Unconditional love as a mother?

[JoannaStayton]

When I was a child/teenager my Mum told me several times that she did not believe that unconditional love exists. I understood the term and found it an unsettling subject but didn't fully comprehend what it meant in terms of our relationship until having my own daughter a few years ago.

I feel pretty unloved and generally like I don't matter to people a lot of the time. I've been trying to work out why and just wondered if anyone had any views on the unconditional love thing? I can't imagine what conditions there would be that would mean you wouldnt love your child any more? And I can't help but think how could my Mum feel like this? And even if she did why would she tell me so on several occasions? Do any other Mums feel like this? Appreciate it might be hard to admit if you do but I would love to get some insight on it. I'm still working hard for her affection in my 40s.

I’m so sorry your mum didn’t make you feel loved. A lot about our childhoods looks or feels different when we become parents.

My mum was certainly in a similar place to you. She’s an enormously loving, cherishing, supportive and affectionate mum and person, entirely in spite of her own fucking awful parents. She found realising the difference in her feelings towards me as her first and then my siblings as they arrived later, and how she always felt her mum was towards her, really painful and difficult and I’m sorry to say their relationship remained a horror show until they were both dead.

Her dad died first and when her mum died many years later we cried, but not because she was gone but because my mum grieved the mother she so wished she’d had. I cried for all the decades of hurt and disappointment mum had experienced and the damage it caused.

Having had parents who didn’t make you feel loved doesn’t mean you can’t be an amazing and loving parent yourself. It can bring painful memories and feelings to the surface and it’s normal for that to be really unsettling.