Some time ago, I heard a phrase that sounded, at first, very romantic.
"I like you because, and I love you despite."
The idea is that we like people for their good qualities, and we love them in spite of their faults. I like her because she has such a kind heart. I love her despite her strange habits and her terrible taste in music. It's a sweet line, and I could see why people repeat it at weddings.
But the longer I sat with it, the more something about it bothered me. It seemed to say that the proof of real love is how much of someone's worst you're willing to put up with. As if love were a kind of tolerance. As if the more negatives you could swallow, the more you must love them.
I don't think that's what love is. And I think the way we talk about it says a great deal about how most of us were loved.
What does it mean to love someone unconditionally?
To love someone unconditionally is to love the whole person, not as a reward for their good qualities and not as tolerance of their faults. It's love that doesn't have to be earned and doesn't depend on them staying the same. It still allows boundaries. What it doesn't need is a reason.
That last part is the one people find hardest to believe.
Why do we attach love to conditions?
Because that's usually how we learned it.
Most of us were loved, as children, by people who were doing their best with what they'd been given. And much of the love we received came with conditions attached, spoken or unspoken. Be good and you'll be loved. Do well at school and you'll be praised. Don't be too loud, too sad, too needy, and you'll be welcome.
A child who grows up with that kind of love draws a conclusion. Love has to be earned. And when a child concludes that, they build an identity around earning it: the good one, the helpful one, the achiever, the one who never causes trouble. I call these survival identities, and many of them are built around love.
Then the child grows up and starts loving other people. And without meaning to, they love the way they were loved. With conditions. With a quiet ledger. With the sense that love is something exchanged rather than something given.
What's wrong with loving someone despite their faults?
Nothing is wrong with the kindness in it. What's worth noticing is where the attention goes.
"I love you despite" keeps the focus on the faults. It organises love around what's wrong with the other person, and around how generous we're being in putting up with it. Over time, that can quietly turn love into a kind of endurance. And endurance has limits.
Most people are driven far more by what they want to avoid than by what they're drawn toward. We give the painful things enormous weight. So it's no surprise that we measure love by how much pain we can bear for someone. But I don't think love needs to be tied to the negative at all.
It's perfectly all right to love someone because of their good side. Or for no reason you can name. I love you because my heart tells me so. I love you because you remind me of who I really am. I love you because, underneath everything, we're not so different.
Or simply: I love all of you. All that you were, all that you are, and all that you'll ever be.
Is unconditional love the same as accepting everything?
No, and this matters.
Unconditional love doesn't mean putting up with anything. You can love someone completely and still say no. You can love someone and set a firm boundary. You can love someone and leave a relationship that's harming you. The love isn't the problem in those situations. The behaviour is.
In fact, people who love unconditionally often find boundaries easier, not harder. When love isn't a transaction, you don't have to keep paying for it by tolerating what hurts you. You can be clear about what you'll accept without that clarity threatening the love itself.
Conditional love tends to blur the two. It says: if I set a boundary, I might lose your love, so I'll put up with it. Or: if you cross this line, I'll withdraw my love to punish you. Neither is really about love. Both are about fear.
Why is unconditional love so hard to give?
Because it's hard to give what you never received, and harder still to give it to others before you can give it to yourself.
If the love you grew up with had to be earned, then the love you give yourself probably does too. You're kind to yourself when you perform well, harsh when you don't. You accept yourself when you're being the good one, the strong one, the one who has it together, and quietly reject the parts of you that don't fit.
That's why unconditional love isn't something you can simply decide to do. It tends to arrive as the old conditions come off. When the survival identity that had to earn love is no longer running the show, love stops being a performance, and starts being something you can simply feel. For yourself first, and then, very naturally, for others.
I've seen that love ripple outward in surprising ways. On our stories page, there's the story of Divya Kaur, who helped her mother out of two years of depression with a single tool from the room, before she'd even completed the full course. That's how it was reported. If depression is part of your life, please keep working with your professional. I share it because it's a picture of love that didn't wait for conditions to be met. It simply showed up.
How can I notice the conditions in my own love?
This practice is written, and it takes about fifteen minutes.
Think of someone you love. Write their name at the top of a page. Then write, as truthfully as you can, three sentences that begin: I love you because. Then three that begin: I love you despite.
Look at what you've written. Which list came more easily? Which one felt more like love, and which felt more like a negotiation?
Now write one more sentence, without a because or a despite. Just: I love you. And notice how it feels to leave it there, with no reason attached.
Finally, if you're brave, do the same exercise with your own name at the top. Most people find that last page the hardest. It's also often the most revealing, because the conditions we place on loving ourselves are usually the same ones we learned first. It connects closely to why it's so hard to accept compliments.
Where did your conditions on love come from?
Often from the identity you built to be loved in the first place.
If you're curious which one that was, the short quiz Who Did You Become to Survive? may show you. It takes about ninety seconds, twenty-one questions. And it might help explain why love has always felt like something you had to earn.
Be careful what you tie your love to. It tends to become the shape of every relationship you have.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.