💙 To Clarify 💙 [Personal Tea] (Patreon)

Hey Teacups -

I uploaded a post a day or two ago called “unpopular opinion: love should not be unconditional”. Since then I’ve gotten a lot of interesting responses, and a few of them just made me want to clarify the intention behind the original post.

So, here I go. A vast majority of people felt that I made a reasonable argument for having healthy conditions to loving someone or being in a relationship (regardless of the type of relationship: family, friends, partners, etc). However, there were a few people who felt that my stance was either “unkind” or simply putting an unfair expectation on “unconditional love”. After all, what is love but the conscious choice to care for someone, and in the case of “unconditional love”, regardless of what they do or how they behave.

And to those few people, I have some further thoughts I’d like to share.

I think the trouble with tackling the subject of "unconditional love" is that a lot of people can't help but feel triggered by it. Most of us love the idea of unconditional love and why wouldn't we? "It doesn't matter what I do and you'll still love me?" Sweet!

And yeah, that sounds great. But the thing is, most of us think of "it doesn't matter what I do" as forgivable, reasonable things: occasionally being rude, forgetting date night, not always making enough time for our partner.

The problem is that that same rhetoric is used by abusers to justify unacceptable behaviour with their partners. "Well, if you love me, you'll forgive me", "hate the sin, not the sinner", "you said you'd love me no matter what".

When I say that I think love should be conditional, I suppose people might feel I'm being unkind or unaccepting of human flaws. But that's just not the case. The best people in the world have flaws. But there's a huge difference between flaws and abuse. And a lot of domestic violence thrives because abusers use the narrative of "it was just a mistake", "you're just so sensitive", "I can only be better if you stay with me". Putting all the responsibility of their actions and the outcome of the relationship onto the abused party. Simply put - “well, love is supposed to be unconditional”.

I'm not a psychologist or a doctor, but I am someone who's grown-up in a domestic violence situation. Domestic violence has not decreased over the last twenty years, it has risen. People are beaten, raped, humiliated daily by someone who claims to love them "unconditionally". And yes, it's tempting for us as people who might never have been in said domestic violence situations to think "but everyone knows that that kind of behaviour isn't love". But that's exactly why domestic violence is so successful. Not only does everyone not know, but in fact, people can be indoctrinated into accepting the worse kind of abuse as just part of the package of loving someone “unconditionally”. Ultimately, abuse doesn’t present itself immediately, it grows, just like the abuser.

If you went out with someone on a first date and they punched you, you probably wouldn't go out with them again. Unfortunately, that's not the beginning of any domestic violence situation. It's insidious and it builds and builds like a pot coming to boil, and the abused parties don't know until it's too late.

In conclusion, do I believe there’s some instances of unconditional love? Yes, I think so. Do I think it’s possible that some parents have unconditional love for their children? Yes, most likely. But the “unconditional love” I’m talking about is in reference to adults in relationships (whatever kind) with other adults. Child abuse is a complex and unfortunately all to common subject, and it is an issue for another time, with a much more informed person than I.

This post is about adults being able to take ownership of themselves and how they are treated in relationships. About them having the right to say “these are the conditions”.

At the end of the day, Teacups, believe whatever you believe. I am a stranger on the internet. But please understand that I am not slating or undermining your desire to be loved despite your flaws.

This isn’t about a list of things on someone’s tinder profile. This is about knowing that abuse cannot be disguised as “flaws”. This is about (hopefully) educating people on what domestic violence is, how it starts, and how it thrives. 

This is not personal to you, or what you look like, or any insecurity you have about getting into a relationship. This is about how my mom was abused for twenty years because she loved my dad “unconditionally”. This is about making domestic violence go down, not up.

Again, fully appreciate that I'm someone who's come out of a domestic violence situation, fully appreciate this is something I'm passionate about on a personal level, and completely respect your right to disagree.

I just hope that explains my thoughts a little more in-depth.

Best wishes,

Tea