Idealistic Love?

[Anonymous]

I was having a conversation with someone the other day about conditional versus unconditional love. I would like to ask — is unconditional love the same as “conditional love” in terms of its “output”? For example, we might love Charles Manson unconditionally. He is generally regarded as a manipulative murderer, so even though we might love him unconditionally, I have a feeling there will be definite limits on what we will “do” for him. I am not convinced we would take him into our home if he was homeless, or do things for him as we would do things for someone who has blessed our loves, or served us in some way — or who poses no obvious risks to ourselves or our family.

On the other hand, we have people in our lives who are not only “worthy” of unconditional love, but they also bless our lives in certain ways. As a result, we are willing to cut off our right arm for them. We will do things for them that we won’t do for Charles Manson….in a way, our love for them is conditional, or a result of their behavior. And if they started behaving like Charles Manson did, we would likely scale back the extent of our loving actions towards them — partly due to personal safety, and possibly due to concern about their unacceptable behavior. Also, their behavior would likely sap our motivation to serve them.

So, what, really is unconditional love? How is it different from conditional love?

For me, I look at unconditional love as an absence of hate, abuse, or backbiting toward others. When directed at someone who has behaved badly, it is often passive. If active, it is at arms length and in no way parallels the service we might give to others who have behaved “well”. When it comes to people who have behaved badly, love seems to have far greater “limits” and caveats than love bestowed on others who have behaved in ways that are acceptable to us.

I have a question:

Quote:

So, is there a difference between unconditional love and conditional love? Is there really such an animal called “unconditional love”? If we love someone unconditionally, but this means we do we do less for them than someone who behaves better (in the same circumstances), doesn’t this mean that unconditional love is really conditional on good behavior, or behavior that blesses our own lives in some way?

[Anonymous]

Good question SD!

For me unconditional love only makes sense within the framework of my children. I saw them grow from babies and know fairly well their strengths and limitations. When one of my children make bad choices I recognize those limitations and try to work with them to help them see a better way. When DS says “He made me mad” or “I cannot control myself when I get mad.” I try to talk to him about coping mechanisms like counting to ten, or walking away, or telling an adult. I hope that as he grows he will develop this ability to consider his response rather than just reacting. On perhaps more of a personal level – I suspect my son is on the autism spectrum. When I tell him I love him he will say “ok”. At age 5 he began calling us by our first names rather than Mom & Dad (This really bothers DW as she relishes her title of Mom). It can be somewhat challenging loving someone that does not return our tokens of love in quite the same manner we are used to. I never love him less. If we are God’s children and he is infinitely more advanced than we are – I imagine that he may view us similarly and love us unconditionally.

As for Charles Manson, I imagine that loving someone also at some point requires getting them the help they need. At the most basic level this might be just ensuring that they are not a danger to themselves or others. Prison and state mental institutions may be the best that we mortals may offer for some of the most extreme cases (this does not mean that we may not visit or write letters or otherwise let them know that they are not forgotten). I speculate that God has better options available. It has been said that the telestial kingdom is so great that we might kill ourselves to try to get there. This is where murderers go. I imagine that God has something in place to keep them from hurting each other.

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

So, is there a difference between unconditional love and conditional love? Is there really such an animal called “unconditional love”? If we love someone unconditionally, but this means we do we do less for them than someone who behaves better (in the same circumstances), doesn’t this mean that unconditional love is really conditional on good behavior, or behavior that blesses our own lives in some way?

Dude, good question. I would argue that you can certainly love someone unconditionally, but still do less for them when they ‘misbehave.’ For example, my mother-in-law used to be addicted to several different prescription drugs. When she would take them, it would make her mean-spirited, abusive, confused, physically and mentally unbalanced, etc. Because of this, we never allowed her to spend time alone with our children, we refused to take care of her by cleaning her house or cooking her meals when she was too ‘high’ to do it herself. And it wasn’t a lack of love that caused us to treat her differently. It was to protect our children and ourselves, and to avoid supporting her behavior. My father-in-law took a different approach. He did everything she asked him to do. He scheduled doctors appointments for her, with multiple doctors, knowing that he was contributing to her addiction. When we tried to get him to stop, and to get her some help with her addiction, his response was that we all just needed to show her that we love her. He used the whole ‘unconditional love’ line over and over. We tried to tell him that he needed to love her enough to STOP doing things for her. Eventually, she overdosed and he found her dead.

