to not believe in unconditional love

Nobody's said it's transactional. That would imply love being 'paid for' by some defined benefits. Come to think of it, many people do love on that basis and it's not for you or me to declare their love inauthentic.

Are you also saying you'd continue to love your partner after finding out he's a murderer, a people trafficker, a rapist or something? Or after he'd attacked you with the carving knife? If so, I think you're a dangerous idiot.

Nope….there are times when my adult children make me feel shit….but my love for them never wavers. My partner can be a dick, and I can ‘not like him' for a while, but ultimately, I wouldn’t be without him, because I do love him deeply.

transactional love isn’t real love.

I think those saying unconditional love of a child, never failing etc etc are in the stage of life where the thought of not unconditionally loving your child feels impossible.

As adults, children can behave horrifically towards parents, at times forcing estrangement. I have never got to that point, but have been headed in that direction before. It is a worst case scenario, and is a nightmare to live. It's also impossible to imagine that, while one's children are younger.

Other forms of love are absolutely conditional.

I find this ' I will always all them stuff, no matter what heinous crime they commit' attitude a bit performative to be honest

Me too. And no-one can know that to be true of themselves unless that love has been tested in some terrible way. So it's pointless to say it.

I find this ' I will always all them stuff, no matter what heinous crime they commit' attitude a bit performative to be honest.

There will be many examples where you probably wouldn't, sibling on sibling crime is the best example.

I think if my child turned out to be a predatory paedophile the unconditional love thing wouldn't exist.

I've made it clear to my husband of 20 years that I do not love him unconditionally. We're together because he makes me happy, but if he stops making me happy, it's over.

I love all my children unconditionally. No matter what they did i’d still love them, so yes, I do believe in unconditional love.

I want to believe in unconditional love but there are traits and behaviours that trigger a real revulsion for me. I don't know how it feel if someone I love displayed those things. Would I be able to separate the behaviour from the person or would it start to kill the love.

I love my children unconditionally. Even if they grew up to be evil murderers, I'd still love them (though I wouldn't like them).

There are lots of things I couldn't forgive. If they did something bad enough, I'm sure I'd hate them... but I'd still love them too.

There are conditions for everyone else though.

I love my cats unconditionally, but that's about it lol

Its like people in the kink world who say they have no limits... Yes you do, you numpty.
Shall we get a chainsaw and chop your legs off? 😅

Aside from your children, steadfastly believing in unconditional love would be extremely unhealthy and open you up to all forms of abuse. In fact that's what abusers say "you should love me no matter what".

Boundaries and expectations are healthy and necessary. Also knowing that if someone breaks those boundaries, you have the capacity to love YOURSELF enough to walk away.

I love my children unconditionally, one is extremely challenging but I love him completely. Two are adults and that love hasn’t changed.

I think those who are saying that love for children is unconditional are either:

Not considering how extreme actions change things, or getting confused between loving them, and loving who they were.

In a hypothetical world where my son committed a truly awful and evil crime, I don't think I could love him - but I think I would always have love for who he was, for the son that existed before etc. But love for a rapist/murderer etc in the present? No.

I suspect the feelings are more "I will always love my little boy" - phrasing which shows that the parent can never not love their child, but it is inherently past tense, and not who that child is now.

I'm not surprised at people who stand by their kids who have murdered someone. As ive read about lots of cases.

I am surprised at a woman who had her son attack her with an axe, so much that she lost an eye, still standing by her son

You might be surprised at the amount of parents who stand by their kids who murder or rape another family member. I’m interested in true crime so read about these cases and a lot mention similar instances from cases mentioned.

Once your dc become adults it’s so complicated.

its easy to say you will always have unconditional love for them when they are little

God thats taking unconditional love too far

Keimani Latigue's was her name, she was actually 13 years old. TW for anyone who reads up on the case. But it happens. A lot more often than people think from looking at the searches trying to find her name.

There was another famous story in America from 2006, Christopher Porco 23 year old spoilt brat who was going to get cut off by his parents, he tried to murder his parents, axed his father, who was still alive and walking around for a few hours with his brain literally hanging out , who ended up dying. His mother never accepted that her son did it and stood by him, she is blind in one eye and has severe facial deformities due to the axe attack…

That. It's so easy to say that we'd love our kids whatever they did. But your middle paragraph is probably the best that most of us could feel in the case of cruel and violent behaviour.

Were we tested by the example given by a pp:
a father raped and killer his own 14 year old daughter…did unthinkable things to her body. Could I forgive that, as a grandmother? No
... I'd be surprised if any of us could even manage that

I'm sorry to hear that. It must be hard when you love someone but they treat you badly. It shows great strength for you to see their point of view and understand their struggles. Despite how they behaved. X

His mum is very much a wrongun. When you look at the things Shannan ( the murdered wife) said about the grandmother, it reminded me of many cases where the mums have unhealthy emotionally incestuous relationships with their personality disordered sons who then murder people.

His mum is absolutely at the very least narcissistic and she knew / knows he was not right. She didn't care. Alternative reality in such family set ups.

No words to describe his parents. Similar to Gabby Petito’s killer, his parents have never been arrested for their involvement. Really good film in this topic called We Need To Talk About Kevin, the son has a conflicting relationship with his mother then ends up killing his class mates, kid sister and dad. Shows you the complex relationship and aftermath of the mother but she ultimately ends up going to visit him and forgives him.

I know this story. He's called Paris. Horrible. The grandmother had lots of signs pointing to sociopathy and probably psychopathy, like the boy /man Paris. The mum appeared to me very much not like these two. She is however a victim of a completely terrifying personality disordered mother so her response in this situation probably won't be healthy for many reasons. She also had a drug addiction problem and used that to blame herself for the outcomes with Paris. Not her fault because he's clearly a born psychopath with a strong inheritance risk for it.

The mum,to me, demonstrated incredible guilt and low self worth,perpetuated by a very skilled covert sociopathic/ psychopath mother of her own. She will have taken blame as many mum's do in such dynamics, when it wasn't her fault. There was a significant genetic influence here. I'm sure in the documentary the father of Paris turned out to have significant issues mentally.

This wasn't an example of unconditional love to me. It was a mum acting out of guilt, obligation and she admits later some fear.

I agree with what you say but apart from the comment that not many of us are tested. The average annual number of murder in the UK is 607, so that’s 1214 parents every year that it effects, not even taking into account rape or torture of animals. So definitely not a small amount.

Yeah his mother was definitely not accepting the facts of the situation.

I suppose its hard to know how you would feel until you go through it. You would probably find it very hard to accept that your child is a murderer