I remember a time when I was out having dinner with loved ones and their grandchildren and I was super excited as I hadn’t seen them in a long time and had missed everyone so much. As we sat at the dinner table, I was shown a picture of the kids on a phone screen displaying their younger selves, and was asked to relay a message to the kids regarding how much that time had been missed.
I sat there for a moment wondering what to do, wondering how the kids will respond, wondering what each party was to get from this exchange, and so I asked what the point of the message was in order to understand the motivation behind the request. The response I got was, “We used to be so close and I have a lot of happy memories of them back then. I prefer this time we had together as we’re no longer close now.” My response to this was, “Well… they’re here right now aren’t they? Why don’t you spend some time getting to know them as they are currently instead of focusing on the past and what was? How do you think telling them this would make them feel?”
We got into a bit of a dialogue about this and I could tell it was going nowhere. So, instead of relaying that exact message as requested, I decided to pull the core meaning behind the messaging and only relay the most important part — the love that was shared in the past. I turned to the kids and said, “Hey! We just want you guys to know that we all LOVE y’all SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much!!!” without any expectations from them and OMGGGGGG the giant heart-given-smiles that ensued freaking MELTED my own heart!
I believe I made the right choice in that moment — to be present with the kids and to give them unconditional love without needing them to perform for us or return our love in an obligatory way, which unfortunately I believe was the intention behind the request even if the person wasn’t fully aware of it.
I was so glad I listened to my inner alarm bells because I sensed where this was coming from, the land of conditional love, and where it was heading, guilt-ville for the kiddos, and I was NOT having it. I truly believe that unconditional love is really one of the most important pathways to help break generational trauma and to help people heal. Conditional love keeps people trapped in guilt, shame, awkwardness, obligation, and helplessness. I was not about to have the kids go through that with us. There’s plenty of conditional love to go around and I’m so glad I made a choice in that moment to stop it from reaching the kids.
Children in particular are a sensitive area for me where I feel incredibly protective. Idk why, maybe it’s because I constantly feel like a giant child myself lol. But when I see people who lack the self awareness to know how their behavior impacts and affects others, who only focus on their own needs instead of those of both parties, who haven’t done AND also refuse to do their inner work, I just feel a strong need to protect the next generation as this behavior can and will continue passing on generational trauma to the innocent.
Sometimes, part of me wonders if I’m stopping the natural force of nature from happening and that maybe I shouldn’t prevent conditional love from occurring, then perhaps it’ll be a good and necessary life lesson for kids, just how I learned about it. But whenever I ponder this idea, I generally land on the thought where conditional love is so pervasive that we get to experience it all the time even if we don’t want to, but when people actually get to experience authentic unconditional love, a usually rare occurrence, that leaves a much more impactful, healing, and powerfully lasting experience. Therefore, my current belief is that people need to experience what true unconditional love *actually* feels like, that they are loved simply because they exist and have their own unique gifts to offer this world, so that they can thrive and grow into the highest and best possible versions of themselves without being addled by the unnecessary guilt, shame, and obligation towards those who demand love from them in a conditional way.
Let’s take a moment to explore what unconditional love means so that we can get on the same page regarding its definition in case it’s different for us.
I’ve heard confusion from others around unconditional love before where people think it’s foolish and enables abuse. I had to ponder that a bit and I’ve come to understand that some people use “unconditional love” to justify their malignant behaviors. It might look something like this, “Since you love me unconditionally, you will excuse any bad behavior I do that crosses your boundaries and disrespects you. You’ll accept that I care about my own needs more than yours. Don’t you want to be a good and loving person?” or even the insidious, “But we’re family and you know that I love you. I’m only just doing what I think is best for you.” This keeps people trapped in guilt, allowing abusive behavior to continue, preventing their own needs from being met, and causes massive confusion on what unconditional love actually should be like. So yes, I can agree that unconditional love WITHOUT healthy boundaries is indeed foolish and enables abuse. However, my definition of unconditional love involves HAVING healthy boundaries.
What I believe is incredibly important is that we develop our own self love and care to first learn our own capacity for giving and receiving love, where we fill our own cups up and can then share the excess love we have with others without needing anything in return to help us feel fulfilled, and to also learn how to set strong and healthy boundaries that can help protect all parties. Having boundaries doesn’t mean we don’t love others fully, it just means we have some guardrails on how we would like to share and experience this love.
