Unconditional love is love that is freely given – it makes no demands and has no expectations of the object of its love (Watts & Stenner, 2014). It is often conceptualized as existing independent of romantic love, sexual desire, even the bonds of family, although of course love can be given unconditionally in each of these situations. What distinguishes unconditional love is that it is motivated and sustained by sheer care and satisfaction in giving love (Gilligan, 1993). Many people conceptualize unconditional love as something that is offered to all beings (Post, 2003), but as a therapist, I am most interested in what it is like when unconditional love is offered to one person by another.
When a person acts on unconditional love, they are not acting to satisfy their own needs (Post, 2003), although it feels good to act out of unconditional love. When one feels unconditional love, one embraces the happiness of others without coveting it or growing jealous.
To feel unconditional love for another person is not simply feeling empathy or compassion for them (Beauregard et al., 2009). Empathy is understanding and feeling what another person is feeling – we can do these things without feeling love for another person. Similarly, compassion is a desire for another person not to suffer, and unconditional love is not limited to times when a person is suffering.
The one brain imaging study I could find on unconditional love found that the patterns of brain activation are different when people focus on unconditional love versus romantic love or love for one’s child (Beauregard et al., 2009). It is clear from their results that the reward system in the brain is highly activated during experiences of unconditional love, which to me suggests that unconditional love may be characterized by finding the successes and happiness of other people to be intrinsically rewarding. This reinforces the idea that unconditional love is not about what I get from the situation, but it is instead about my feeling good about somebody else’s good feelings.
Unconditional Love vs Conditional Love
Conditional love is love based on the degree to which the object of love satisfies our expectations (Welwood, 1985). In other words, it is based on the answer to the question, “What does this person do for me?” People feeling unconditional love are not concerned with this question, because their unconditional love is not based on their own wants or needs.
Although this might not sound like a very desirable form of love, I think if we are being honest, most love is conditional love. I love my friends, but if they stopped sharing the same interests as me, no longer wanted to engage in meaningful conversations, and couldn’t be counted on to support me and ask for support – well, I would probably start to love them less. In fact, I would probably start to feel resentment or frustration instead of love.
I imagine things might look similar for you in most of your relationships. If you are a parent, you might have experience with unconditional love. In those moments when a parent looks at a child and thinks, “There is nothing you could do that would make me stop loving you,” they are feeling unconditional love. It is possible to feel this way toward people who are not fully dependent on us, though – you can feel unconditional love for a friend, relative, lover, or even a complete stranger.
