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The Unconditional LoveĪfter we’ve recovered from the heartbreak of the intense love and we’ve begun to heal and cultivate self-love, then comes the unexpected love. What We Learn: What we do want from love, and what we don’t. The heartbreak from this relationship can be indescribably painful, but it is also through this heartbreak that we really grow, change, and evolve while finding the inner strength and resilience we didn’t know we had. This is the love that feels like a rollercoaster and the one that can leave us feeling guarded, distrusting, and hurt. We often try to mold the other half into our perfect partner, and we try to mold ourselves to become theirs. The relationship comes with massive highs and dramatic lows. In this relationship, we may experience jealousy, fear, and self-doubt that we’ve never felt before. As we fall into this intense love story, the relationship becomes a mirror into our soul: we see all our insecurities, our needs, and our desires staring back at us. This is the second love, and it’s usually the one that turns our world upside down. What We Learn: That falling in love is the most incredible feeling in the world, but that not all relationships last forever, and they certainly aren’t always like they appear to be in the movies. The heartbreak can feel immense, initially, but you usually recover from it quickly.
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While it certainly feels like true love at the time, it’s not usually the deep, raw love that you’ll experience later on. This love is usually more surface level, with more importance placed on how the relationship might look to others. Often we experience our first love in high school, and usually it ends because the two people either grow apart or because of some trivial argument that the relationship simply isn’t strong enough to withstand.
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It’s that all-consuming puppy love and one that, at the time, you think will last forever. The three types of love are the first love, the intense love, and the unconditional love. Ahead, we’re breaking down the meaning of each and what you typically learn from each stage of love. Each love feels totally unique from the other and teaches us something different that shapes the person that we becoming. A theory that throughout our lifetime, we will fall in love three times, at three different stages of our lives.
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