Unconditional Love

[Tmac]

I'm not convinced it's completely unconditional. I'm a parent with two girls, and would take a bullet for either without thinking twice. But I think they could destroy my love for them if they acted heinously enough. It would need to be extreme, and I can't know for sure, but that's my suspicion.

I respect the honesty you have shown.

 

[BSM1]

I hate you for a reason. I love you for a reason. Take away reason and what have you?

Just yourself.

 

[BSM1]

I'm not convinced it's completely unconditional. I'm a parent with two girls, and would take a bullet for either without thinking twice. But I think they could destroy my love for them if they acted heinously enough. It would need to be extreme, and I can't know for sure, but that's my suspicion.

Once you love unconditionally you always love unconditionally. However, you may not like what or who the one you love has become.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Once you love unconditionally you always love unconditionally. However, you may not like what or who the one you love has become.

You're entitled to your opinion. I hope (and suspect) I'll never be in a position to truly know the answer to the OP.

 

[BSM1]

You're entitled to your opinion. I hope (and suspect) I'll never be in a position to truly know the answer to the OP.

Me, too. But unconditional love is just that, unconditional forever.

 

[Tmac]

Once you love unconditionally you always love unconditionally. However, you may not like what or who the one you love has become.

The however part needs work.

 

[Tmac]

You're entitled to your opinion. I hope (and suspect) I'll never be in a position to truly know the answer to the OP.

I think you truly know the answer now, as honest as you appear to be I can't see you lying to yourself, at least not for very long.

 

[BSM1]

The however part needs work.

If I understand what you're saying, absolutely. But unconditional love and unconditional like are two different animals.

 

[Deidre]

I'd like to see the opinions of people who think that God offers unconditional love. Unconditional love is possible, I think it depends on how we define love. You can abhor how someone behaves, but still love them as a fellow human being. Like how we are with each other here. We should love each other here, but we might abhor one another's posts.

Spread the love!

 

[suncowiam]

I'm not convinced it's completely unconditional. I'm a parent with two girls, and would take a bullet for either without thinking twice. But I think they could destroy my love for them if they acted heinously enough. It would need to be extreme, and I can't know for sure, but that's my suspicion.

I agree with this.

All love should be conditional. Some with very few exceptions.

To maintain love requires a lot of hard work and the right perspectives. It's not free.

 

[Quintessence]

The not uncommon love of a parent for his or her child comes to mind.

Or that of children for their parents - when they are old and mature enough to appreciate the gift they have been given.

 

[sun rise]

Truly unconditional love is very rare to me. It's like the sun which shines even when there are clouds and even at night. Most people can only rarely approach it under certain conditions but love without any conditions is not possible for the vast majority of human beings. Only the Divine and those whose lives are wholly Divine can experience it fully.

 

[Enoch07]

In my view, there is such a thing as unconditional love*. However, so far as I know it is:

• relatively rare (doesn't happen to everyone, and infrequently happens to anyone),
• usually extremely brief (typically lasting only moments),
• is as much (or even more so) a perspective or way of perceiving as it is an emotion,
  
• cannot be forced to come about (there is no guaranteed path to it, or means of bringing it about),
• is typically life-transforming.

It's nature makes it difficult to research scientifically, but I suspect it has a neurological basis, and that it is closely related in physiology to the mystical experience of oneness.

But what's your own take on unconditional love?



*Selfless love that is given freely, without demanding that the beloved comply with any requirements as a condition of being loved. Not to be confused with love that is merely self-sacrificing. That is, selfless love does not entail self-sacrifice. The "beloved" here can be a person, place, thing, or -- perhaps most often -- an entire perceptual field.

EDIT: I should have written here that the "beloved" -- or object of one's unconditional love -- is almost certain to be the contents of one's entire perceptual field. Thus it is most likely to include everything one is perceiving during the experience of unconditional love.

I agree with everything with the exception of

usually extremely brief (typically lasting only moments),

I think unconditional love is permament. Children are a good example. Even though not all parents unconditionally love their children. I would hope that most do.

Unless your specifically talking about romantic unconditonal love. Then I take no exception, and agree whole heartedly.

 

[gottalovemoses]

Sometimes I feel unconditional hatred towards people. Not something I'm proud of ,you know.

 

[gottalovemoses]

What about those guys in marriages who take advantage of their partners "unconditional love" through domestic violence?
It just occurs to me that we need to be careful in aspiring to it.

 

[Ponder This]

I think by "unconditional" is meant that no rational justification for loving is required.

I don't love you because I am married to you. I simply love you for who you are.
In a way you can't really call it love if it relies on a condition.

What sort of love is it if: "I love you because you are my son, but if I suddenly found out that biologically, I'm not actually your father... then I would suddenly cease to love you."

That's conditional love.

Whereas, "We are arguing all the time. You are always wrong about everything you say, but I still love you."

To be unconditional simply means to not require a justification.
Because of our own cognitive limits, to love unconditionally simply means, that we can't conceive of any conditions or that we choose not to conceive of any conditions that would cause the love we feel to cease. This is not to say that there aren't things we don't like, but rather that there is a fundamental level at which we are willing to always love regardless of the conditions or the presence of things we don't love.

 

[Sunstone]

The not uncommon love of a parent for his or her child comes to mind.

I don't doubt that very many parents experience a species of love for their children that is nearly unconditional. I also don't doubt that there are some parents who experience profoundly unconditional love for their children. But I think parental love -- even when genuinely unconditional -- is clearly distinct from the kind of unconditional love being spoken of in the OP.

For one thing, I think it is well enough established that the oxytocin bond forms the hormonal basis of parental love, but that hormone and bond appear to me to play little or no role in the species of unconditional love that I spoke about in the OP. The OP's unconditional love does not -- at least on the surface -- seem to be associated with a "molecule of emotion", such as oxytocin, at all. Rather it seems to be more of a perspective than an emotion.

Second, parental love does not seem to me to fit the description of the OP's unconditional love as "rare and brief", although it most likely fits the description of it as "life-transforming".

Last, parental love -- so far as I know -- does not typically include as the object(s) of love everything within one's entire perceptual field, but the OP's unconditional love does.

 

[Sunstone]

We have gotten off on the wrong foot before so please know that is not my intention. I'm not versed on how to reply to sections of what you wrote but some of your thoughts were so true that I felt the vibrations.

I would like to talk about what you know so far? Your thoughts speaks of incidents, how is it that you can see it so clearly and not experience it at the same time?

Thank you for your kind words. I am seldom open to discussing my own experiences of unconditional love. While those experiences might sometimes inform my views of that love, I do not take them as definitive of unconditional love. This is a subject that I've spent roughly 35 years studying on and off. Most of what I think about it comes from those studies.

 

[Sunstone]

Is the kind of love asked about for this thread the kind of love that also has no reason for it? @Sunstone

Assuming I understand what you mean by "a reason", Savagewind, the OP's unconditional love apparently has no "reason", although it does seem to have neurological causes.

 

[savagewind]

Assuming I understand what you mean by "a reason", Savagewind, the OP's unconditional love apparently has no "reason", although it does seem to have neurological causes.

An example of the reason is the love a parent has for his child. The reason he loves his child is that he is his child.
Another reason for loving is that it feels right.
Another one is an understanding that the one loving wants love so he loves.

Even believing it is right to love another is a reason to love.

Reason is to condition.

Conditional means to meet certain conditions. Unconditional means there are no conditions. But a neurological cause is a condition.