In marriage, the ideal again is agape, but it is not the reality. The condition that we put upon our spouses is that they behave! Common deal breakers of our professed “agape” toward our spouses include rape, infidelity, incest, DV, and other such acts committed by our spouses. While these may be isolated acts with extenuating circumstances that you could forgive in light of who your spouse is, but what if these or other moral failings began to characterize that person? What if that spouse is no longer the person that you married? I could only conjecture what would be your deal breaker, but I submit that the extent of your love, even for your spouse, does have implicit conditions!

To have completely unconditional love may be noble, but it is neither practical nor honest with oneself. Really consider, what could my spouse do as a matter of lifestyle, that would ultimately drive me away from him/her? I believe that we each have a breaking point to where our love will fail, even if we are not aware of that point. I believe that none of us is so altruistic that we can pour of ourselves into another person in perpetuity and not expect some satisfying reciprocation.

It is no disgrace to have conditional love. Marriage itself is a form of conditional love– under the condition that you love your spouse exclusively and above all others, you commit to the person who reciprocates that love and commitment. There are social, moral, and legal priviledges to the “condition” of being married to one other person.

Agape–”unconditional love” may be ideal, but it is not practical.

Agape love is a “choice” love, meaning you choose to love your spouse. That makes it impossible to “fall in” or “out of” love, but you choose to do one of those two things.

Agape is a powerful word, thanks for writing about it. I do enjoy your blog.