Should love be unconditional?

[Lark]

I've seen threads online where people ask others do they believe in unconditional love but I think the better question is should love be unconditional in the first place? I'm sure it does exist, lots of unconditional feelings exist but should it? Is it something to encourage and validate or not?

 

[Elis]

Love is love, if you love someone you love someone. Still, laws such as age restrictions are there for a reason.

Other than that, norms can go fuck themselves.

 

[SpecialEdition]

I think people misunderstand love. You can love someone without enabling them. You can love someone without actively participating in their life. I don't believe that loving someone unconditionally means that you have to abide bad behaviour. Bad behaviour is not the single identifying feature of a human being, either. There are too many different aspects that make up a human being that can be loved. You can love a person without loving what they do.

I suppose it depends on your definition of love and whether or not that love means you are bound and tied to someone acting like a piece of shit.

 

[Rcs6r]

What kind of love are we talking about, like romantic love?

 

[Skarekrow]

I think it has to do a lot with personal perspective…and where you stand on a personal spiritual level.
Should it be…I believe so. Let me put it to you like this…let’s say that my own Son does something horrible and is on trial for murder. I still know a more comprehensive view of who he is, who he was, etc. etc. and will “hate the sin, love the sinner”…because I don’t think anyone without some sort of mental illness or psychopathy is born innately evil and murderous. So yes, I would love him unconditionally even as he were locked up for a terrible crime and it would be an awful waste of life on all sides of the equation.
There are those who are mentally ill or a sociopath who’s childhood snapped his mind…who do disgusting and awful things to their fellow human beings, things we consider to be truly evil…but one could blame the illness and still find salvageable fragments of what could have been a “normal” person once. But even that when looked at from a wider-viewpoint seem to not really matter as much if you believe in a human soul, heaven, hell, or reincarnation.
This is part of why Hell is an unjust idea…eternal punishment will eventually outweigh any conceivable crime…purgatory is a bit more feasible but still varies with your personal idea of God’s unconditional love.

 

[Average]

Fuck it shouldn't.

 

[bagelriffic]

My experience of love is as a state of being, not dependent on external factors, and I agree there are different types of love, but I'm not looking to get into that.

I think you're going to have a hard time experiencing love if there are 'shoulds' or ultimatums attached to it, because passionate love, by its very nature, pushes your boundaries, confronts your comfort zone. As was mentioned above, one needn't be a doormat because of their open heart, but one doesn't stop loving in the face of difficulty either because the act of loving is itself the means and the end. I love for myself in other words. If someone's a dick to me I'm not going to stick around, but I'm not going to close myself off from loving either, because its not for them, its for me.

This is, as with most matters of the heart, easier said than done. Furthermore I'd be lying if I said this is a state of being I have much access to, but it's not just reciting what I read in a book either, I've been there, and it was fucking fantastic. Imagine your life on fast forward ×20 and you're still not there, but maybe in the ballpark. I've said it before but its gotta be comparable to living like you're dying. Read something from t mckenna once after he'd found out he was done for, and one of the things he said was how surprised he was at just how in love he was with even the simplest aspects of life. Its like the difference between babying a brand new car around potholes or being chased by the cops highspeed down the freeway offroad and over road spikes and speed bumps, crazy sparks and shit shooting everywhere, because it doesn't need to last forever anymore, just a few more miles, like the point of life becomes life itself, to experience it as much as you can before your body craps out on you. Yeah, something like that anyway.

 

[Eventhorizon]

I think that to love someone, you are not loving them by making it unconditional. To do so is to say you could potentially love everything. Which means if you love everything so easily, your love has little value to begin with.

 

[ZcM4xzkjgzCjytBc]

Nothing should be unconditional.
Nothing can be.

 

[Barnabas]

I think that to love someone, you are not loving them by making it unconditional. To do so is to say you could potentially love everything. Which means if you love everything so easily, your love has little value to begin with.

That's all based on the notion of unconditional love being easy. Unconditional love requires a great deal of effort in overcoming it's oppositions, the effort results in a love that is made not just spread wide as reach more but made deeper as to wholly submerge what had before only been waist deep.

Nothing should be unconditional.
Nothing can be.

Love has to be unconditional, if love can't cover all things then there is no hope for all men, and if only some men have hope then there can be no faith for anyone.

 

[ZcM4xzkjgzCjytBc]

Love has to be unconditional, if love can't cover all things then there is no hope for all men, and if only some men have hope then there can be no faith for anyone.

Can you translate this?

We wouldn't fall out of love if it was unconditional.

 

[sprinkles]

Can you translate this?

We wouldn't fall out of love if it was unconditional.

Yeah, but is love revoked because conditions aren't met, or is it revoked because love can't have conditions therefore if there's a condition it wasn't actually love in the first place?

 

[sprinkles]

Also deal breakers aren't the same as conditions.

Such as if I give you free pizza for life without conditions, that means you don't have to do anything to earn it. But if you decide to be a legendary bag of dicks then I might decide to revoke the privilege without citing any specific conditions.

Edit: Or to make a parallel - you don't earn a gift but that doesn't mean you can't piss off the giver.

 

[ZcM4xzkjgzCjytBc]

Yeah, but is love revoked because conditions aren't met, or is it revoked because love can't have conditions therefore if there's a condition it wasn't actually love in the first place?

