The Unfortunate Myth of Unconditional Love

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True that, Hale. Unfortunately, what you're describing is not a healthy or happy relationship - at best it's lonely, isolating, and unhappy; at worst, it's an open door to abuse. That's a big reason I wrote this thread: loving someone when they mistreat you is not virtuous or romantic - it's dysfunctional denial. I known plenty of women who've wasted years of their lives (even their youth), in just the type of relationships you've described. When they finally had the courage to get out, the only thing they tended to regret was not leaving sooner.

Interesting thread.

Every person I loved, I still love to this day. I can think of lots of people I love, but not one that I hate. Love is a forever term for me. My love for a person has no conditions, my interaction with them does. So I am a believer in unconditional love.

I will love my wife until the day I die, I have no question about that. I don't think there is anything she could do to make me hate her, She could make me angry, she could crush all that I am.. but I would still love her.

If my mate was to become abusive to myself or son.. we would most likely part ways. I am a hard love type of person at times.

Currently I fall in love on a regular basis, luckily it's with the person I'm married to.

Definitely agree!

Yeah I know. I was just trying to get the point across that its possible that both parties don't have to be involved for love to be unconditional.

Fair enough. I see your point and readily agree. But whatever it's called, I know that in my particular case, having that kind of stability in my life would go a long way to helping me feel a lot better. Boring? probably. Takes a lot of work to maintain? I'd be a fool to think not. But not having to worry every single day about "will she leave me?" would greatly reduce the stress I feel in a relationship, and therefore put me in a better position to provide something and be able to do said work mentioned.

Argh. You say you see the point, but I wonder if you do.

Definitely... But what about her?
I imagine the word your hypothetical committed-as-is partner would choose would be 'maddening'.
More work for one out of the two people, if committed as-is.
This is called putting the cart before the horse. And what you're asking is unfair to your hypothetical partner.

i do not love many people at all. but those i do love, i will love until i die no matter what may happen.
i love easily my animal friends, and even if they act odd, i overlook it completely.

i love my father unconditionally, and lately he has acted very odd because he has alzheimers and he seems to not care about me anymore.

it matters not how he treats me or what he is capable of saying. i will never not love him.

people in general have agendas and wish lists and they are quite selfish and they choose who they think they love like they choose a car they want to buy.

people are generally mutable and not rooted deeply into their fondness of others.

if i love someone, then it is not my choice to do so. it is an innate response like i love air and therefore i breathe every 4 seconds.
i have no special interest in air, but it is factored into my being like the people i love.

How would it be so maddening? What's maddening to me is that you seem to illustrate that most relationships fall apart seemingly at the whim of one's partner (rather than any particular reason in which it would make sense for a relationship to stop). I know full well that commitment is not something that you can impose on another person, but it's not going to stop me from dreaming about the stability that my parents enjoy together (still married after almost 25 years).

All I want to do in a relationship is not have to look over my shoulder all the time to worry about whether it's going to catastrophically fail on me or not. In my last relationship, being unsure of the outcome caused way too much stress for me to handle that by the time it actually did fail, for a short time I was actually grateful that the stress was over (not the relationship, just the stress of it falling apart).

You don't want a girlfriend. You want a wife. The intensity of your desired commitment probably scares off women (or more likely...girls) who just want a boyfriend. It probably unnerved your short-term girlfriend who was too young to even be thinking about something like that.

The good news is that when you get into your late 20's, the women you meet will increasingly want a husband. I seriously doubt the ones you meet right now do. A 27 year old man with a job in engineering and an intense desire to have a wife will get one so long as he isn't an awful person. (And you aren't, despite mopey posts insisisting you are). You will make a fine husband some day. But as a boyfriend to a 20 year old (or 17 year old!) you are probably way too intense about commitment.

s**t... you're right. Now I don't know what to think. I just know I keep seeing how happy my parents are together (even after almost 25 years of marriage), and I keep seeing the affection they give each other and wishing i had someone that was there like that for me.

