Unconditional Love

Is unconditional love possible? Is it healthy? Or is it just an illusion for those of us who experienced childhood trauma or neglect; wishful thinking that maybe one day we’ll get our needs met?

It is common to talk about the unconditional love a parent has for their child. As healthy and healing parents, we aren’t looking to our kids to meet our needs. We aren’t looking to them for our identity and our worth. This makes unconditional love possible. But we look for these things in our adult relationships and call this love. And we find ourselves exhausted, fearful, resentful, disappointed and empty. As children, when we don’t get our emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs met for safety, attention, affection, identity and love, we can spend the rest of our lives relentlessly looking for these things in our adult relationships. Or give and give and give in an attempt to receive. And call this unconditional love.  

And we do want to feel safe in our relationships. We do want attention and affection and love. We are created to be in connection with others. We’re not going to thrive in isolation and avoidance of the vulnerability of loving and being loved. Healthy love grows where there is a balance of interdependence. There is me and there is you and there is we. Not one or the other. Not one over the other. You matter and I matter. You are a priority and I am a priority, to ourselves and to each other.  

Without these things, unconditional love can be mistaken for codependency, martyrdom, and loss of self. Unconditional love is not over-giving, managing the other, fixing, controlling, manipulating or demanding. It is not putting up with abuse, mistreatment or harm. Unconditional love can’t be anything that isn’t loving. And it can not go against loving self. Unconditional love requires deep connection, first and foremost to yourself.  Unconditional love is only possible if the foundation is unconditional self love. It has to begin within. 

Unconditional love requires living intentionally attentive to ourselves and our own lives. If we are not aware of our own story and the wounds that have shaped us, and working to heal these things, we will be thinking, acting and relating unconsciously, not out of love or freedom or hope or trust or plenty but out of our fears, our shame, our trauma, our regrets, and a lack mentality. The greatest unconditional gift we can give our loved ones is our ongoing work on our own growth and healing. The most empowering thing we can do for ourselves is take the focus off others and how we want them to change, and look at ourselves and the work needed to be the best versions of ourselves. Unconditional love is being responsible for our own inner and outer world. Looking into our own eyes, holding our own gaze and being there for our selves. Not exclusively, instead of intimacy with others, but as well as. As we hold onto others for dear life, are we first holding onto our self?

Unconditional love is a spiritual love that connects us to something greater than ourselves and invites us to surrender and trust in a purpose larger than ourselves. Unconditional love is a transforming love that has the power to not only heal you and me but our broken and hurting world. It is the radical gift we receive to give to ourselves, to each other, and to the world.