Think again if you think you can love unconditionally

Ever since my daughter-in-law told me that I have failed as a grandparent because I don’t love my grandchildren unconditionally, I feel my hackles rising whenever people talk about unconditional love as if it is not only unquestionably real, but is also a crucial component in the relationship of a parent and child, and in one’s relationship with a lover or spouse, and thus is something that we all should try to attain.

In May, I chanced upon a news item about a letter addressed to Brian Landrie — a young man who murdered his girlfriend — from his mother, who seems to believe wholeheartedly in unconditional love:

“I just want you to remember I will always love you and I know you will always love me. Nothing can make me stop loving you. Nothing will or could ever divide us. If you’re in jail, I will bake a cake with a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags.”

Would those who regard unconditional love as the highest form of love applaud Brian Landrie’s mother as an admirable model and someone to emulate?

What would it mean to love unconditionally? “Unconditional” means not subject to any conditions. So unconditional love must be love that remains unchanging no matter what happens. Such love by definition must be perfect: “completely free from faults or defects”— the perfect, ideal form of love that Plato believed each of us strives to achieve.

I suppose it is conceivable that human beings exist, or have existed, who love others with totally unchanging love. But I doubt whether such people constitute more than a minuscule portion of the number of people on earth at any particular time.

If, as many people believe, unconditional love means that you always want the best for someone else without regard for its effect on you and without wanting anything in return, how can you know without any doubts exactly what it is that is best for someone else?

If the child you think you love unconditionally decides to pursue a career in the theatre at 18, and you encourage her to follow her dream, will you still happily encourage her to follow her dream if at 40, she is still bent on appearing on stage after two decades of failed auditions? Can you be sure that your continuing to encourage her in what has become a futile pursuit was or is really what was best for her? And can you be sure that your affection for that child will not change in any way?

Moreover, if you declare everlasting, unconditional love for another person, you must believe that you can predict the future, although where people are concerned that is not possible with any degree of certainty.

Change and unpredictability are inextricably part of life. Countless seemingly love-filled marriages have disintegrated when one or both partners changed significantly or behaved in an unpredictable way that their partner simply could not accept.

Extreme examples of change and unpredictability provide an amusing plot twist in the 1953 movie “The Captain’s Paradise,” a film starring British actor Alec Guinness as a ship’s captain. The captain enjoys a sober existence with his staid, domesticated British wife in Gibraltar. In his other port of call, in what was then Spanish Morocco, he keeps a much younger, sexy, tempestuous lover, with whom he goes dancing and drinking every night.

After some years, the British wife discovers that she wants adventure and excitement, while the Spanish lover becomes tired of being out every night and decides she wants to stay home and cook.

The Guinness character is a rascal who is far too selfish to be capable of unconditional love, but if we suspend disbelief and imagine that he loves each woman unconditionally, what are the chances that he would feel the same after each woman undergoes such a radical change?

An article on the website Healthline.com, “What’s (Unconditional) Love Got to Do With It?” pointed out that if conditions in any relationship never change, “you might never know whether your love truly is unconditional. In reality, love grows and shifts over time.

Love changes, in part, because people change. You, or your partner, may not be the same person years down the line. Instead of seeking out an idealized, potentially unattainable type of love, try for a better, more realistic, goal: mature love founded on compassion and respect.”

Those words apply equally well to the relationship between a parent and a child, and between a grandparent and a grandchild. So when my daughter-in-law condemned me for failing to love my grandchildren unconditionally and thus failing in my job as a grandparent, I felt irritated, but not bothered. Because I rejected her accusation as delusional.