The feeling of love is lost when conditions aren't met. ("love revoked because conditions aren't met")

"is it revoked because love can't have conditions therefore if there's a condition it wasn't actually love in the first place?"
This paradox is invalid given the parameters of my statement that love must be conditional ("cannot be unconditional"). I'm not simply saying this cannot be the case, but rather there might be a misunderstanding in what I meant (possibly with the double negatives).

 

[Delta]

I've seen threads online where people ask others do they believe in unconditional love but I think the better question is should love be unconditional in the first place? I'm sure it does exist, lots of unconditional feelings exist but should it? Is it something to encourage and validate or not?

I am wary of dependency which I see as each party feeding off each other in the claim of having unconditional love - but some level of co dependency has to exist for love to flourish. Therein lie the nuances. A person can go through a whole lot of rubbish in a relationship but both know exactly where the other is at and their love is like a force. Whatever come in it's way gets absorbed or remoulded. I see this as a gift of spiritual origin which most people have access to but it is up to them how far they go with developing it; it's either a spiritual or psychological process.

There are Biblical references of love in 1 Corin 13:14 Love is always patient; love is always kind; love is never envious or arrogant with pride. Nor is she conceited.

This has been my personal mark of love in choosing a partner rather than romantic love, which I see as being ego based.

My husband is far better at loving unconditionally than I. He adores me. I'm more cautious and can look for signs of dependency as I like to be independent and self sufficient. He has taught me to be more unconditional by how he loves me. He is an ES type.

I think it's all about being a work in progress and as time goes on the love changes and moulds together so that a natural understanding of the other occurs. Overall, I view unconditional love as a high aim to have in life and one should be very careful what they wish for and not give themselves over to it entirely as really it can only function as a 50-50 deal. Anything other than this is an imbalance but as time goes on I think the balance can shift with one giving more when the other is weak, ill or in positive terms also.

So I think I operate at the level of normal expressions of being loving with others but if any form of co dependency comes into play, my love has the potential to become unconditional.

.. but I could be being over protective as when I gave my love unconditionally in younger years I became ill. Worst years of my life. Had to shut that shit down a level.

 

[sprinkles]

The feeling of love is lost when conditions aren't met. ("love revoked because conditions aren't met")

"is it revoked because love can't have conditions therefore if there's a condition it wasn't actually love in the first place?"
This paradox is invalid given the parameters of my statement that love must be conditional ("cannot be unconditional"). I'm not simply saying this cannot be the case, but rather there might be a misunderstanding in what I meant (possibly with the double negatives).

1. Conditions which aren't presented forthright can hardly be expected to be met.
2. Revocation doesn't require conditions even if brought about by conditions. Love too is brought about by conditions - first of all the existence of the subject is actually a condition.

Edit:
Basically if you give without expressed conditions then logically you can also revoke without conditions - i.e. you don't need a reason even if you have one.

 

[barbad0s]

I think that the act of falling into love must be based on a set of conditions (otherwise you would love everything, as others have mentioned), but that after that, the love that is given to the object of affection can be unchanging in spite of changing condition, as a result of that attachment having already been formed. I think that unconditional love is probably okay, though unhealthy attachments and relationships do exist.

 

[tfg345i4u5lw]

Maybe love has to be unconditional or else it's not really love. Even people that I've cut out of my life are people that I love. Sometimes the best way to love someone is to get away from them.

So, to answer the question. I think love should be unconditional.

 

[Solongo]

Love would not feel like love if it comes with "conditions". Love feels good because it's free and it is freely given. Like a hug or a sincere compliment.

If love does have conditions which modern day it does anyways and - hence so many people in the process and pain of love - because so many end up wrestling with the "conditions" love comes with rather than just learning to love without anything else attached to it. These conditions cause more misery and heartbreak because everyone gets "distracted" by the conditions that love comes with. Like people are shocked and surprised when people offer love and affection freely and think it is unnatural.

The challenge for humans will always be about giving away love freely without wanting anything in return. But ironically when you do give it away freely and wholeheartedly; you tend to recieve the same love in return and it feels so good. There is nothing in the world that can give the human soul more nurturing and care than an unconditional love given freely by another soul. The more we complicate love; the more misery we experience.

 

[Barnabas]

Can you translate this?

We wouldn't fall out of love if it was unconditional.

Love has to be unconditional. If love is conditional, eventually you'll screw and not satisfy all of loves demands and then you are no longer loved. If you fail to meet loves demands you spend the rest of your life without hope, because there isn't any chance of things being made better. If there is no hope of things being made better then there can be no faith, because nothing can fix this situation, you can't put faith in anything.


In short, this quote.

We wouldn't fall out of love if it was unconditional.

Is a misunderstanding of what love is, it's not something you just happen into one day, as if you tripped on branch and now can't help but have warm and fuzzy feelings for nearest available person.

Love is a dedicated action towards caring and well being, that requires continued effort and endurance in spite of the flaws and indignities around you. When someone stops loving a person it's not that love has stopped existing but that one person no longer has love.

Example: I love my wife unconditionally, nothing she can do or say will ever make me love her less. If one day I stop loving her, it's not because she has done anything to be undeserving of my love but instead that I have become an unloving person.