What’s unconditional love? The term is thrown around frequently, but I haven’t ever thought about the term and its implications.

Suppose, for this discussion, we had a shared understanding of the term love. This is a really hard supposition to put forth, but let’s assume there was one.

For this love to be unconditional means there is no condition under which the love dissipates.

Does this really exist?

We normally think about unconditional love in the context of parent-child relationships, but it isn’t difficult to conjure scenarios where this love doesn’t hold.

Suppose a parent has two children who are unconditionally loved, but one child kills the other. Does the unconditional love still hold for the murderer. I apologize for the graphic scenario but it does demonstrate a flaw in our (or my) understanding of unconditional love.

It appears to me when the term unconditional love is used colloquially, it really suggests love with very few conditions.

The stronger the unconditional love, the fewer the conditions under which the love falters.

I suppose it’s important, then, to determine how “strong” the unconditional love in your life is and determine the hidden conditions for its demise.