Toad, your parents dated before they got married. Everyone dates first, but people hardly ever end up marrying the first person they date. It's a process. Think of it like building a house - you don't just wake up one day and find a house where grass used to be. Someone digs the foundation, pours it, runs the utilities, frames out the walls, puts on the siding....you get the picture. Finding a spouse is a process too - you'll date a number of girls until you find one that you like, that you're compatible with, that you're attracted to, and that feels the same way about you. You can't rush it. What happens if you rush through building a house? You probably won't end up with a solid, stable, comfortable place to live. It takes time and patience and trial and error to find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. So get started already.

Bingo.


I agree with you with you for the most part, in fact I think you are dead on.
Except one thing. I think the relationship between parent and child is not unconditional love. I think it is as much conditional as any other relationship, at least it is for me.

I do not unconditionally love my parents. I do not love them at all, and its a mutual thing. I had several conditions in which there would be love, they did not meet them, and of them. A parent/child relationship is built on conditions just like any other relationship, ESPECIALLY as the child grows into a teenager and then an adult. Any parent who is foolish enough to think that the parent/child relationship is unconditional is foolish. The PARENTS love should be unconditional, but the truth of the matter is the childs love for the parent is very conditional. If the child loves you when they become an adult, you were a good parent because you met those conditions. But those conditions are not always met. Talk to children who were abused by thier parents now that they are adults, there is no "unconditional love" there is no love whatsoever. The parent/child relationship is just as conditional in terms of love as a partnership. The difference is one can be picky about ones partner, they can in no way be picky about ones parents, just because they are your parents does not mean they are deserving of your love. Love is conditional and is something that is earned through trust and compatibility, whether it be a parent or partner.

Sweet starygrrl, if I upset you, I didn't mean to. I did say that the idea of unconditional love does not apply to every parent and every child - and that's a g'damn shame, because it should. I don't need to talk to children who were abused to understand that....I have first-hand knowledge. I actually think your response - to not love your parents - is probably way healthier than a lot of abused kids who remain very emotionally connected to their parents.

I just can't emphasize enough how important it is to be a good parent. I got frustrated with my daughter last night because she's having a hard time with math. She's a sensitive kid, and it doesn't take much to upset her. I made her cry, mostly because I had a terrible day at work and was exhausted. But I'll forget that terrible day at work long before she'll forget that I made her cry because she's having a legitimately hard time with math. Yes, I hugged her and kissed her and apologized many times, but I acted like an a$$hole and I let her down. As a parent, that's the worst feeling in the world - or at least it sure as hell should be.

this is really gorgeous writing and I really liked the part about love being a feeling and committment being a decision. I love someone and I've been beating myself up about it for months because they don't have any feelings for me and wouldn't commit to me even if they did. I think I'm just going to stop judging myself about it. Your post is really great, I will probably read it a few more times.

I do feel like the person said that if your parents don't love you unconditionally what hope do you have. It made me wonder if those of us who felt less than loved have more trouble with this because we don't have any idea at all what love is supposed to look like, feel like, be like...

@b9 - I'm sorry about your dad. Please remember that there's nothing he can do about the effects of the Alzheimer's. Try to remember the person he was when he was in control of his faculties, because when he had a choice in the matter, he loved you very much. Take care........Hope

@alana - Thank you very much for the compliment. Please don't feel bad about loving someone who doesn't reciprocate - we've all been there - it's part of the human experience. You can try something to help stem those feelings, though. Love needs to be nurtured in order to survive. When love is not being nurtured by the object of our affection, we humans respond in a very creative way to fill that gap: we fantasize about what a relationship with that person would be like. Those fantasies feed our emotions, and love remains. If you can stop fantasizing about the person you're in love with, it will help lessen the intensity of your feelings for him, and eventually they'll fade away.

And I completely agree with you: children learn what love is from their parents. If the parents are abusive, dysfunctional, mentally ill, etc., the children are going to think that messed-up example is what love is all about. Fortunately, with the help of the right kind of counseling, those lessons can be un-learned. But that's based on the ability of the child (now an adult) to recognize that mom and dad were wrong, and having the ability to identify, access, and afford the right resources to help. When choosing a mate, we who were raised in abusive or dysfunctional environments have to be very, very careful. If you haven't healed the damage, you'll probably want to run from the mate who seems "right" or that you have a "connection" with. That "connection" is very likely a subconscious recognition of the same type of dysfunction you have - in that other person. It's very much like damage recognizes damage. Very, very scary.