So, I would say that unconditional love has nothing to do with how much you’re willing to do for a person, regardless of whether they behave the way you want them to or not. I believe unconditional love means that you love someone regardless of their behavior, and you’re always ready to be there for them when they fall. But, it doesn’t mean you have to trust them, or put yourself or others in danger just to support them or their behavior.

[Anonymous]

Boundaries are important in life. They are healthy.

You can love someone unconditionally and still set boundaries.

My love for my children is unconditional. If they do things that are negatives in my life, I will increase boundaries and limits on my children. That isn’t done out of lack of love. That would be done with unconditional love — but loss of trust.

[Anonymous]

Thanks — my takeaway from most of your comments is that love has two components. One is an attitude toward the person. The other is behavior toward the person. You can adopt an attitude of love toward everyone, and this is generally fairly easy because all it entails is thought and perhaps reflection, and positive emotions toward aspects of the person’s composition (their spirit, perhaps a few good qualities), without having to do anything. The behavioral side of love, in my view, is what distinguishes unconditional from conditional love. It’s clear that people who behave badly receive less behavioral love. Sure, they may receive “tough love” (like prison, or limits) but I see that people who behave well often receive far more behavioral love as a complement to the attitudinal love. Therefore, my investment in her as a person, and perhaps even my verbal expressions of love would be muted by her behavior.

For Charles Manson, I might intervene to prevent people from harming him, but I probably would not invite him to dinner. If my mother was addicted to drugs, I would likely send her a birthday card and a gift, but I would likely not develop a close, advisory relationship given the swings in her moods and her unpredictable behavior, and her potential to hurt me emotionally.

I see see unconditional love as the attitudinal foundation from which behavioral love springs. After we have made the decision to love someone unconditionally, our behavioral love works on a continuum from low behavioral love to high behavioral love.

I also believe that the attitudinal love is very sensitive to the behavior of others in certain situations. In marriage, attitudinal and behavioral love is very hard to sustain when the partner does not exhibit behavioral love that meets our needs. One marriage theorist said that he never felt it was fair that one person in a marriage should meet the needs of their spouse, while their own needs go unmet for their lifetime. Implicit in his statement is that in long-term relationships, like marriage, there must be sufficient meeting of needs for the partner in the marriage to sustain enough attitudinal love to keep behavioral love, and therefore, the marriage alive.

Although this question is not about marriage, I think it applies to a wide variety of relationships – even children. There have been instances when children have behaved so badly (destroyed parental wealth, health, and well-being) to the point attitudinal love is gone, and the parents disown their children. There are families where the members have no contact any longer as a result of the destruction of attitudinal love by the behavior of the child, or the parent…

[Anonymous]

Hey SD,

I get what your saying, and it makes a lot of sense. But, I also think that it’s hard to boil love down to a simple formula. I think one reason love can be so complex, is because people choose to show their love in different ways. I’m sure you’re familiar with Gary Chapman’s book, “The Five Love Languages.” It’s a pretty over-simplistic book, but he makes a few good points. He talks about how people have different ways of showing their love, and have different preferences for how they’d like other people to show love to them. Some like gifts, some like physical touch, some like talking, etc. One person may be thinking that they’re showing their spouse a lot of love by buying them gifts all the time. Then the spouse complains that they don’t feel loved because they don’t receive the communication that they want.

Personally, I think unconditional love is a pretty rare thing. I would say that the best example would be Christ’s love for us. Although, even in that regard I’m sure there are a lot of differing opinions on that from people here. But, for me personally, I would consider Christ’s love to be unconditional. Just my two cents.

