He’s the Master of Aggravation. You have a million things to do, but he needs your attention right now. He’s whining about the computer. He can’t do this. He can’t do that. You know he won’t stop bothering you to fix his problem until you drop what you need to do and help him. You show him how to search for what he wants. He complains that it won’t work. You want to strangle your husband or at the very least, get out of his sight for the day.

Instead you give him an unexpected hug and tell him, “Relax honey, I’ll help you do your research.”Loving is easy when the one you love is pleasing you. True love is unconditional. I recall one happily married woman saying that anyone can love her husband when he’s sweet and becoming, but you still have to love him when he’s angry, when he’s stubborn, when he’s forgetful and whenever he acts like the complete opposite of the man you thought you wanted to be with for the rest of your life.In the play, “A Raisin in the Sun,” by Lorraine Hansberry, Mama’s son, Walter secretly squanders his family’s life savings on a bad business deal. Walter feels terrible enough, but then his sister Beneatha adds more misery to his overwhelming guilt.“That is not a man. That is nothing but a toothless rat. … He’s no brother of mine,” she says about Walter to Mama, who then reminds her daughter what real love is all about.“There is always something left to love, girl, and if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don’t mean for yourself and for the family ’cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? … that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so. …”I believe it takes unselfishness and even courage to love someone when they are most unlovable. I dare say that everyone reading this column including yours truly has been unlovable many times, and we have also been challenged to love someone else when he or she causes us great displeasure.Acts of love can come in subtle comments or gestures and yet have profoundly positive results. A wife calms her husband’s anger with a kiss on his cheek or a brief massage of the tightness in his shoulders. A husband relieves his wife after she caused a car crash earlier in the day and comes home blaming him for not getting the brakes fixed. He apologizes, pours her a glass of wine and makes dinner that night for the family. A father scolds his young son who made his sister cry, but then tells the boy he loves him before bedtime.In each of the above examples, a decision to love rather than a decision to escalate the problem was made. First, the wife could have reacted to her husband’s anger with her own. In the second example, the husband could have decided to blame his wife for the crash rather than take responsibility for not getting the brakes fixed. The father could have let his son go to sleep feeling that whenever he does something wrong, his father will hate him.According to Familyshare, learning how to love someone who is undeserving requires three important steps.The first is forgiveness. Instead of telling the ones we love how awful we feel because of their thoughtless actions, we need to forgive their mistakes. This immediately removes guilt and anxiety and furthermore proves that love is unconditional. It also empowers the wrongdoer the opportunity to exhibit long-term appreciation.Patience is the second step. Rather than match anger with anger because she forgot to pay the bills on time, calm down and discuss the reasons and correct the problem. We all can be absent-minded, so why should we get mad at someone else’s forgetfulness?The third step takes some thinking. We all know what words we say or what gestures we make that will upset our loved ones. Stopping this behavior is the key to avoiding conflicts. When you live long enough with someone, you know what you can say or do to trigger negative responses, so avoid the problem by not pulling the trigger.Making the decision to love and accepting the imperfections in each other builds strong and long-lasting relationships.Rich Strack can be reached at

katehep11@gmail.com.