us to experience the infinity and profundity of what it is to be a unique human being.