Unconditional love for crap partners

[DuesToTheDirt]

Is it just me that doesn't get it?

There are so many of these threads on here.. "He cheats on me, but I still love him, what should I do?..""He calls me a fat cunt, but I can't imagine life without him...""He does nothing in the house or with the kids, and spends all his time gaming, but I love him so much..."

Is it just me that doesn't understand unconditional love for these wastes of space?

It's not just you. If DP doesn't pull his weight around the house I start to feel myself losing respect for him and not feeling the same about him anymore so god help him if he called me a fat cunt or cheated on me. We would definitely be over!

A wise person told me once that there is no such thing as unconditional love between two people having sex. They were right.

Definitely agree Lex. There are quite a lot of things that DP could do that would make me stop loving him.

It’s not unconditional love( which is what a child gets from its parents in an ideal world) it’s codependancy, which is usually caused by childhood trauma.

Good, I was starting to think I was living in a parallel universe!

Low self-esteem can make people sacrifice themselves at the altar of whichever person will give them a relationship. It's as if the person just wanting them in the first place makes them amazing, no matter what they do next.
But the worst part is that the damaged party will never listen to advice. Or they listen, moan on, then turn around and repeat the same reasons why they can never leave. Maddening!!!!

peekyboo, it's not even the question of leaving these men that puzzles me - relationships can be complex. But love?

OK I guess I had a happy stable childhood, with parents who didn't behave like that. But this "love" is hard to fathom.

My stbxh is struggling to understand that marriage /love within a marriage is not unconditional.
He thinks that any and all appalling behaviour is forgivable as long as they are really genuinely sorry. With no comprehension that years of treating someone like shit makes them stop loving you.

It's a mystery to me tbh.

It’s a defence machinist isn’t it? A lot of people get themselves very deep with people who are bad for them.

They want to transform themselves, and their crappy partners with love. That’s not going to happen but lots of the things we see about romance suggest that love can transform things. I understand why people do it. It’s as human as squinting at yourself in the mirror and pretending you look 25 again.

It depends on the situation and is hard to judge from a few posts on the internet. So maybe posters just shouldn’t post. I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have posted my thread. I had a very healthy, happy upbringing. I would say dh is more dependent on me and I am all he has.

Relationships are complex and whilst I never thought I would be with someone who cheated on me, I am proud of myself for recognising my dh is just a man who after a traumatic time was suffering and made huge mistakes which in his own words he deeply regrets over a short portion of time when he was in pain, and so was I.

To understand this though you would have to know the situation, know us, be prepared to speak to a counsellor and read a lot about why people have affairs. Which is why I have never posted a should I leave type post. Of course on the surface it’s a LTB situation and sometimes I beat myself up because I know outsiders are probably thinking that. But they also have know clue what he and I have been through. Also a lot of couples work through affairs and some end up stronger. I personally know two couples who have who are older than us. This doesn’t mean we will but we want to try. It’s not a case of burying our head in the sand, it is a case of every day facing up to the fact our marriage needs work, he has to face up to what he has done and see if we can make it through. He could run away and when I am angry or he has to face seeing me in pain I know he has at times felt like it. Maybe I will LTB and if I truly got to the stage where I felt he was a B and that’s what you have to remember, for some women you are talking about long, mostly good relationships not short abusive bad relationships. People can and do do stupid things for many reasons.

I think unconditional love is for children. Love between adults should absolutely be conditional!

Yes the listen, moan on and repeat pattern seems quite common. Or describe a cunt then get defensive when people point out the person is in fact a cunt

These people have no love for themselves and what they call love is actually codependency or trauma bond.

They don't love the person, they're afraid to be without them.

Unconditional love is from a parent to a child (in a healthy parent/child relationship.) It's not healthy between 2 adults.

If you had a parent who withheld affection unless you exhibited certain traits/behaviours for them, then you will tend to seek unconditional love in romantic relationships. It's a false beacon.

"Yeah he cheated on me but I love him to bits"
"Yeah he shouts at me but I love him to bits"
"Yeah he slapped me but I love him to bits"
"Yeah he makes me feel like shit but I love him to bits"

All those responses are really dysfunctional but often people are traumatised. That makes them behave oddly to others and not see it.

There are those who are just after a while at home to the drama llama as the behaviour continues. That’s dysfunctional too but people who post here after often subconsciously looking to have their feelings confirmed. It’s great they get insight but you can’t expect it.

It is not unconditional love it IS unconditional fear.

Not necessarily physically fear of the partner although this is the case for many. It is unconditional fear that either
I don't know who I am without this partner;
I don't know how to live on my own;
or
this person has so destroyed me that I can't imagine life without him/her (Mostly but not always male to female abuse)

This is me. Am currently staying in a women’s refuge after my ex strangled me in an argument. That was 6 weeks ago. I still feel in love with him. I hate what he did, but I love him. I can see why his childhood & abusive father moulded him to think violence is acceptable & women are to be put in their place. I see how he hates his father, yet has been manipulated by him his whole life. I see the sweet boy he is when he is away from him. I know he loved our peaceful life, that he misses what we had & how pure & deep our love was. I miss his smell, the way he tickled the back of my neck while driving, feeling so utterly comfortable & myself with him...how he made me laugh, oh wow how he could make me laugh. I would describe our love as being passionate.