[Anonymous]

What I am hearing is:

Love is unconditional

Trust is earned

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

Although this question is not about marriage, I think it applies to a wide variety of relationships – even children. There have been instances when children have behaved so badly (destroyed parental wealth, health, and well-being) to the point attitudinal love is gone, and the parents disown their children. There are families where the members have no contact any longer as a result of the destruction of attitudinal love by the behavior of the child, or the parent…

I agree with you that unconditional love is not completely possible as mortals. I believe that the closest we can approach it is in our love for our small children. (I am only talking love here – not privileges or natural consequences for actions)

Unconditional love would require that the lover does not really need anything from the lovee but is self sufficient and self contained.

Unconditional love would require that the lovee does not really have the power to harm the lover.

Otherwise our need to get something from the lovee or to protect ourselves from the lovee would introduce limitations or conditions to our love.

When our children are small they are not in a position to deny us things that we may need or to really do us harm. This dynamic can change significantly as they grow.

True unconditional love IMO is only possible when the being that is the lover is far above and independent of the lovee. I imagine my God to be just such an individual.

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

True unconditional love IMO is only possible when the being that is the lover is far above and independent of the lovee. I imagine my God to be just such an individual.

Is it possible for us to embrace that divine love, and reflect it to another?

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

Unconditional love would require that the lover does not really need anything from the lovee but is self sufficient and self contained.

Unconditional love would require that the lovee does not really have the power to harm the lover.

Something to think about – People on the ASD spectrum are noted for doing this in relationships. Usually in response to overloading stimuli, we focus on what we can control and block everything out – including spouses. I try to self-sufficient and self-contained emotionally in our relationship. Part of it is me – I HATE being out of control of myself with a passion. I take pride in being self-contained/self-reliant emotionally – to the point where I “shut myself out from” relating to my husband. I try not to rely on him emotionally. However, he needs to be emotionally connected to me. He needs to feel that I can rely on him and that he can help me emotionally (since he does not want to harm me). This has been a HUGE issue in our relationship that we are working on.

So my practice of unconditional love as described above does not work and backfires. I usually wind up overwhelmed from containing everything and handling everything so I shut down even further (or clean things). According to this theory, this should not be backfiring.

If you look up the “Cassandra Syndrome” online, it goes into further details about this type of situation.

Roy wrote:

True unconditional love IMO is only possible when the being that is the lover is far above and independent of the lovee. I imagine my God to be just such an individual.

I think that unconditional love is in part a state of mind – of being willing to see the best in others and get in the trenches with them on whatever they are working on IF specific boundaries are met. For example, I always love my daughter the toddler and I am happy to work with her to explore and expand her world – but if she demonstrates behavior that shows me she needs time in her crib to re-group (maybe she flailed in my direction because she was upset and wanted me to know that), then I will impose that boundary. And I will listen in and support her when she is done re-grouping and forgive her for the infraction. The unconditional love is how I view her and the actions I take to re-connect once she is ready to do so – my attitude. My behavior appears to set my love as conditional – which makes sense if love is perception-based.

[Anonymous]

I have a HUGE problem with the idea that we can love people we don’t know at all. That isn’t “real” love; it is “idealistic” love (in the sense that it is based purely on an ideal, not on reality). Claiming we love people we don’t know cheapens love, imo – since it makes love easy. Love isn’t easy. In fact, unconditional love can be brutally hard in many cases.

It is like saying we forgive people who have not hurt us. That cheapens forgiveness and tends toward judgment and condemnation of others who struggle to forgive those same people.

For example, I can say I love and forgive someone who rapes or kills someone to whom I am not connected (or connected to such a small degree that what happens to them doesn’t impact me to any great degree), but that is lip service only – especially if I can’t love or forgive someone who has hurt or offended me less than raping or killing someone close to me would do. If I hold a grudge against a gossip who damages my reputation, for example, I can’t say honestly I love and/or forgive a rapist or a murderer.

I used an extreme example above, but the same idea applies to much less severe situations. Love and forgive are action verbs, and they apply fully only to people with whom we interact to some degree.

[Author]

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