Buddha taught us to live in the "unconditioned". What is the unconditioned? The unconditioned, also called nirvana, is love. It is the love that Buddha talks about when he speaks of love, compassion, sympathy and equanimity. In Buddhism there are different ways of practising love. There is the love of the renunciant who loves all equally but with detachment and there is the love of the bhakti practitioner who loves passionately and devotedly. There is love for the Buddha and love for one another.
The problem for a great many Western practitioners, however, is the question whether the ordinary love of lovers has any place in Buddhism. Does being a Buddhist mean detaching oneself from one's nearest and dearest? Is it a matter of avoiding grief by never caring sufficiently about one person to be vulnerable? Undoubtedly some people do interpret Buddhism that way.However, intimate relationship can also be a demanding spiritual path. In the midst of a close intimate relationship one is likely to be challenged at a greater psychological depth than in almost any other situation. Issues of power, commitment, willingness, self and selflessness, vulnerability, the management of emotional vicissitudes, the translation of sentiment into action, the challenges of conflicting loyalties - in fact all the stuff of real life, appears here often in magnified form. In an intimate relationship that remains alive one's habitual scripts and old karmic patterns are exposed. One's bluff is called. One goes through a process that changes one deeply and goes on being an ever unfolding mysterious process of discovery.
by my pal, 