Think about a playground. Without any boundaries around the playground, isn’t it dangerous when kids wander off or when things that shouldn’t enter (e.g., cars) make their way in? If someone is abusing us and we continue to love them unconditionally without boundaries while taking in all of their abuse, this becomes an incredibly UNHEALTHY dynamic that can potentially scar us even further, cause trauma, and deal unthinkable damage. It’s as if we’re in a playground and someone keeps driving a car all over the place trying to run us over. But if we recognize that someone who’s willing to abuse us probably has a lot of healing to do themselves, we can accept that, we don’t have to be around them to love them. We can choose to love them from afar and wish them well and we can find healthier people to be around. We can choose other better and safer playgrounds to play in where others actually respect the rules and care for our wellbeing. This way, we don’t have to become resentful of them and their abusive behavior, which quite frankly is a self-made prison that hurts us even more, and we can still have love for them, just from very far away in our own place of safety. Remember that we are the only ones who can do our own healing. We cannot force others to do their own healing. And so if they refuse to do their inner work, you know what you have to do.
A quick example to highlight loving someone from afar who has negative and manipulative intent is an ex of mine who, due to feeling intense resentment from our breakup, decided to take revenge on me while appearing to be kind, devoted, and caring. When the ‘grand plan’ was revealed, thankfully without it actually being carried out, I realized that they probably didn’t love me the way I wanted to be loved. I think my ex just wanted to see me in pain from the reveal, or as a friend suggested, wanted me to be grateful for their ‘restraint’ — like ‘wow! what a wonderful person you are for not fully executing your revenge plan! you must *really* love me!’
I immediately drew strict boundaries out of self protection and cut off all contact. I had regretted keeping in touch with the ex out of compassion and empathy for their sorrow but perhaps it was a good thing I did so that I was able to discover who they truly were and see where their words and actions did not align. I don’t hate them, I don’t want them to experience harm, in fact, I’d love for them to heal and become healthier so that they can finally be free from this pain and suffering. I still care about them as a person and hope the best for them, however, I have zero desire to have any contact or ever be near them again. The conclusion I made is that people willing to carry out harm towards us *probably* don’t really love us unconditionally and it’s totally okay to cut them from our lives. Actions speak louder than words. No matter how much my ex told me we are meant to be together, that I’m sorely missed, that I’m the love of their life and the only one meant for them, seeing how they were willing to plan and execute revenge told me everything I needed to know. When it becomes clear to us that manipulation and intentional harm is being done to us, I believe it is our duty to have the self respect to leave such dangerous situations ASAP if it’s within our power. Of course safety comes first and situations can be tricky. But if it’s not a life or death situation, definitely please leave.
What I usually like to do to help figure out whether love is conditional or unconditional, aside from detecting whether something is wanted in return to help fill a void in another, is to identify whether both parties get something positive out of the experience. If the experience leaves one side feeling awful or negative, like their needs had not been considered, their voice had not been heard, and/or they feel unseen, then I don’t believe that’s truly unconditional love. I believe that unconditional love generally creates win-win scenarios in a very healthy and natural way where both parties want to understand the other better even if they have disagreements or don’t see eye to eye. Of course situations might not be so black and white, so just because not everyone comes out of a conversation feeling good doesn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t any unconditional love present. Just from my experience, the most loving and healing conversations allowed both sides to feel seen and heard even if they don’t agree because at least they reached mutual understanding.
When we give without expectations but with healthy boundaries, we get the gift of giving while the other gets the gift of receiving. Whether they want to return that love is completely up to them and our self worth and feeling of love and fulfillment should not be reliant on how the other party chooses to “return” our gifts to us. There is no obligatory returning, there is no obligatory repaying of debts. With boundaries, the balance of giving and receiving love is naturally achieved.
Perhaps now you might have a question of what if it becomes very imbalanced where the giver keeps on giving while the receiver keeps on receiving? This is where boundaries shine, AGAIN. If you’re giving until your cup is empty, then that’s a giant red flag, please stop. Setting some boundaries around how much you’re willing to give will be incredibly important. Ensuring that your own cup is consistently full, that while you’re giving unconditional love to others you don’t neglect to fill your own self love cup, is vital to your own health and wellbeing. As long as you maintain a healthy balance, you can continue giving as much as you’d like. Never let that self love cup run dry. You deserve to be loved as much as you give to others. I truly believe this is a key principle to remember and live by. Always ensure that you’re taken care of as well and that your own needs are met. Giving so much of ourselves when our needs are not met is a surefire way of building resentment and that’s not an ideal path to take IMO. Not to mention, it’d be completely awful for our health on all levels (mental, physical, emotional, and even spiritual).
To wrap up these thoughts, I think the main points here are about:
- stopping generational trauma,
- becoming clear on what unconditional love truly is,
- the importance of healthy boundaries,
- and remembering to fill our own cups and to take care of ourselves as much as we care for others.
Generational trauma can be broken but it takes someone to become aware of it first and then to choose to put a stop to it by picking different actions than what one has been conditioned or taught to do. Why not let that person be you? And if you’re already doing so, THANK YOU!!! We need more people like YOU in the world. Let’s create and contribute to a much more authentically and unconditionally loving world.