I agree. Unconditional doesn't mean you're a doormat to be used, abused, and exploited. It just means you love them through it. Sometimes the best love is letting them clean up their own mess and give them the opportunity to learn from it.

Agreed. Only dogs to humans.

Humans can possibly be as capable of it as dogs, and dogs conditioned/abused in a certain way can have that trait suppressed.

Trying not to sound too crazy here, but I have a certain amount of that left, though had more of that years ago... but as a very young child, my development was more influenced by dogs than humans. I had mostly abusive parents, but there was a lot of neglect, especially before preschool. I remember my mother telling me to go out and do whatever the dog told me to do, and not come back until I was called or if it got dark (frequently). I remember one day being out in the woods and realizing that I didn't know my way home, so I got the dog to take me to where I could see the house over and over again until I thought I could find the house on my own. Then I realized that if my mother came looking for me, I wouldn't recognize if it was her or a stranger just saying they were my mom, so I got the dog to take me home again, and I tried to get in the house. He kept blocking me when I was trying to get too close to the house. Eventually I got past him and went inside, where my mother started screaming at me even before she turned around, and started jumping up and down as she turned. When she turned around, I could see that she was purple. She kept screaming about how I wasn't supposed to come back until dark unless I was called, and for me to get out of there. I left, and figured that now I'd recognize my mother, because she was the purple screaming woman.

All that I've gone through, I guess I'm lucky - or considering what kind of person I otherwise should have turned out to be, maybe the world is lucky - that my personality was formed mostly by dogs during critical development stages.

Unconditional love from dogs. I have some objections to that. Dogs are pack animals and will be loyal to the death to their Alfa, but that is an instinct. I know I will get the wrath of most of the readers here for this, but free all I prefer to give and receive sublime feelings from humans (that’s because I don’t feel the need to ask for unconditional nothing from my companion, I know we both have to work at it or it can die).

That's a great attitude. I wish life would let us all live in that happy place forever.

what, @kensmile4u? forever? please, not. ... & it took me more than half a lifetime to realise the potential of love.

@walklightly I'm glad you found it after half a lifetime. I found it when my first child was born after a third of a life time. But I also learned after half a lifetime that love ebbs and flows with the storms of chaos that pass through all our lives.

@kensmile4u, yes, so it does, always on the move, but never gone

Like this very much - thank you ! I was struggling to find the words to express this and you gave them to us- luvya!

luv ya straight back, @jacpod!

but even as a philosophical goal, it feels good

You've said you think it is more of a philosophical goal, than a feeling. However, love is a feeling, isn't it? Conditional or unconditional?

I think what you've said is applicable to relationships other than the parent-child relationship. We may start by loving, but have to learn or grow toward the unconditional.

I think that the parent-child dynamic is different. It comes more naturally, maybe even innate, to a certain extent. There are of course parents that don't have this type of love, but I think that is an exception, maybe a dysfunction of sorts.

@walklightly It sure could.

@BeeHappy I suppose all of the feeling types of love are mostly innate, but to say that the only thing people have ever been talking about when they use the word love is just some kind of feeling or other is missing a big part of the picture I think. The “higher” manifestation of love is to do what is fair or right toward a person regardless of how you feel. In that sense, love is an act, not a feeling. Love is a philosophical commitment. Does that make sense? I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person to think this way.

I don’t think unconditional love means indestructible love; I think it means that your love isn’t conditional on the person’s behavior OR what your relationship to the person is.

@skado very well put. a fixed relationship need not come into the equation of acting out of & feeling the love at all.

@walklightly Yes, I agree. The only thing I might add is... even though the feeling is very likely to be there, it isn't even required, to meet the definition of love in this sense. The philosophical ideal would say that you should do the right thing no matter how you felt about the person and no matter how doing the right thing made you feel. You could despise the person, and being kind to them could make make you nauseous, but it would still be love if you did what was best for the person.

There are many different kinds of love (for a child, lover, parent, friend, society) and, correct me if I'm wrong (it wouldn't surprise me, it happens, ), it sounds like you are lumping them together.

The "higher" manifestation of love, I believe, grows from innate love. Over the course of any of the above relationships, the love (feelings) can change or grow, that will then influence how you act. So, I still believe love is a feeling, but it can and does influence our actions to and for that individual.

I'm not grasping that love is a philosophical commitment, but I am more of a feeling person than a thinking person, and maybe that is why?

I agree that unconditional love doesn't means indestructible love.

not sure i'm ok with that, @skado. where does that leave the love for self, also known as philautia, if actively loving a person i despise makes me feel nauseous? i understand that the universe is within me, so a despicable person is part of me too. but it doesn't mean that i have to overextend myself towards that person in order to proof the existence of unconditional love. that proof would be in the acceptance of the moment & taking a deep breath.

