to not believe in unconditional love

I'm sorry that this has happened to you.

I think this is how would feel. I could think of a number of scenarios where I could not see them again but my love for the human that they previously were would not go away

That is naive, people hurt the ones they love all the time. It might be through low self esteem, a poor upbringing, addiction, mental health issues, selfishness or all manner of other reasons.

My love for my children & grandchild is absolutely unconditional as is my love for my for my furry son (who is sadly deceased) and his was for me.

My mother was/is incapable of unconditional love. Every relationship was contingent on how it made her feel or benefited her. Her love was transactional. I learned from a very, very young age that I had to be her definition of "perfect" in order to win her love or approval, and even then, it was very fleeting.

I realized that in return, I never loved her. I haven't spoken to her in years, haven't missed her for even one minute, and celebrate the fact that I never have to see her again. There is nothing that could make me ever speak to her again. She also has no interest in me. She could take me or leave me, and actually speaks to none of her children because they have somehow each disappointed her by simply being themselves (one is gay...and a brain surgeon...for example...)

Look, as a result of being raised by someone like this, I went through periods of becoming overly attached to people I barely knew if they were kind to me, and then as the years went on, I struggled to truly love pretty much anyone, and that includes my spouse and everyone else in my family of origin. HOWEVER, my child would have to commit some brutal act of violence for me to waver in my love for her. And even then, I think all the good memories would make it impossible to stop loving her.

I don’t actually love my DD for “who she is” iyswim (I do like her very much) I didn’t wait to see if I liked her personality before being able to love her. So it doesn’t surprise me that I believe my love to be unconditional. She could have been a very different girl and I would have still loved her. I think love for your kids can be very primal, it’s a specific kind of love which makes sense from a human survival perspective, a drive that we have little control over.

I’m not surprised when parents continue to visit their children in prison or house them regardless of what they have done. I am surprised when people don’t acknowledge the truth about their child's actions. Reminds me of that case Casey Anthony, her parents were fucking insane imo, she was clearly a compulsive liar with zero conscience.

I have thought about this and concluded that whatever my children did I would be there for them, even if it was something awful like paedophilia or rape.
Whether that would be from love or from a sense of responsibility I don't know

I believe unconditional love can exist between parent and child.
That’s it really.

I acted immediately.. I hope your family did too ^

Dd was believed by police and it went to court....
He pled guilty to lesser charges which meant dd didn't have to have her witness statement viewed...
The accused saw it though..
A dm's worst nightmare.. Sorry to all affected.. I had absolutely no idea it had been happening.. I know that can't be said for all SA victims....

Ugh.

I had an older brother and this also happened to me.

Older brothers are a danger to younger sisters. Women are not safe anywhere

Ime unless you are in the situation you can't gauge your reaction...
My teen ds SA his small dsis..
I was the one to ring the police..
I attended court with dd.
I accepted I had lost my ds.
It was truly horrific but I can't say I don't love him. Unfortunately he will never know I still do.

Really? I'm not too sure I'd love mine if they went round bombing people, or raping kids etc

Well yes, of course they should be loved unconditionally as children.

Recognising that the love might go should they commit the most heinous crimes as adults is not something you need to see a therapist for.

Everyone has a breaking point. It's just easy to say you don't have one when your children are young and your adult children aren't out there torturing others.

I didn't have unconditional love for my father like a lot of people say they have for their parents. For me, love is affection, respect, acceptance of who they are, care, connection and so on. The whole love is a verb resonates with me.

I don't feel any of that with my dad due to his behaviour. I have mixed emotions, but it's not actually love. I can't love an adult who I have none of those feelings for and don't actually see. It wasn't a quick process but that love did die.

Even the love for your children is not actually unconditional. You love your children because they are yours. If they were the same exact children, with the same looks, same personality and character traits, but someone else’s children, you wouldn’t care about them.

I love my parents and my child unconditionally. I don't think anything would change that. I agree with you in terms of relationships, friends and extended family.

I wish i was more like you, believe me!

