Love Really Is All About Money

I've been reading this book by Donald Miller, "Blue Like Jazz." It's helping me put into words random thoughts and ideas that have been aimlessly floating around in my head for years. Anyway, he points out that Christians tend to use the metaphor of economics for the concept of love. Now that is revolutionary! We earn love, we lose love, we invest in others, we make withdraws from the relationship, etc. Before I share with you how this all plays into my ever evolving understanding of unconditional love, you need to know a bit of my background.
A few random thoughts, soon to be all tied together:
#1. In the past, when it came to money, I believed that there was always a right and wrong way to spend it. Not only was there a right and wrong, but there was always a best way for the limited amount of cash that I had to be invested. Therefore, I shuddered at the thought of waisting money, and I rarely, if ever, spent money on myself because that was obviously a waste.
#2. In the past, I have applied this same view to life decisions. Now, yes, this was a bit obsessive compulsive, but every decision, big or small, every action, every interaction, was judged as a success or failure. There was alway the "best" decision, action, word to be said, etc. and if I fell short of that standard, then I had failed. There was no middle ground. No, I had either succeeded or failed at hundreds of things everyday. Imagine living under that pressure, compounded with the belief that love was reserved only for those who succeed at life. Yes, it was a living hell! And, to think I created it for myself, hmmm...
#3. A year ago, God spoke very clearly to me and told me that life is not about succeeding or failing. He doesn't have a grading system, and I do not need to stress about getting all As. He said that He looks at our lives as a journey and it doesn't matter so much what we do along the journey of life as it does what we learn and who we become in the process.
Okay, so all of that is spinning around and I realize that, yes, I have loved myself and others using the metaphor of economics. My very strict thinking about money and life caused this metaphor to be quite rigid. If I am to be deserving of love than I must be worth the investment and if others are to be deserving of my love than they better be worth my investment as well. Wow! Now if that doesn't scare you, I don't know what will!
Scary thing is, I recently realized that I invested years of love in someone who was incapable of loving me in a healthy way in return. Now, we have all probably made that mistake at various times in our lives, but I allowed this person to ruin all of my other love relationships. I willingly gave this person all of my love and in the process retracted the love I had invested into so many other relationships (because they couldn't support me in this particular relationship). For a while, I thought things were working out alright. Then, I started to have my own thoughts, opinions, ideas that didn't match up with his. I started to expect certain things in the relationship, then, my most brutal of all actions, I set a boundary and kept it. Now, the relationship is most likely going to end in divorce and I have the forever embedded stigma of "Divorcee" etched across my face. Can we say, "Failure"? Yes, there is no way around that one. Not only did I not succeed in my marriage, but yes, folks, my marriage failed.
So, I have had to face loving myself knowing that by my standards I am a failure. Can I love myself unconditionally, or do I declare my account bankrupt? Recognizing my personal reaction to my own marriage, or lack there of, have i been mistakenly hypocritical in thinking that I haven't been placing this same standard on all the other people I know whose marriages ended in a less than perfect way?
Once again, I come to the conclusion that I am incapable of giving to others a love that I cannot give to or receive for myself.