@BeeHappy “I'm not grasping that love is a philosophical commitment, but I am more of a feeling person than a thinking person, and maybe that is why?”

Maybe so. I don’t think there’s just one right answer. It means different things to different people, and that’s as it should be I suppose.

I think a relationship might grow close to that, eventually, never early on. "Conditions" exist, that's a given.

The person has a mental image, even if unconscious, of their ideal mate, and projects that onto the person they're focused on.

One approaches "Unconditional" love after they realize the other isn't, and never will reach that perfect image, and it ceases to matter, having grown to love them as they are.

I am speaking of romantic love of course, (parental love, friendly love are very, very separate entities)

That's all too simplistic, perhaps, but I feel this is the base/truth...

@walklightly I don’t think we have any obligation to prove the existence of unconditional love, or any obligation to perform it. It just seems to me that a definition of “unconditional” is that the giving of the love is not dependent on any conditions. If we withhold love because the person or the circumstances don’t meet our required conditions, then that love was clearly conditional, right?

@skado, ok, i already had an inkling that you might snag on the word 'proof'. what i am trying to get at is that actively loving someone who i despise, if that entails extending myself to the point of exhaustion or nausea, is not unconditional love anymore, the condition being that i love myself less in order to be able to love the other. i realise here that for me unconditional love will always be a kind of balancing act. so, let's say, i am at peace with myself, where unconditional love is effortless. then a despicable person enters my universe. my love remains the same, unconditional in its being. what i am actively capable of doing in the name of this unconditional love depends on my human strength, not on any judgment.

@njoy_life_2 That sounds like a very reasonable and useful interpretation. A very valid perspective.

@walklightly I’ll have to think about it a minute...

@walklightly Of course we’re all free to see it however we see it, but for the sake of discussion…. It seems to me that the phrase unconditional love is referring to a kind of love based on principle rather than on feeling. That you give what is needed rather than what feels good to give. Love based on altruism rather than on affection. The basic working definition of altruism is to give up something of value to yourself, for the benefit of another. So to me, unconditional love carries a connotation of sacrifice. Personal loss for the betterment of another. You give, at expense to yourself, out of principle, not out of a desire to reward a person for gratifying your affection. The definition of the phrase has conditions; the act itself doesn’t. The conditions don’t have anything to do with yourself. That refers to conditions the recipient must meet (or not) before the love is given.

None of my favorite dictionaries back me up on this. They all give definitions based on affection. So this probably comes ultimately from past religious training, and/or cultural influence, but in any case, such behavior does exist, so if not unconditional love, what should we call it?

@skado, despite finding it increasingly difficult to word my sentiment in my second language... i really am hooked!

unconditional love to me only works if i do not deprive my self in acting it out into the world. i perceive the universe being within, or rather the self being all i have in the perception of my senses, my experience of the world. so there is no 'other'. love exists, whether i acknowledge, like or repress it. so the best i can do is make the most of it, which is a free-form of love, no expectations, no demands, no conditions.

so, no altruism by the book for me. by the book i might pick two of the six types of love according to ancient greek philosophy: there is philia, translated as friendship or comradeship (a bit weak perhaps?), & then there is pragma, meaning a mature, deep love. both don't fully satisfy me here, so i'll stick with free-form love, bound to nothing.

@walklightly Thanks for sharing your worldview. I’m glad that’s working for you, and I’m glad we are free to see things differently.

absolutely, @skado! diversity makes life more interesting. thank you too.

couldn't the fact that your father "would flip" be an indication of his unconditional love for you? if he wouldn't care for you, he might not even shrug his shoulders. people have to fight terrible emotional battles when their love is challenged - but that doesn't make the love less unconditional or real.

@walklightly however what he does after could disavow his unconditional love

@MuhammadSaleh98, i'm sorry, talking big just to keep optimistic, when as a matter of fact i can't even comprehend to have been born into a religious, let alone muslim family. respect to you!

@walklightly it's quite alright I welcome ideas and thoughts that might differ from my own

Too right. That person you loved so much but realised they were poison so you juggle the emotions in your brain and move them to that category usually reserved for the wayward child. You love them and it is unconditional, but out of pure self preservation you no longer give them power over you. Very hard trick, so much easier to hate.

That behavior is similar to kids that won’t turn in an abusive parent, maybe better to stay with the devil you know than risk it.

yes, & that's the whole secret: it is always there; only when i open up to its reality - realise its unconditionality - will i experience it.

I can't say that stalking is an indicator of love. That's more like an indication of selfishness. Selfish "love" is when someone wants someone else solely for what the other can do for them - how the other makes them feel, look, etc. They want to possess. Love is wanting what is best for the other person, even if it comes at a painful cost to the individual.