I’ve always had trouble with the idea of unconditional love. People have tried to explain it to me in various ways. They have said it is love given without expectation of anything in return.
To me, unconditional love means that there are no conditions. You will love the person no matter what they do. You have no boundaries to your love. You are codependent.
Everyone has boundaries, don’t they? I mean if the person you love abuses you all the time, would you still love them? Would you try to get away from them, but still love them? That seems pathological to me.
Many people I’ve spoken to suggest that the love of a parent for a child is unconditional. I can see that for maybe five or ten years, but at a certain point, if a child is bad enough, I think that unconditional love will fade because, truthfully, there are conditions.
Of course, I’ve never experienced it, so perhaps I can’t imagine it. My parents had significant conditions on their love. I had no signs of love on a personal level. Everything was impersonal—providing shelter and food and education; that sort of thing. But no hugs or kisses. No “I love you’s.” Little or no praise, except for extraordinary feats. I spent a good twenty-five or thirty years trying to get praise before giving it up overtly. But my psyche failed me. It still wished to gain parental love. It still wants that praise that will never be coming, no matter how good I am; no matter what I accomplish. Even if it did come, I wonder if I could allow myself to hear it.
So I learned, growing up, that love was conditional and that I was never good enough. I graduated in 1978, during the Carter recession. Jobs were as hard to find then as they are now for new graduates. I didn’t find one, and my parents thought I was not trying, and they decided to kick me out. Which they did, in dramatic fashion, one night. This again confirmed my idea that it wasn’t safe to trust them. It taught my siblings never to come home after college. One went West to the far east, and one went East to Europe. For years, I lived closest to my parents—around 200 miles away.
I learned that love was conditional when my first significant love, the one to whom I lost my virginity and with whom I experienced other significant first time events, ditched me when I graduated from college. I realize that, since then, I expect all my relationships to end. Sometimes I make them end before the other person ends them, and sometimes the other person ends them first.
I try to be good. I try to be good enough to be loved. But I’m not. I failed my wife big time, but this time she didn’t get rid of me. Maybe she would have if we didn’t have kids. For now, I’m taking it as a sign that she really does love me—even if I am not worthy of that love.
I don’t think it’s unconditional love, though, because she said if I screwed up again, she would get rid of me.
The only unconditional love I experienced was online, and that’s only because they didn’t really know me. In reality, they were in love with their fantasy of me, but even so, it was seductive. It was a quick hit. I’m not sure why I continued to meet people online. Maybe I felt like if I didn’t have online relationships as an outlet, I’d be too scared to stay with my wife. It was only with a backup plan, that I could risk staying with her until she ditched me. Without a backup plan, I would have had to ditch her first.
Seems like crazy logic, but it isn’t if you don’t believe you can ever fully trust anyone. If you don’t believe in unconditional love.
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