to not believe in unconditional love

[ZippyPeer]

My love for friends and any partner is entirely contingent on them treating me with respect and me in general finding them interesting and enjoyable to be around (of course people have off days/weeks/times, but the overall vibe is positive).

My love for my child I just also feel is finite like if they behave consistently badly I just wouldn't want to be around them and wouldn't have warm feelings towards them... I imagine I'd still think about them but not sure it would feel or seem like love...I don't want to sacrifice everything for them and tbh would only want them around if they had a positive or neutral affect on my life.

Do other people feel this way or is this a me problem?

I watched a documentary.

A teenage boy killed his younger sister.

His mother still went to visit him in prison.

Partners/ friends/ family in general is not unconditional or shouldn’t be.
I speak to my brother now but had to go very low contact due to his behaviour for a few years. I am now still very wary.
Prior to that we were very close growing up. I was very sad about it but ultimately if he was going to behave badly then I no longer wanted a relationship with him. I want the best for him and do care but he isn’t someone I want to be around when he is behaving badly and I have made that clear.
My children are different. I think I would forgive them and love them no matter what even if for example they killed one of my sisters (who I love.)
I think perhaps the only unforgivable thing would be if one killed the other. This would be especially horrific in our family as they have already seen me grieve for their younger brother who died many years ago so to cause me to loose another child would be the worst thing they could do to me. So if one killed the other I don’t think I could continue a relationship with them but I think I would forgive them killing anyone else and always love them. I don’t think anyone ever really knows how they will react to things and feel about things until they happen.

to the poster who said they stopped loving their child because of what they did I wouldn’t interested to know what that was. I think everyone has their limits.

Unconditional love for my kids and family, been through some tough things with siblings, had to distance a while hurts so bad but never ever stop loving them...Same for my kids when older they may do wrong or bad things but disappointment and hurt still wouldn't kill the love I have

I don’t think people would admit to this even if they did feel this way. From the comments spouses are different to children. There’s plenty of stories out there where someone’s kids have murdered their own kids and worse. Even as an adult you’re still your parents child. If I was a grandmother and my adult child had murdered their child, could I still love them? Probably not? Look at Chris Watts, he murdered his pregnant wife had two children, do his parents still love him? Or if anyone knows the Adrian Jones story, which was horrific, could I as a mother still love my son after what he did, no. I think it’s foolish to say you have unconditional love for your child as you never know what could happen, yes you hope you would but there are monsters out there that do truly horrific things, and them monsters are someone’s child.

Chris Watts parents forgave him.

I remember seeing them at court saying "i forgive you son"

They actually blamed the woman he murdered for her death, for a while.

If your child killed their own child (or worse) so your grandchild, would you forgive them?

Well they blamed the woman for her own death, so tells me all I need to know about what type of people they are. There was a story recently in America from April where 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 would have no son and be asking for the death penalty.

I love my mum unconditionally. But I guess she's not been abusive or really neglectful or cruel. If she was maybe I wouldn't feel that way?

I don't have kids but feel I probably would love them that way. But again if they were Tommy Robinson or a murderer I don't know?

I think I can say categorically I do feel unconditional love for my cats. Animals are not capable of intentional harm or hurtful behaviour.

Yeah they said he was an abused husband, and she provoked him into killing her.

I know, not a great pair of people

I don't believe in it either.

My children would have to do some awful things for me to stop loving them, but I think we all have our limits. If one of my children committed violent heinous acts and tortured others I can't say I would carry on loving them. How can you really love someone who does the most wicked things to others?

I might love who they once were, I might even still have that biological urge to protect them, but for me, that is not real love, it's just a bunch of mixed emotions.

It's so easy to say that we will love our kids no matter what they do, but not many of us are tested, thankfully.

My mum waa abusive and refuses to speak to her at all

I can see that she was abusive because she wasn't coping in life, so I do talk to her.

But i can understand my brother too

Exactly

I wonder what excuse they had for him killing his unborn baby and his two children under 4 years old.

Totally agree OP. It's all conditional, it's all transactional. We don't often question that so buy into the narrative alot of the time.

With children, it's the biological imperative that will keep you loving in the face of all sorts. Societal shame also adds to that with mums.

With enough problems, say your child is born a psychopath with obvious problems associated,no return of your love in a healthy way, and you yourself are not a psychopath,yes, you're going to have alot of love to give sucked out the tank.

Your ongoing presence in some form would possibly be guilt, obligation and biological driver more than the concept of unconditional love. Imo anyway.

I watched a recent video where they played prison calls between Chris Watts and his mummy. His scarily unhinged mother is speaking to him like he is some heroic victim in need of cuddles only a few weeks into his prison term for murdering his wife and children. That's not unconditional love. That is a highly personality disordered mother, with a psychopath for a son, engaging in a game of communication that is built on insanity and a reality construct that more healthy people don't live in. I'd say there's a similar situation playing out with P Diddler.

Anyway I digress 😆

Your ongoing presence in some form would possibly be guilt, obligation and biological driver more than the concept of unconditional love. Imo anyway

Absolutely this.

Originally he lied and said that his wife killed the children, he found her killing them, and then he killed her.
.
His parents believed his story for a while, and said some awful things about his wife.

After a while, they did accept that he had killed them all .

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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…

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.