Love: Conditions don’t apply!

“Do you have any difficulty there? Is everything ok?” This was one of the first questions my grandpa used to ask my sweetheart every time we spoke with him over the phone. He was genuinely concerned about the fact that we stayed far away from home in a place where people spoke a language that was different from our mother tongue. We used to stay in Bangalore then. It didn’t matter to grandpa that it was just an overnight journey from Bangalore to Changanacherry, my home town. For him we were in alien land and was truly worried about us. We were quite fortunate to have experienced his love, the one that held us together through thick and thin.

I’d seen my grandpa expressing similar concerns towards everyone in the family. He never differentiated between those who are from the family as against those who came into the family. He was teaching us a very valuable lesson through his expression of love. Family survives on a fundamental truth. Love needs to be expressed in a form that is truly unconditional. The moment you introduce conditions for love then you’ll never be able to love everyone in the family in the same manner.

In fact, unconditional love comes naturally for most parents towards their kids. Having said that it is also a common phenomenon to have a favourite son or daughter for many parents. Even then, most parents share their love among their children in a pretty uniform manner. The times when situations in family could get delicate is when the children start a family of their own. The equations tend to change in some cases. This is exactly where the earlier incident citing grandpa’s wisdom commands a respect.

There could be reasons plenty for parents’ behaviour to have variation in expression of love towards the children and their family. Right from social acceptance of the new relatives to proximity of residences as well as personality differences of son-in-law or daughter-in-law can cause the parents to behave differently. The elder ones in the family tend to understand this differentiation and either reacts to it or in many cases decides to swallow the bitter pill. The affected parties in the whole picture are the grandchildren. Their innocent minds do not understand why their cousins get a special treatment while they get grossly ignored.

It is also a fact that not all children in a family tend to be at similar levels of independence. There could be certain children needing emotional and financial backing that the parents generally provide an additional level of support in all respects, emotionally, physically and financially. What they don’t realize in such cases is the fact that, lesser affected children while they may not need any financial support, still yearns for the same amount of support for their emotional needs. All they ask for is to be loved unconditionally.

While the story of unconditional love progresses between parents and the family of children, there is a different face to this whole story. This is the version that is generally seen in a family where the husband or wife display favouritism towards their respective families. This is an unfortunate state of affairs for the affected family. When you say ‘I do’ you accept both the families as your own. Your spouse’s parents should be as dear to you as your own parents. Any act of demeaning or reducing the significance of your better half’s family is nothing but injustice.

What couples need to realize is the fact that your spouse’s family is the primary mould in which he or she was created. Their behaviour and nature are driven predominantly by the manner in which they were brought up. Your in-laws have an unparalleled influence on your spouse’s personality. Hence it is not your merit that you ended up liking your better half, instead due credit must be given to the family that made them what they are.

Hence it is absolutely critical to acknowledge and show respect both ways by parents as well as the children to their respective families. Finding a suitable partner for your kids should not be the end of story for parents. Same applies to those who got married to the one they fell in love. Your match making will truly be blessed only when you learn and accept each other along with their family. May you have the wisdom to extend a heart full of warmth not just to your loved ones but their loved ones as well!