There Is No Such Thing As “Unconditional Love”

True love is conditional and it is perfectly fine.

“The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.” — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Unconditional love — such a rosy and teary concept. It is commonly defined along the line of “a love offered without expectation or repayment”. From numerous religions to entertainment industries, this “virtue” is lauded and praised, love everyone or even everything unconditionally, as if God or some supreme moral principles command us to strive towards it (I mean, how can one reject this!?). And it appears many people, if not everyone, do want to attempt to pursue, or at least made to believe in such a concept.

Romantic movies often portray sacrificial, selfless love, the love of “I’d catch a grenade for ya”, the love so substantial that masks everything else as if the Universe exists for this sole moment of manifestation. A heaven-shattering moment, our emotional brains agree and we weep as the frozen Jack is sinking to the abyss. But (sensationalist) movies are movies, how about real life?

“What it’s like to be a parent: It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.”― Nicholas Sparks

Parents are often lauded to express “unconditional love” towards their children, giving them everything, all the attention, care, blood and sweat, even the whole life. I hate to break the bubble, but it is not unconditional. Every single parent wants to shape their child in some ways they perceive to be good, they want to make an impression and imprint on the child. Bullying others at school, cheating in an exam, purposely throwing stones at a neighbor’s window? If you do this, I will punish you, far from no expectation. To escalate it further, even Jesus (not that I am religious) expected us to learn something about our sins when he sacrificed so much of his time and life to teach us, to save us from our inclination of horrific behaviors, not so unconditional if you ask me.

The bad fairytale

Because we are taught that God, Jesus, some unfound beings, whatever, will shower us with love unconditionally, we loosen our self-critique and reflection, choosing the reactionary path of least action, i.e., same old same bad behaviors are never changed, new bad behaviors are never challenged (you’d think you are spared so long as you “feel good” or pray to some God). That’s where the problem of this romanticized concept comes in. As many people are still deeply obsessed with utopian fairytales, Disney, or an all-merciful God, the problem is a pervasive one and worth examining further.

If you really think about it, the trouble of unconditional love transcends superficial semantics, it is a deep problem of philosophy. Is it even truly possible to love someone without hoping for anything to your own ends, conscious- or unconsciously? You may sacrifice a great deal of yourself out of love, but ultimately you want your family line to be better than other families, you want to live a proud life and be recognized as a great partner/parent, you want somebody else to achieve your unfinished dreams hiding deep in your psyche, etc.

Of course, parents, as an example, are generally more tolerant and accepting of their own children relatively speaking. But it is still conditional. It boils down to one picture — unconditional or conditional love is not a superficial, binary category (a very dangerous conception!), it exists as a continuum of degree, the degree of tolerance, acceptance and expectation associated with that love. It would be unrealistic, and unwise, to think that we ought to pursue one end of the extreme (similarly, I am not advocating for a completely calculative and manipulative kind of conditional love, that you monitor and inject your expectation in every conscious moment).

Suppose hypothetically, certain parts of our brain are shut off which makes it possible that we have no discernible selfish motives, one should still question: Is unconditional love any “good” in effect (disregarding motives)? Unfortunately, if unconditional love is perceived to be possible (at least in the sense that our brain conjures it), it would be a gateway to destruction and extinction. Let’s see why.

Exposing the myth

“Nothing you become will disappoint me; I have no preconception that I’d like to see you be or do. I have no desire to forsee you, only to discover you. You can’t disappoint me”― Mary Haskell

Specific unconditional love is always toxic, as in all predominantly one-sided relationships e.g., totalitarian coercion, economic monopoly, dominion over nature. It embodies an essence like the lyric “They say that the world was built for two. Only worth living if somebody is loving you”. That is, you would do everything to love one very specific thing, probably at the cost of everything else.

The unconditional love for your homies could make a gang that terrorizes the neighborhood; The unconditional love of one skin color over another constitutes racism; Our blind favoritism to fellow sapiens and their technology means we ignore the rest of Mother Nature. It could even mean that if your children become “a kind of Hitler”, you would still love them, love them like they are your special good kids. Needless to say, these are all dangerous inclinations we should flush down the toilet.

Extra: Weren’t these parents acting out of the unconditional love for their own skin, when they protested a black child integrating into an all-white school?