Children are meant to feel loved unconditionally. I actually think only having conditional love for your dc is a problem and something to maybe think about with a therapist, it really isn't ideal for their development.

There's a difference between "forgiveness" and "unconditional love".

I will forgive most things because I don't think holding onto anger and resentment does me any good and I tend to detach from people who hurt me so after a while I would just cease to care about them.

I think unconditional love only exists for children really and in extreme cases not even children. No other sentient adult deserves unconditional love. People can't expect to be taken back into a relationship again and again if they don't have any moral compass. If someone repeatedly shits on you from a great height you owe it to yourself not to keep walking underneath it.

If my child murdered someone or committed a really serious crime, or became a hopeless addict and stole from me repeatedly I would probably forgive her because I don't want to be locked in bitterness indefinitely. But I wouldn't necessarily reinstate her into my life as it was before.

Wow, for me it would switch from love to hate in an instant. I guess we're all different!

Loving someone doesn't mean approving of what they do.

In fact a parent still loving a child who has done awful things is in part about acknowledgement - yes, perhaps something went wrong during his (or her) upbringing, but I was there during that upbringing and he (or she) is my son (or daughter).

You can condemn someone's actions and agree that they need to face the consequences without stopping loving them. The love doesn't even mean you forgive them, it's a thing in and of itself. To pretend your adult child stops being your child if they do something awful is just to lie to yourself anyway.

My older children are adults and I still love them unconditionally. That doesn't mean that I'd let them exploit or take advantage of me or their siblings, but I cannot imagine not loving any of them, even if they did something truly awful (not that I think they would).

Loving an independent adult child is different from loving a dependent minor child or an adult child who is still dependent due to health or additional needs, but I don't think love stops being unconditional just because your child no longer needs to see you every day.

You can let your offspring "fledge" and live their own lives and not see them every day but still know that they are among the tiny number of people you'll always love and be there for, and do anything necessary for, if they need you, no matter what, and no matter whether they don't seem to love or like you. I think that's what unconditional love is, and that parents do (often? sometimes? usually?) have it for their children, including adult children. It doesn't mean being a mug, it means being "there".

Totally understand you OP. Don't understand 'unconditional' at all.

This is how I feel about my children, albeit no one else… I don’t think.
It is a funny question though. Like take my husband for example, he’s wonderful and I love him so deeply, it’s hard to imagine life without him BUT if he hurt my kids or had an affair, I couldn’t be with him and I’d hate him for that. With that being said, a part of me would still love him, or who I thought he was, because that doesn’t, as we know, just switch off overnight. Eventually those feelings would fade into nothingness I expect, but still. So being in a relationship with me would be conditional, but perhaps love itself isn’t?
I know firsthand that love has no rhyme or reason. My ex used to physically and mentally abuse me but I loved him so much. We didn’t break up after the first, second or even tenth occasion because when he was good, he was absolutely great and, which brings me to my point, I loved him anyway.
I don’t know. It’s a very interesting concept.

Have suffered worse and wholeheartedly still love the person 🤷🏻‍♀️

I swear there was a very similar thread a week or two ago. Unless I imagined it. If I did, I'll expand on the answer I imagined I gave the previous time: there's no such thing as unconditional love, just love that hasn't (yet) reached the point where the person realises that there were conditions after all.

You would be pretty sick and twisted to believe a human can give unconditional love, because that literally means the love of the giver will not be affected by absolutely anything. Could you love someone who turned out to be the next Hitler? Sure, Hitler had a partner, but would she have loved him if he had tried to exterminate a more "worthy" (in her eyes) race of people?

Unconditional love effectively means supporting genocide, child abuse, mass rape, mass murder, random torture, anything unpleasant or disgusting you can think of, and plenty more you can't even imagine.

Perhaps a god can give unconditional love - but then again, in many popular religions the "unconditional" love is very much conditional on the person believing in the right deity.

I’m not going to argue with you. You can believe whatever you want, that’s entirely up to you. You are entitled to your own opinion :)