Unconditional love exists! You wanted to hear me say it, I know. I love my kids – UNCONDITIONALLY!

BUT…. if they started acting like a-holes, some boundaries would be enacted.

Maybe – it’s all romantic love that is conditional. Some familial love is conditional.

I’ve been thinking, obviously, about love and not love.

I had a friend, many years ago, whose husband knocked her around. One day, he slapped her, shoved her backwards over a chair; she ended up in a flip that messed up her knee. When she cried out and told him she couldn’t move, he said she was faking and left her there, sitting on the floor crying. She had two kids to take care of, one still in diapers. She told me how, when the baby started crying, she dragged herself over to him. She had to count on her daughter, only two and a half, to go get her some diapers, to bring her bottles and formula, to push the chair over to the sink and climb up for water so she could mix the formula and feed the baby. She sat like that, on the floor, with two little ones, unable to get up for nine long hours until he got home that evening. And even then, he wouldn’t take her to the hospital.

She was too afraid to call anyone for help.

I made a number of suggestions: call the police, call her family, leave the guy. She had a quick response to all – the police would put her kids in foster care, her family would not help, she couldn’t leave him because… here it comes…. I LOVE HIM.

I’ve heard toooooo many stories like that.

I know, even now, some of you want a counterargument. You want to hear… yeah, he probably loved her, but….

BUT I’m not going to say it. There is no excuse in the world to treat someone you supposedly love the way he treated her. That is not love.

People who abuse you do not deserve your affection or attention. You can love someone and not be with them.

Do you think Valerie will figure that out in time?