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 didn’t see your first comment about your child so it wasn’t a personal insult to you. What was the crime? That may help understanding walking in your shoes.

The love for my children is unconditional, they could do anything, I’d still love them though I may not like them.

My love for my husband is conditional, all romantic love should be conditional to an extent because otherwise you’re into real abuse danger territory. Love does not override that.

I think I have unconditional love for my DC, she pisses me off pretty regularly already tbh, I would still panic if anything happened to her. I can imagine feeling ashamed of something she’s done etc but I would most likely still love her more than anyone else in the world. She’s probably the only person I don’t have the capacity to stop loving.

Romantic love isn’t the only love that contains real abuse. Plenty of parents love their children and abuse them, and some kids abuse their parents.

I wouldn't know how to not love our DDs? The bond is primeval and beyond my control. If DH had an affair/behaved dreadfully then I would leave him, but I would still spend the rest of my life loving him.

That may be how you feel.

I am certain that I will love my ds no matter what he does. That doesn't mean I will necessarily approve of everything he does or support him in it. I may even not like him much but I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I would not try to get him whatever help he needed.

I disagree, parents that love their children do not abuse them and vice versa. You do not hurt someone you love.

There is potential for abuse in any relationship, but my point with romantic love is that it shouldn’t be unconditional because to make it unconditional or believe it should be would make it difficult for anyone to leave abusive partners. And it’s a different situation to child to parent. I would still love my child if they hit me, I wouldn’t necessarily like them but I would still love them, whereas if my husband hit me it would be over.

My Nana often said she was surprised that she still loved her son (my father). She despised the abusive, vile person that he had become and had nothing to do with him after taking us from him (at significant risk to her and my grandad, both from his violence and legal repercussions). But she still loved the person that had been her son.

She felt it was similar to loving someone who had died. You still love them, they just don't exist in person anymore.

I don't know.

I think loving my children is a part of who I am, it doesn't go up or down in terms of their behaviour. It's fundamental to my consciousness.

I think love and warmth are very different things though, for me love can be purring along in the background even when I'm angry or upset with people. In fact the upset and anger is often because I love the person responsible. I can't imagine not loving my family.

And equally, perhaps those saying that their moral standards would supersede their love are being ‘performative’. Or perhaps we just have different views and belittling people who disagree with you is petty.

I suspect that none of us can know what may or may not break the love we have for our children. I would say that the thing about the love we have for our children is that it is irrational and cannot be controlled, for all that we may try. As others have pointed out here there are many examples of parents who continue to love their children after they have committed horrendous crimes. That doesn’t mean that they like them anymore, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they are not repulsed by what they have done, but still there is a residual love that holds. Indeed, I suspect that they find that love incredibly hard to understand and feel enormous guilt that they can’t just throw it off. Really, perhaps, that is the definition of unconditional love.

I cannot relate to this, no. My mother once said something very wise to me. I asked her if she would still love me if I murdered someone and was sent to prison. She said that if this ever happened and because she knows me, she would know that I had lost my sanity and therefore would still love me. I liked that.

How old are your children?
I have a 28 and a 16 year old. One has destroyed me physically - broken bones.
The other is living at her Dad's for now and whilst they don't mean to, it has destroyed me mentally.

Do I love them?
With all my heart! I take some responsibility and I'm not afraid any more to tell them (well, especially the eldest) and I'm always here for them. I'll always love them. It is completely unconditional.

Other family on the other hand can fuck off 😂

So, as unlikely as it might be, if your husband cheats on you over and over again, and steals your life savings to fund his gambling habit, which costs you your home, you will continue to love him? This is what unconditional love means to me (which is why I don't believe in it, apart from between parents and young children).

I dont believe in love soul mates unconditional love and romantic stuff or being sentimental or being attached etc.

To me its like religion you either believe in it or not.

It’s a very narrow minded view to think that you don’t hurt the people you love. Like your example, if your child hit you that does that mean they don’t love you?

YANBU.
If anyone I loved ever did something absolutely despicable, like raping a child, they would be dead to me.

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 :)

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.

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

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.

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

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".

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.

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

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.