Is Unconditional Love Actually Healthy?
A parent who lays eyes on their child will likely declare its existence. Devout followers of a faith may turn to the divine for it. Many romantic comedies are based on it, while poetry and love songs serenade us about it, and those falling for each other, or happily married, often unwaveringly proclaim it. We’re talking about unconditional love.
But what exactly is unconditional love? Better yet, is it doable or even healthy? We asked experts to unpack if it can really conquer all, or if it's just rosy fiction, capable of causing more harm than good.
Unconditional love basically means you're not expecting anything in return.
“It's a matter of extending our non-judgmental attention, acceptance, and caring toward a person without any expectation or hope of receiving anything back, or wanting them to change in order to meet our needs,” says John Amodeo, PhD and a licensed marriage and family therapist. “When the happiness and security of another is as real and meaningful to us as our own, we love that person unconditionally," adds Stephen G. Post, PhD, president of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. However, the trouble with this ideology is human love tends to be conditional on reciprocal calculations, tit-for-tat pay backs, and is generally a bit nearsighted, Post says.
Okay, but is unconditional love healthy?
If there's any sort of abuse or violence in the relationship, that's when unconditional love can cease to be a good thing, argues Post. “Love of self is as important as love of your neighbor,” Post continues. “Unconditional love can be healthy, but this does not imply tolerating hurtful behaviors. No one should ever be a doormat because it teaches others treating people that way is okay when it’s not,” he says.
Taken to an extreme, the belief that we should remain unconditionally loving, could enable a partner who refuses to enter couples counseling or seek personal help for a serious addiction problem, says Amodeo. “It could be a self-betrayal to remain with a partner who is damaging our soul,” he adds.
Yes, unconditional love can be be good for you.
Love isn't merely some altruistic action or duty, says Post. The unlimited type, especially, has to do with a real warmth that generally includes a sense of joy. This state of emotional being is healthy because the neurological circuits associated with it—like the mesolimbic pathway—when active, turn off the parts of the brain associated with bitterness, hostility, and other destructive emotional states that if left turned on create long-lasting stress and can do damage over time to vascular health, says Post.
But arguably, unconditional love goes against human nature.
In the experience of John Amodeo, PhD and a licensed marriage and family therapist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, loving unconditionally in an adult relationship is a “noble ideal," but it doesn’t pass the "reality test.” He compares doing so to complying with a child’s plea, no matter how poorly they treat us. Of course, on the other hand, "mature love requires reciprocity,” he says. An adult is not a needy child who doesn't know any better.
Amodeo additionally compares his argument to a flower bed, which can only thrive with fertile soil, ample water, and adequate sunshine. In the same way, our relationships can't bloom in a climate of neglect, he says. “Just as there are limits to what nature can offer us, there are limits to what we can offer others because as human beings we’re wired to have needs for acceptance, kindness, and intimacy,” says Amodeo, who wrote Dancing with Fire: A Mindful Way to Loving Relationships.
Now don’t get us wrong. It can feel good to offer love and nurturing to someone we care about without expectations of an immediate return. We can't, however, expect to extend ourselves indefinitely if we’re not getting enough back or if our kindly expressed needs are continually ignored, Amodeo adds. Doing so can inevitably lead to feelings of depletion or defeat. Know there is absolutely nothing shameful about wanting to meet our basic human longings in our adult relationships.
As with any love, it starts with how we view ourselves.
Ever heard of the idea that the love we accept reflects the love we think we deserve? Let’s dig into that as it relates to what unconditional love is. The most effective way to love another person is to be committed to our own personal growth. This includes unconditionally accepting our own authentic feelings or longings and caring enough about ourselves to convey our needs or desires to someone we love, says Amodeo.
“Our way forward is not to pride ourselves on being unconditionally loving, but rather to empower ourselves to learn what it takes to create a lasting, mature love. Rather than striving for selfless love, we can do our part to create conditions for mutual love,” he adds.
It varies between parental love and the romantic kind.
If in your eyes love is merely a kind of caring, as it is often the case in parental love, then love can be unconditional, says Ben-Ze'ev, the founding and former president of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions. However, if love involves (in addition to caring) two-sided interactions amplifying the growth of the lovers and their relationship, then love must be–at least to a certain extent–conditional, he says.
And no matter what, conflicts must be resolved respectfully.
Emerson Eggerichs, Phd, author of Love & Respect, often challenges couples by saying, “in a conflict, the most mature person moves towards the other to seek forgiveness.” Unconditional love means there’s nothing your spouse can do to get you to stoop to a level that causes you to be unkind or harsh, according to Eggerichs, who defines unconditional love within the context of marriage.
“Our spouses don’t cause us to be the way we are, they reveal who we are,” he says. “It’s not always easy! Especially if our spouse is being less than mature,” says Eggerichs, adding his definition of unconditional love doesn’t suggest that we applaud or ignore unacceptable behavior. “Unconditional love sometimes means the most loving thing we can do is have a hard conversation" about our partner's pitfalls.
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