Unconditional love...What is it

Unconditional love... is it real between two people who are not blood related?

i mean within the family we don’t really have a choice

outside the family unit can we really love unconditionally?

At my age and past experiences I haven’t been able to tolerate qualities that I found difficult in the other person .
Would that mean I haven’t been in love then?

What is it and is it real between two people who are not blood related?

What is it and is it real between two people who are not blood related? i mean within the family we don’t really have a choice but to accept them but outside the family unit can we really love unconditionally? At my age and past experiences I haven’t been able to tolerate qualities that I found difficult in the other person .Would that mean I haven’t been in love then?

Seems easy enough to look up the individual terms.
Loving someone, either a feeling or communicated behavior, that isn't predicated upon expected reciprocation.


I think it would be important to define love and it's conditions.
Are you under the impression that "love" is an absolute goal that is self perpetuating and correcting to maintain itself, influencing everything about a person, absolutely changing them to an uber human with nothing but positive and altruistic goals?

Like once you achieve it then it's there, always and forever, to the same degree, the same feelings, like a nugget in your brain that exudes love radiation to the same degree for the rest of your life?


Sure you do.
How many parents want their kid to GTFO when they turn 18?
How many kids want to GTFO when they turn 18, or want to run away before that age?
People absolutely have a choice.
They just don't like the consequences of making that choice.
They rationalize their behavior and beliefs and emotional conditions.
People want what they want they just don't want to be labeled for their choices.
So they simply come up with justifiable reasons (or plausible deniability) making their choices appear to be altruistic and loving and all those socially valued traits.
"It's not that I want you to GTFO when you're 18...uh...it's because I love you and it's time for you to leave the nest and explore the world and have your own life! Yeah, that's it, sniff sniff cry, oh I love you so much, my baby is leaving! Look at me, I'm signalling that it's unconditional love for my children!"


No.
There are always conditions.
The conditions are sometimes internal though rather than dependent upon reciprocal behavior from the other person.
IOW following a script to establish, maintain, and perpetuate a social identity.
IMO most of what people label as "love" is simply ego.
"Unconditional love" is just what bards and poets and hollywood screenwriters came up with to give people something to rationalize their behavior and feel better about themselves and/or better than others.

Every single thing a human being does, emotes, or feels is for a very simple reason:
1. immediate survival. Chase food, run from danger, maintain efficient energy use for homeostasis, feel pleasure.
2. procreate and keep offspring alive so it can self perpetuate.
3. establish a social identity to conform to a herd that facilitates point 1 and 2.
4. establish position/hierarchy in the social herd.


Maybe. If you've spent more than a week in regular contact with someone you've probably been in some stage of some kind of love with someone.

Again, love isn't a trophy you can win, stick on a shelf, and pull it down when you want/need to in order to feel a certain way, is always there for the rest of your life unvarnished and absolute.

You have biologically determined, brain chemistry, emotional association determined "love" for the sake of procreation, then you have a bunch of types of "love" that are more along the lines of social delusion for the sake of conforming to the herd and protecting a group to facilitate personal desires and identity.

You can "be in love" through a process, maybe you (conforming to what you perceive to be societal demands) decided you didn't want kids and family but education and a job, so you actively (or nonconsciously) worked against the biological bonding process.
You could have "been in love" for 3 seconds or 3 weeks until you started working against it, working to recover from it.

If you've ever had a difficult time after a breakup because everything you do, think, feel, reminds you of the other person even though they aren't around, you haven't seen or talked to them, it means you were probably "in love" with them, having associated them deeply into your memory and emotions.

That's ultimately what love is. A process of imprinting someone into your memories which affect your thoughts and feelings which influence your behavior.

If you spend enough time with anyone, they are imprinted into your brain, how you interact with them determines how they are associated generally.

The biological process for falling in love for mating purposes uses stronger more hormonal related chemistry to push the imprinting into "deeper" memory associations, associate with pleasure, as well as all the shared feelings, goals, desires, utility, etc.

You're still you. They're just deeply imprinted into your thoughts in ways you may not realize. Your memory is ultimately your identity. They become a part of your identity, you adapt similar mannerisms maybe without realizing it, what motivated you before still motivates you but when you feel an urge, compulsion, feeling, emotion, whatever, a part of them is associated with it to some degree.

It's why "friends first" is not really possible. You only have a small window to go through the biological process of love. The more you delay it, the more you are signalling to your brain to stop seeing the other person as a potential mate. The longer you do that the more the brain will form negative associations and resentment for sticking around that person, as it wants you to go out and try to pass on DNA.

It's why trying to remain "just friends" after a breakup is a bad idea as it keeps the brain from healing and changing the association network. That will keep people from falling "in love" again to a necessary degree.
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Truth! They don't want to hear that. Uber human

No such thing, everyone has a line in the sand

Thank you all I appreciate all your opinions and will ponder on it. It seems the older I get the more confused I am with love and relationships but one thing is sure for me though I can and will give unconditional love the way you guys described it.

Then maybe simply stop confusing yourself and make loving yourself a priority in life? That's always the first step to (true) love.
As for the rest, why worry whether love is conditional or unconditional? As long as you and a partner are happy.

I'm always pretty black & White with this stuff...
Is any of us Buddha, Jesus or Mary? Nope.
So can we love unconditionally? Nope.
Can we love deeply? Yes.
So can we live happily ever after? Yes.
End of story