The Everlasting Human Need For Unconditional Love!

PART 1 ARTICLE 4 AUDIO FILE IN FOOTER

Reflecting on our families of origin, we’re often filled with a mix of love, joy, and cherished childhood memories, and inevitable feelings of disappointment and sorrow. These family dynamics shape us profoundly, leaving deep imprints on our emotional expectations and perspectives on unconditional love.

At first, we feel gratitude for the parental sacrifice that made our lives possible. Our parents loved us as best as they could, despite the countless responsibilities that parenting entails. Yet, over time, emotional baggage and personality differences naturally lead to conflicts. We expect unconditional love in family life, but this ideal often leaves us feeling frustrated when family members, each with unique limitations, fall short of fulfilling these hopes.

The idea that love should be without conditions creates guilt and frustration when it doesn’t materialize. Many of us, throughout our lives, continue to search for this elusive love from our moms, dads, and siblings — who, being only human, may not have been able to meet these expectations. This, in part, is why many people turn to therapists and counselors.

After observing families, including my own, for over seven decades, I am beginning to understand that the burden of unconditional love has been unfairly placed on the nuclear family. At its core, this expectation is unrealistic. Families are, by nature, conditional. We have differing personalities, values, and experiences. The expectations we place on one another can feel overwhelming: “You must do this,” “You must become that,” “You must feel this way.” The list is endless.

We expect to be loved in the precise way we desire, every moment of every day, regardless of what else may be happening. Yet, this is not realistic. Still, we have been conditioned to expect unconditional love from our family, and on some level, we continue to yearn for it.

No matter how many years pass, we seek the perfect mother who holds us in a perpetual embrace, supporting every decision we make without judgment, caring only that we follow the desires of our hearts— desires she can never fully know. We long for a mother who adores our quirks and unique goals, no matter how different they are from her own. A mother who accepts our values, even when she doesn’t understand them, is the rarest kind of treasure. The perfect mother never engages in actions that might hurt us, regardless of her own struggles.

Similarly, we yearn for the perfect father — the one who tells us every day how beautiful we are, showering us with affection, warmth, and praise. We dream of a father who celebrates every achievement, big or small, and who always listens to our deepest thoughts without judgment or rejection.

Siblings, too, are subject to intense expectations. As the people who lived through the same family dynamics, both the good and the bad, we often expect them to be our lifelong allies. Yet, this expectation doesn’t account for the fact that their perception of reality may be completely different from ours. It denies them the freedom to hold perspectives that diverge from our own.

When my brother and I were young, we had a game called “Two Little Kids on a Deserted Island,” which we played whenever tensions in the family became too much. We would make a tent out of his bed and imagine living on a lush island, where we picked fruit and fished for food, content with just the two of us. This was what we needed at the time — a sanctuary from the complexity of family life.

However, as life moves forward, it demands growth. We evolve, leaving behind the idyllic childhood fantasies, pursuing individual paths. Our trajectories inevitably diverge, and this is both natural and necessary. The notion that siblings should walk the same path or share the same values is, in hindsight, absurd. Yet, I have held on to this unrealistic expectation for far too long

On a deep, primitive level, I continue to crave unconditional love from my family of origin, despite knowing its impossibility. 

The Buddhist philosophy of peaceful acceptance of reality resonates with me. I strive toward it daily, though I still struggle with attachment to an ideal that never existed and never will.

Matt Kahn expressed it best: “Despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves.”

Growing up is incredibly hard, and even at 72, I feel the weight of letting go of these ideals. I now understand, at least intellectually, that it is unfair to expect anyone to change just to make me feel better.

You may wonder, “Don’t you love your family?” Of course I do! I love them more than anything — they are my heart. But it’s incumbent upon me, and upon all of us, to work toward acceptance. We must strive to love and appreciate our family members just as they are.

It is not their responsibility to please us. Our task is to allow them the space to be the amazing humans they are, free from our unrealistic expectations.

This is a lesson easily missed when we are trapped in our misguided longing for perfection but missing it would be the greatest loss of all.

My goal is to work toward unconditional love in every relationship. As I glance at the “big girl pants” hanging in my closet, I hesitantly put them on, with guarded optimism that today will be the day.

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