Those good feelings didn’t disappear when he put his hands on my throat, twice. I miss who I thought he was. Every day I wonder how he is, what he’s doing, wondering if he still misses ‘us’ like I do. I remind myself that one day will find real love again if am lucky, but it doesn’t change the fact that my heart was in love, then in a moment it all had to end. My brain immediately knew it must be over, that he is actually capable of murder - but my heart still needs time to catch up.

I think there needs to be more awareness about loving our abusers - I thought if someone laid hands on me, it would feel easier to leave, that would fall out of love instantly. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that, it was great so much of the time. So much was awesome about him.

I think we have more belief in people being capable of self reflection & insight, so we want & hope for them to have that moment of clarity & change, so they will stop those bad behaviours & be who we love 100% of the time. I know in my head he will never change & that 1% is deadly dangerous. But my heart still loves that 99%.

Ramble over

It’s codependancy , and more like an addiction than love.
If in childhood love and true intimacy is absent, in adulthood codependency will grow in the place where intimacy should. It’s partly low self esteem( due to the same causes) and partly unconsciously learned behaviour.

It’s sadly very common.

Before I met my ex I would have agreed with you.

I don't know why I've ended up here. I don't know why I'm trying to convince him to love me back when I'm unhappy most of the time I'm with him.

I guess I think I can fix him.

People mistake attachment and trauma bonding for love.

Love can walk away, love can let go, love can continue alone.

Trauma-bonding clings on out of trauma, and is more an addiction than it is love. Addiction cannot walk away from its fix, addiction cannot let go of its fix, addiction cannot continue without its fix.

I believe people cannot truly love anyone else unless they deeply and unconditionally love themselves. That is not the same as the self-regard some toxic people have for themselves. Someone who truly loves themselves does so whilst recognising and admitting their own faults.

It took me most of my life to learn to love myself - and lots of crap relationships on the way. Not a single crap relationship since, because I walked in the early stages. When you have self-respect, you don't tolerate a lack of respect from others any more.

I'm single, and that feels good. A relationship would have to improve my life for me to consider it now, so anything crap doesn't stand a chance.

It's unfathomable why it happens, but it does.

Abusers make excuses; they were "tired" or "feeling insecure" or any manner of ridiculous reasons, and, judging them as a normal person, we imagine they are as horrified by their behaviour as we are.

There has never been anything wrong with my self esteem, and I consider myself worthy of everything life and love have to offer, but I think most people can find themselves in a "how the hell did I get here?" situation at some point.

I know a married couple who had an 'understanding' that he could sleep around, and man did he take advantage of that!

They split for a while, not sure exactly what the details were, then got back together. I know he's still doing it, whether or not she does 🤷‍♀️

According to a friend, who knows her better, she loves him 'almost unconditionally'

I do kinda feel bad for her.

Well, yes it can be described as an addiction but it is an addiction that has been deliberately placed in the surviours mind. This is the creation of the trauma bond. I imagine it as the grooves in a record. Those grooves have been placed there and the mind keeps on going back to what it is familiar with.

With time and distance the the right kinds of therapy, those grooves can be erased.

I'm not sure if people appreciate how prevalent NPD is in society. It's actually about 1:6 or nearly 17% of people are walking around without affective empathy. That's a lot of people. Out of that 17% only about 5% understand that they have no affective empathy.

The vast majority of people posting their stories on here belong to the empath group. That means that they hold both cognitive and affective empathy in much larger quantities than the general population. About 1:4 or 25% of the population belong to the empath group.

So yes, I feel it is unhelpful to describe it as an addiction but I do understand why others' perceive it that way. However, this is the route of pretty much ALL domestic violence. Sustained abuses always come from those suffering from NPD. The vast majority of abusers will not see what they do as abuse. If they do apologise, it is just empty words, they see no reason to change and because they do not possesses insight, they can never change.

This is why abuse always escalates, it is the repeated deployment of golden time and devaluation before finally, the surviour escapes or they are disengaged from.

A PP said that her ex strangled her and yet she loves him still. This is such an incredibly difficult concept to understand if you havn't experienced it. It does not make her weak it makes her strong because he wanted her quality of affective empathy so badly he was prepared to kill.

Its not just you... I think some ppl just have terribly low self esteem and in some cases they feel stuck because they are financially dependent on these useless men.

They've often grown up with poor role models for parents and the cycle repeats . Sadly we are a product of our environment.

I never forget a poster a long while ago, who's OH urinated in her bubble bath as some kind of revenge for something she allegedly said.

He confessed this to her and she still wanted to stay and have a baby with him. I recall pp saying, so if the kids piss him off what will he do, put sh*t in their chocolate cake.

To stay with such a man, actually says more about the woman...because it's clear the man is sick in the head.