I think we are using different defintions. I'm considering [unconditional love] as a single concept, related to but distinct from love without conditions. I have specifically seen people use it to mean "if you really loved me, you'd ..." tolerate my drug abuse/blow me/move across the country. When I say [unconditional love], I mean what they called love. And while I agree that love shouldn't- can't- be used as a carrot to motivate good behavior, and love that is destroyed by minor changes in appearance wasn't really love, I stand by the belief that love that persists despite fundamental negative changes in who you are isn't love either. I was also pretty specifically thinking about when unconditional romantic love, because that's the only place I've seen the phrase used outside of adult relative -> child love, but you're right, it doesn't have to be.
Something like dementia is a tricky case. I respect the world out of people who care for partners as they lose themselves, but I view that as something one does out of love for the person they were. Which I guess generalizes pretty well: if someone I loved developed a drug habit and I couldn't be with them anymore, the love for who they had been and their potential to be that again could persist. I wouldn't label that loving the person in their current form, but it wouldn't be wildly inaccurate to do so.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-08-07 10:41 pm (UTC)Something like dementia is a tricky case. I respect the world out of people who care for partners as they lose themselves, but I view that as something one does out of love for the person they were. Which I guess generalizes pretty well: if someone I loved developed a drug habit and I couldn't be with them anymore, the love for who they had been and their potential to be that again could persist. I wouldn't label that loving the person in their current form, but it wouldn't be wildly inaccurate to do so.