The Love of Others is All About Acceptance

In another article I made the case that self love is all about acceptance, now I am changing tack to talking about relationships. I said in a thought for the day,'If you truly love somebody you must accept them'.

In another article I wrote is called 'Unload your expectations', I basically say that when we place expectations on others or ourselves we are setting them and us up to fail. Later when I read through this article I wondered if I was correct in what I said because I concluded that there are some areas where we must place expectations on others.

After I wrote the article on self acceptance I changed my mind, I do not retract a single word from that article.

So am I saying that spouses should place no expectations on each other? Yes.

Am I saying that parents should place no expectations on their children? Yes.

In fact if you want to try to screw up the lives of your children a good way to start is by letting them know that you are disappointed in them.

So how do we deal with the fact that children should attend school and should do their homework for example, how are we to exercise discipline. We exercise it through a means of punishments and rewards.

Punishments may include: grounding, sending a child to his/her room, not giving them their allowance that week. Rewards may include: money, taking the child to a sports event, getting them an ice cream, you get the idea.

The key point is that by not doing homework, skipping school etc they should be aware that you love them just the same, your love is not diminished.

So what happens in the case of a marriage or long term relationships in the case of something like fidelity. Don't we expect our partner to be faithful?

No, we trust them to be.