But what about the firemen who rush into the fiercely burning forest to save some injured animals? What’s bad about it? Sure it is a heroic act, but it is still a calculated one (that they evaluated whether their own life/health would be at serious stake). If it is truly an unconditional act out of love, without any sort of objective evaluation of the conditions, it would be a foolish act i.e., one could have failed to save anything yet lose their life, end up breaking the heart of their family, relatives and friends, plus further risking the lives of an extra rescuing team.

The only chance that unconditional love is non-toxic is if it is truly universal and equal i.e., you love an ant as much as the human next to you, or even your son. To quote the Bible: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (Corinthians 13:4–7)”. Unfortunately, little did we know humans are finite beings (sorry you need to be humbled). If we love everything equally, everything will get a nearly zero share of love. Let’s imagine an advanced human-sized robot programmed to “love” all things i.e., it detects distress signals from everywhere and every moment and “try” to remedy them by all it could. Would it be able to accomplish any of its designated “love tasks”? No, of course! (its “brain circuit” would probably fry due to thermodynamics…) So, anyone with half a grain of rationality and no God complex would recognize this is a stupid thing to even consider as possible and sensible, except for the sake of virtue-signaling. You know something is up when nobody is able to do it but everyone keeps preaching it.

The truth

Therefore, full unconditional love does not exist. True love is conditional and limited, to the right degree. True love is an act of kindness, the sowing of a seed, a lesson that enlightens and propels people through the path of betterment instead of going down a reactionary path. This can only occur if we apply limits and conditions.

In fact, even your own frontal cortex does not unconditionally love your own limbic system (vice versa) and is constantly trying to inhibit one another, this creates the mental struggle we all experience but is the essential bedrock to produce a better version of you. Even the true God (if you believe in one semantically) — Mother Nature, operates based on reciprocity and ample negative feedback mechanisms. She is happy to punish you without any mercy (at times even kill you) if you act like an exploitative and opportunistic spoiled child. She only grants you comfort and stability when you behave well, very conditional but necessary. This love is what I think is real, the right kind of love. You wouldn’t want Mother Nature to shower you with comfort without you doing anything useful, that’s not the kind of love you would want to receive. (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, my friend!)

Adding to that, having an Asian root, I have frankly never felt that the love from my mother and father is unconditional. But the thing is, there is really nothing wrong with it (there are other things going wrong but I never ascribe it to the “conditionality of love”). This makes me suspect that this concept/terminology started out as some region-specific romanticized propaganda, in order to sell an imaginary omnibenevolent God to spread certain religions, or later certain commodities and genres surrounding the entertainment and wedding industries. After all, one cannot deny “unconditional love” does sound fluffy and catchy for some reason.

Everything breaks down a little further once you realize that the human perception of love is just some neurochemicals and hormones (e.g., oxytocin, dopamine and vasopressin) jumbling in your limbic system telling you what love feels like. In fact, the more unconditional (blind) it is, the higher the resemblance of the neuron firing pattern is to that of drug addicts. When love is strongly felt/expressed, the frontal cortex would also experience a decreased activation (the area of the brain that controls all the higher-level cognitive functions such as reasoning and memory). Not as honorable as you think it is. Nevertheless, your acts of love and care do matter, whether or not it is coming out of your rational judgment or impulse, but we ought to control ourselves to not be blinded by the excess flood of love sensation and act recklessly. Such uncontrolled excess can hardly be matched by healthy reciprocity and would likely end up being an externality to outsiders, like a mad warlord on a rampage believing himself to be a romantic patriot — not so romantic in the end.

Conclusion

No, full unconditional love does not exist and is a foolishly dangerous concept/terminology that should be abandoned. If you think unconditional love does exist, sorry, it likely means you are quite prone to foster reactionary, toxic relationships, to your own narrow end whether you are aware of it or not. Conversely, expressing conditional love is nothing to be ashamed of, it is in fact the healthier version of love and we should not be discouraged by some outdated historical connotations that need to be sealed under the rock. Only bad people dig out rocks and sell them through propaganda for their own gains and profits (sounds familiar?). Better still, the classification of love by its “conditionality” should be discarded all together. What matters is true love in the end.

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