Can men and women love eachother unconditionally? Honest opinion

[HoneyB2025]

I know you can care for someone genuinely and be there for them, support them, but when something bad happens or if they disappoint you it is possible for your feelings to change, hence why relationships break.

But I feel loving your child is unconditional because you brought them into this world, they are apart of you, no matter what they do you will always love them regardless, without expecting anything in return.

It would be weird and quite gross to love another adult unconditionally. Id even go so far as put adult children in that category. Although you may love them, you dont have to like them, or have no boundaries around them. In some cases that can even be dangerous. Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin" explores this well.

No. Definitely not.

I don’t think unconditional love for children is based on them not being fully responsible for their actions. I think I will still feel that kind of love for my children even when they’re adults. Yes, if they commit mass murder it would be challenging but you often see mothers standing by their adult children who have done wrong.

Regardless of anyone's gender, there is no unconditional love towards anyone but your child, I believe.

Surely, if the love is dependent on them being "as you think they are", and it doesn't transfer to them being a different version of themselves, then it is by its very nature conditional.

You love them on condition that they continue to conform to your perception of who they are. That is not unconditional in any way. And that's fine!

I think this is a key point. All too often, love doesn't just switch off when bad things happen. It may erode over time with repeated failures, or it might remain as stubbornly present as ever. When relationships end because a boundary has been breached, it doesn't necessarily mean that one or both parties have stopped loving each other. Just that one person (or both) has realised that the relationship isn't good/safe/healthy for them, no matter how they feel about the other person.

Death by a thousand cuts, there will always be a red line in any and all relationships.
its a huge taboo to say a mother doesn’t love her child but surely it does happen.

No, but I don't believe in unconditional love full stop.

To me the whole concept is very unhealthy. People do things that mean they are no longer deserving of unconditional love - I include children in this, once they are of the age where they understand the consequences of actions.

I'm not sure we're all talking about the same thing. There's 'feeling love', which we're capable of doing for inanimate objects, fictional characters, ideas, utterly reprehensible people with one appealing quality: anything or anyone, really. Then there's 'doing love': more of a giving, sharing, caring, going out of your way sort of thing. Love as an action means showing up, having someone's back, and it ought to be reciprocal.

I still feel a special sort of affection for my exes, their families and my siblings' exes. Even the ones who've done awful, selfish, hurtful things - I once opened my heart to them and now a little piece of them is stuck in there. I don't know if this is the same for everyone but, since it happens in millions of stories, I know I'm not unusual.

I would not 'do love' for any of them, though. I already gave them too much and found out what happens. Loving myself means not giving any more to those who take the piss.

Some congenital conditions make people very loving, indiscriminately and with weak boundaries. They have to be protected: I think that tells us we know it's dangerous to love unconditionally.

Even with (adult) kids, many parents say, if what they’ve done is bad enough, that they have disowned them.

We all have boundaries.

Nope, no unconditional love for DH. Its conditioned on him treating us right and being a good person. My kids i would probably protect if they murdered someone.

So glad to see all the PPs saying it: unconditional love is for children. Love between adults should be conditional. If someone treats you badly, you should take your love back.

@DeryOne man told me he wants a woman who will love him unconditionally lol

He wants a dog not a woman. Ew.

@EwwPeopleI know right ew!

Raising the bar to unreasonable levels, well, good luck to him... He'll probably be happy with a dog, exactly as @EwwPeople says, haha.
Any relationship outside being a parent to a child will have a myriad of conditions.. romantic relationships, friendships, you name it. I will be there in a blizzard helping my friend tow a car 3 AM on the other side of the country.. But if they become people who, say, hurt animals, treat waiters like trash, our friendship won't survive. I love my wife to bits, even after all these years, we laugh a lot, love each others' company and absolutely can't get enough intimacy with each other, but if she cheated on me, for example, our marriage and relationship is over. Conditions are absolutely normal, it just sounds negative because of the context we tend to say them in - terms and conditions, etc...

I dont believe in love so i gusse i`ll never know.

I love my husband deeply, there is almost nothing I wouldn’t do for him but it is conditional. It is fed and kept alive by his fidelity, our shared values,
his treatment of our family and of others. Only my children have love that is unconditional on their actions and behaviour. That is as it should be, romantic love doesn’t require that you sell your soul.

Maybe. Most people would say romantic love is conditional but I don’t think that’s always the case. People can do you wrong and you can still love them in spite of that.

Someone doesn’t stop loving someone else just because they cheated or whatever. I suppose love would slowly fade away if a spouse was continually crossing boundaries and disrespecting the other, but it would take multiple incidents to chip away slowly at your love for someone

Loving someone doesn’t mean you have to be together either. You can split and move on but still continue to love someone, even if it’s in more of a platonic way as the years pass.

Ive pondered on whether unconditional love even applies to children when they become responsible for their own actions, for example the mother of Ian Huntley recently, I find it very difficult to see how even a mother's love could endure such horrors

I don't think truly unconditional love exists at all.

I think even with children it's possible for them to do things that eventually destroy their parents' love for them, although obviously it usually takes a lot more.

But if someone's child tortured and killed their pets, attempted to physically and sexually abuse their siblings, was violent to their parents, and then continued that escalating sadistic criminality as an adult, eventually becoming a serial rapist and murderer....I have to think it's quite plausible that a parent - even a mother - would stop loving that child.
Hell, there have even been cases of sons who have terrorised, abused, and repeatedly raped their elderly mothers they were 'caring' for - do you think they love their sons? Do you think they should?

I think love always has conditions, and it should have those conditions for the sake of self-preservation, even if the bar is much higher for children.

Someone without any conditions on their love is someone without self-respect.

Nope, a man who wants a woman to love him ‘unconditionally’ wants a woman with no boundaries who’ll put up with anything and do everything for him. I could not love a man who treated me badly - that is not the kind of man I want or need.

So for those saying that it is conditional do you have experience of love actually turning off like that?

in my view love fades very gradually over time. As I said up thread you make decisions to leave/ cut people out of your life who behave badly but love doesn’t just stop like that for me. So interested to hear from those who experience love differently.

No, but chipped away over time, yes.

And then it dawned on me after yet another crisis, I could do better on my own - and I was done.

It was sort of like a tap turning off at that point for me, I suppose, but it had been a long time coming.

No. I think some people are dependent, so let things slide and choose not to see things.