Love Reconceptualized: Unrequited, Unqualified & Uninterrupted

If I were to ask you what comes to mind when you think about love what might you say? Perhaps you’d answer about romantic love, or what binds together families and marriages, or about our first experiences as babies in the loving arms of our mothers. Love is an immense concept to unpack given its multifaceted, all-encompassing nature and I think there are numerous paradigms shifts and infinite progressive levels of understanding.

One aspect of love that I’ve been contemplating is the interrelationship between us and God’s non-reciprocated and boundless loving nature. I think this article will pose more questions than provide answers but my hope is that it will provoke interesting discourses in various settings.

In my contemporary culture in Jordan, unrequited love is usually understood in the context of romantic relationships (such as a crush). However, unrequited love can also found in familial, platonic, and several other relationships: such as always being the sole initiator in texting a friend to hang out, or overseas siblings not reaching out as much.

In reading the Writings I have noted a re-occurring theme of non-reciprocated love between God and humanity. But unlike the examples I mentioned, this lack of reciprocity is not the cause of distress or hardship. God’s love is unqualified and boundlessly uninterrupted towards humankind while we humans, contrastingly, are negligent and fall short of receiving God’s loving remembrances. Three passages from the Writings of Baha’u’llah that really struck me on this subject are:

“O friend! Many a day hath passed, and still the sweet fragrance of thy faithfulness hath failed to reach Us. Hast thou forgotten the One Who forgetteth thee not, and forsaketh thee not, and neglecteth thee not, even as thou hast forgotten, forsaken, and neglected Him?”¹

“O Moving Form of Dust!
I desire communion with thee, but thou wouldst put no trust in Me. The sword of thy rebellion hath felled the tree of thy hope. At all times I am near unto thee, but thou art ever far from Me…”²

“O COMRADES!
The gates that open on the Placeless stand wide and the habitation of the loved one is adorned with the lovers’ blood, yet all but a few remain bereft of this celestial city, and even of these few, none but the smallest handful hath been found with a pure heart…”³

From what I understand, God shows infinite forgiveness and grace, unqualified love, boundless bounties and uninterrupted unconditional love towards us. We, on the other hand, are relentless in our abandonment, covenant betrayals, cruel injustices towards His Manifestations; we show negligence to God’s laws such as treating everyone with respect and kindness.

“Unasked, I have showered upon thee My grace. Unpetitioned, I have fulfilled thy wish. In spite of thy undeserving, I have singled thee out for My richest, My incalculable favours…”⁴

Whether we are aware of what we are doing in terms of receiving God’s love, we are affected by it. To contextualize, we live in an age of unbridled individualism; social rejections (platonic and romantic) and profound loneliness on an unprecedented scale. For example, generally-speaking, in urban areas, neighbours don’t know each other since every man is an island. People act as sole initiators in a friend group. People “ghosting” each other over text messaging is commonplace. There are thought-provoking YouTube videos that delves into these topics such as Big Think’s “The Friendship Recession” and also “How Loneliness is Killing Us, According to a Harvard Professor”. In short, I believe we are neither allowing ourselves to receive God’s love, and we are also surrounding by imbalanced relationships.

It makes me wonder, if we re-conceptualize love in light of God’s unqualified, boundless, and uninterrupted love, how can we mirror forth this love in our lives in the face of non-reciprocal relationships among friends? How can we better manifest God’s love since we are “created in His Image and Likeness”.⁵

Where does a person’s dignity and self-respect lie in relationships when the other falls short? If one does not reciprocate nor match the energy in a friendship does the initiator still pursues the friendship uninterruptedly similar to God’s uninterrupted, unqualified love? If yes, then does that harm the person’s nobility and pride? Also, is expecting reciprocity a transactional mode of thinking that “defiles the limpid stream of friendship?”⁶ Is reciprocity always required in familial, social, and intimate relationships?

In the 19 March 2025 letter from the Universal House of Justice, it writes:

“…the sound relationships that are to bind members of a Baha’i family are based on justice and reciprocity. Each member must receive the rights due; each must fulfil the responsibilities owed.”

How are the rights and responsibilities affected by love? What can we learn from God’s boundless love in relation to and in the face of non-reciprocated, unrequited love in everyday relationships?

I hope these questions give you some food for thought and I hope they spur you to reconsider and rethink the nature of love.

1. Baha’u’llah, The Call of the Divine Beloved, Three Other Tablets [↩]
2. Baha’u’llah, Persian Hidden Words, #21 [↩]
3. Baha’u’llah, Persian Hidden Words, #17 [↩]
4. Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from The Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 322 [↩]
5. Genesis 1:27 [↩]
6. Baha’u’llah, Tablet of Wisdom [↩]

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Ali Helmy

Ali is a Jordanian Baha'i architect who loves to design, create art, and write articles.