If love is not unconditional, is it love?

Love between two unrelated adults is voluntary bullshit. If you are good at playing a part, then it’s whatever you both agree to call it.

There are always limits to love between two or more people. You may find that there are things you can’t live with, or that there are attributes or acts of a person that you didn’t know about or began to be revealed. Real love may die very slowly, but after separation the person may say they still love but can’t “live with” the person or be around the individual (a ‘toxic relationship’_—however, over time, the insignificance of the separated individual becomes the norm.

That said, there will always be memories or moments that strike from time to time If acted on the results are likely to disappoint.

No one is perfect, however—so this thing about love being “unconditional” usually means that if we love a person, we accept their faults even if they are many. And part of the ‘thrill’ of being loved is being accepted and even helped in spite of our faults and things about us that may be distasteful. And be loved in spite of this.

Love has no conditions. People have conditions as to what they will tolerate and what they will not tolerate. The two are not one and the same.

@MollyMcGuire So, ‘Love’ is a thing that exists independent of a ‘being’?

I think love is different for different people.
I saw love as greater than our flaws.
I could argue with my ex wife and really hate the things she did, but I felt that I still loved her, would always take care of her and would die for her if I had to.
She seemed to see love as conditional based on how we were getting along right now.
She lives in the moment and if we had a fight she could very easily decide she didn’t love me today and go cheat on me and then decide she loves me again another day.
You see why I’m so messed up?

I prefer to think of love as a verb.

It’s a series of decisions, actions, feelings, that can’t be retconned into nonexistence by their ceasing.

I used to love my mother. I don’t anymore. I used to love my best friend in seventh grade. I don’t anymore. But I did.

Love IS a verb. It exists as an action from humans and many animals. I verb @Seek. (for example)

I still love my parents, even though they are dead. I can show my love by how I talk about them and share the stories they shared with me.

and I hope you are happy, because now, I’m crying.

Yep, love is a verb, expressed in action not just feeling. Love is also a choice, not some uncontrollable state of emotion. Yes, love is conditional. You can love someone but if their actions are destructive or not loving in return you can choose to no longer love them or associate with them.

Probably the most unconditional love is in relation to our infants and small children and our pets, but even then there are limits. I may have loved my old dog years ago but once he started biting people I had him euthanized. That action was loving in the sense of making a choice to protect the greater good. Same with our kids. We may always love them because they are our children but if they end up becoming criminals or abusive we may have to choose to not be around them anymore. This applies to everyone else as well.

Here’s what the BArd had to say on the subject. I don’t agree. I think love can be strong and powerful but still can wane or change if the lover – or even one’s child – behaves in ways that are not tolerable. A cheater can kill love, a sociopathic child might even strain a parent’s love. It doesn’t mean the love wasn’t real when it was there.

Perhaps there are angels who can love with no hope of a return, but I don’t think many mortals can.

I prefer to side with Edna St Vincent Millay:

“Must we say it was not love, now that love is gone.”

^ Agreed.

@janbb Where is that in St Vincent Millay? I want to read more.

Let me see if I can dig it up. It was something my Mom always quoted to me.

@janbb And thank you for the reminder of Sonnet 116. It’s early here, and I need more tea.

Here you go:

“After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems

(The Penguin Librarian still got it.)

Passer Mortuus Est

Death devours all lovely things:
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness, — presently
Every bed is narrow.

Unremembered as old rain
Dries the sheer libation;
And the little petulant hand
Is an annotation.

After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?

I am grateful for the thoughts expressed so far. I’m still thinking about love. I’m still wrestling with the thought that it varies. I can’t quite grasp that.

To save you from having to click @janbb‘s link, here is Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

I think there is a clue between the two poems.

Do men and women see love differently?
Was the poem @janbb shared written by a woman and was the one @Hawaii_Jake shared written by a man?
The different views remind me of my view of love compared to my ex wife’s.
Just something I’m trying to understand not a sexists statement I’m making because a lot of men cheat too.
I’m just trying to understand women better because after 15 years of marriage I’m more confused than ever.

@SensitiveChris Passer Mortuus Est was written by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Sonnet 116 was written by William Shakespeare. Not only were they written by the opposite sexes, they were written at very different times in history. St. Vincent Millay wrote in the middle of the 20th century, and Sonnet 116 is 400 years old.

You raise a good question. Do men and women view love differently? I do not know.

I’m really trying to figure out my thoughts about love. I’m confused, too.

From Passer Mortuus Est

Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?

From Sonnet 116

it is an ever-fixed mark,

These two views seem irreconcilable. One is from the 20th century woman, and the other from the 17th century man.

Have humans changed? Has love changed? Is love vastly different for women and men?

I have personal experience with love that leads me to view it with Shakespeare. It is rock solid. But I have felt love for a person, and that love is not present any more. There is abiding affection for the person. I wish her the best of all possibly lives, but do I still love her? I do not feel for her what I feel for my friend that is rock solid.

Can my rock solid love for my friend fade? Sitting where I am today, it’s hard to imagine, but time can change us. I don’t believe it will change, but what is belief?

I appreciate you all coming along for the ride with me as I explore this topic with you and within myself.

Or is it just that some people are loyal and some are not regardless of sex?

^A good question. Perhaps someone will come along and enlighten us.

And maybe she’ll marry me and show me true love, LoL!

Your basic premise is false. There is no unconditional love between adult human beings. Can’t be. We’re too intelligent. We overthink things. But there is love, no doubt about that. And there is oxytocin which might make one say they will love someone forever, unconditionally—until the oxytocin wears off.

If you want unconditional love, get a dog. The dog won’t have any conditions, but you will. Shitting in the house is usually a deal breaker.

^ Yeah, shitting in the house is for sure a deal breaker, be that man or beast. Sorry, I love you but you’re outta here. 3 shits you’re out. lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NyUzbdyHQY

@Espiritus_Corvus When did I state a basic premise? All I can find are a bunch of questions.

Even “unconditional love” can mean many types of “love.”
My love for chocolate is unconditional.
My love for pretty girls is unconditional.
My love for my old dog was unconditional.
My love for my old Chevy pickup was unconditional.
My love of life is unconditional.
My love for an old girlfriend was unconditional.
Etc., etc., etc.
Unconditionally moot.

@Hawaii_Jake

It is implied in your question:.

“If love is not unconditional, is it love?”

1. True love is unconditional.
2. Therefore, if love is conditional, it is not love.

The love I feel for my children is like nothing I have experienced before or since with other human beings. I have different love for the family members I was born with and grew up with, and a different sort of love again for my husband and for my friends. The love for my children feels very unconditional but, as has been mentioned, are there deal-breakers? What would change the love? Would it be that the love does not change but the tolerance to be around that person changes?

Your questions are my questions, @Stinley. I don’t know the answers either. I understand that, because I have the same love for my children. Thank you.

When I was expecting my second child, I wondered how I could love another child as much as I loved the first one. How could there be any room for love when my heart was already full of love for my daughter? I even asked a friend. After she was born I felt my heart expand with the love I felt for the new one. It didn’t seem possible before to love anyone as much as I love my older daughter but it was. Having children was the making of me.

Oh @Stinley – so true! I wrote a poem when I was pregnant with my second about just those feelings and having to move the eldest, then two, “out of the nursery.” My love for my sons is like no other love.