Unconditional love has come up in conversation several times in the last few weeks, and although as a little girl it was something I strongly desired, as I’ve grown older I’ve realised how much the concept actually scares me.
Unconditional love, in my mind, is dangerous, and it’s worrying how much it’s offered, through wedding vows or just an off the cuff remark from one partner to another.
Love is a wonderful thing. It’s healthy, it’s beautiful, it makes people happy. But people make mistakes. People screw up. Sometimes, they screw up really badly. They do something that isn’t forgivable. Or they do something that is forgivable far too much, until it stops being forgivable. They hurt you irreparably. Worse, they might do it deliberately, abuse and attack you.
This isn’t scaremongering or cynicism. This is real life. Shit happens. However much you love someone, and however much they love you, it will never, ever be perfect.
And if you’ve promised to keep on loving them, even if they do those things? You’re stuck. You can’t get out. You’ll be there alongside them, forever, loving them unconditionally. Because you promised, you said “there is no condition under which I will stop loving you, and I will never leave you.”
You don’t want to be promised unconditional love. Really, you don’t. If your partner promises to love you, whatever happens, you’ll find it so much harder to love, grow and be a better person. You’ll be suffocated by the love of your partner, who insists that you’re perfect as you are and don’t need to change. That’s not what love is about. Love is about caring for someone, understanding, supporting, and forgiving their mistakes because you really want to.
I want those who love me to see my flaws and love me anyway. I want them to love me enough that they can tell me I fucked up, and support me as I fix it. I want them to love me the way that I am, but see that I can be so much more, and hold my hand as I walk through life, improving myself.
I don’t want someone to tell me it doesn’t matter who I am because they’ll love me regardless.
I am not perfect, and I do not want unconditional love.
Surely love that is unconditional is something that’s suited for someone secure enough to admit they are not perfect? Love that isn’t unconditional is more likely to disappear at the first sign of a flaw.
I also want to be loved as I am, not as some form of ideal, just like you. I agree that accepting someone as a whole package is love. But surely loving someone whatever they do kind of counts as unconditional in itself? Maybe it’s the promise that scares you, but I don’t think the prospect itself should hold that much of an uncertainty.
Sure, the opposite of unconditional love is placing conditions on the love. Because we don’t say “I’ll love you if…” when we express emotions, unconditional love could be assumed, but there are implied rules. Don’t join the BNP. Don’t cheat. Don’t break the rules we’ve made for our relationship.
But promising someone that you’ll love them forever is a promise of unconditional love, whether you say “no matter what you do” or not, and I think such a promise is unwise and unethical.
Unconditional love makes a person believe they can do whatever they feel like and get away with it, even if they know it’ll hurt feelings. Not morally, of course, but in terms of being loved in spite of it. It helps to justify destructive behaviour.
Clearly, anyone you suspect might abuse your love and trust is a bad person to offer unconditional love – but people are full of surprises. You won’t see it coming; they may not see it coming either.
Uncertainty doesn’t scare me. The threat that someone could hurt me exists whether my love is unconditional or not. My fear is of being damaged, or worse, damaging the person I love.
“I want those who love me to see my flaws and love me anyway. I want them to love me enough that they can tell me I fucked up, and support me as I fix it. I want them to love me the way that I am, but see that I can be so much more, and hold my hand as I walk through life, improving myself.”
This is what unconditional love means to me. There’s nothing that says that just because you have promised to love someone you can’t criticise them; in fact, I would argue that if you care about someone the opposite is true. If you’re too scared to tell someone they fucked up that’s not actually love.
Oh, I agree totally. What I meant by that part was that I want all that instead of someone who’ll tell me it doesn’t matter who I am because they’ll love me regardless.