Unconditional Love: Fostering Acceptance and Empathy

Tools of Liberation in Relationships

This article is part of my Tools of Liberation in Relationships series. Click here to start from the beginning.

I have struggled to write this piece. It’s been weeks since I published anything, and that’s unusual for me. I had planned to write about unconditional love as the next article in this series. But every time I sat down to write, something in me resisted. I kept asking myself: Do I even believe in unconditional love? Not in the abstract, but in practice, in the messiness of relationships, in the wake of betrayal, in the aftermath of harm. I wasn’t sure.

For a long time, I thought I was practicing unconditional love in my marriage. I stayed when my ex-husband regularly disappeared all night, when he drank himself into oblivion, when he crashed cars, got arrested, and frightened me. I stayed when he put his hands on me. I kept telling myself that love was supposed to be unconditional, that if I truly loved him, I would stay through it all.

But that wasn’t love. That was conditioned fear and survival. That was me internalizing everything that tells women that suffering is proof of devotion. I’ve come to understand that what I was practicing was not unconditional love, it was the absence of boundaries. The consequences were not romantic. They were devastating.

So this article isn’t going to romanticize unconditional love. I think it’s often misunderstood. I think it’s been weaponized, especially against women and caregivers, to encourage self-erasure. I think it kept me in a marriage that was damaging to me. And I think the cost of that misunderstanding is part of what makes me so cautious now, some might say “closed off.” But I know myself better now. I know how long it takes me to feel safe and how slowly I move. I know what I need in order to offer the kind of love I do believe in. Love that is generous, grounded, and reciprocal.

That love starts with me. If I have learned anything, it’s that the only unconditional love that truly matters is the one we cultivate for ourselves. Everything else, every act of care, every offering of closeness, should have room for discernment, growth, and boundaries that protect our sacred well-being.

Unconditional Love as a Path

These days, I don’t think of unconditional love as a rule to live by. I think of it as a path, one we may have to walk slowly, imperfectly, and with care. It’s not about ignoring harm, bypassing anger, or dissolving all boundaries. It’s about cultivating a kind of love that can exist without possession. A love that seeks no control. A love that sees clearly and still chooses compassion. But getting there takes work and time. For many of us, especially those who have lived in survival mode, that kind of love doesn’t come easily.

When you have been betrayed or abused, when you have had to watch your back, when trust has cost you something, you don’t arrive at unconditional love with open arms. You crawl toward it, sometimes against the grain of everything you have learned about what it means to stay safe. You may find that your nervous system can’t relax around unpredictability, that you brace when others get too close, that love feels like a risk.

This is why the work of personal growth is not about forcing ourselves to love unconditionally. It’s about healing the parts of us that needed conditions to survive.

In parent-child relationships, this might mean recognizing how fear of judgment or failure shaped the way we were loved, or how we have loved our own children. It might mean softening the need to control, learning to affirm worth even when behavior doesn’t meet our expectations. Sometimes parents send the message to their children that they love them because they’re doing well, not because they see them and appreciate them. It’s the difference between teaching performance and providing safety.

In romantic relationships, it might mean being honest about the subtle ways we withhold affection when we are hurt, or use closeness as a reward. It might mean owning the rules we have internalized around worthiness, rules that say love must be earned through perfection, productivity, or sacrifice. It might mean learning to release someone with love, instead of punishing them with distance.

Unconditional love isn’t about tolerating harmful behavior. It’s about detaching from the need to control how others show up, while still maintaining integrity in how we show up. It’s love with boundaries, without ego, that doesn’t require agreement, but does require accountability and self-honoring.

We can call this “loving detachment,” the ability to hold others in compassion while also holding ourselves in protection. It’s not cold or passive. It is staying grounded in your own energy and choosing to respond instead of react. Sometimes, it’s knowing when to step back in order to stay open.

This requires a deep sense of safety within yourself. Many of us were not taught this, especially if we were raised in environments where love was conditional, chaotic, or withheld, we become wired to confuse urgency with connection. We rush toward people, try to earn our way back into someone’s good graces, and contort ourselves to stay close to those who feel familiar, even if familiarity is not safe.

So the practice begins with noticing: when you abandon yourself in the name of love, when your body says no even if your heart says maybe, when you feel consumed, not connected. Loving detachment means you stop ignoring your own cues in order to stay attached.

This is hard. It is grief work. We have to mourn the love we didn’t get and the love we gave too freely. It is the work of realizing that compassion, when truly rooted in care, includes you. It is the work of realizing that you cannot help to liberate anyone else if you are not liberated yourself.

Aspirations

The slow rebuilding of trust between me and me. Gently speaking to myself after a mistake. Praising myself for walking away from something that didn’t feel good even if it felt familiar. Choosing rest over performance, honesty over appeasement.

Unlearning conditional love. Questioning how I have measured my own worth. Catching the voice that says, “you’re only lovable if…”

Doing this work so that capacity grows. Loving from overflow, not obligation. Becoming less reactive and more spacious. Letting others be who they are without taking it personally or trying to mold them into something safer. Paying attention to boundaries as expressions of care, not punishment. Becoming more forgiving, not because harm is forgotten, but because my well-being no longer depends on carrying the weight of it.

This is what I aspire to now. Love rooted in self-respect and offered freely, not conditionally. Love that starts with me and radiates outward. And when I ever truly arrive there, I’ll know because I won’t be striving or searching. I’ll be loving with ease, clarity, and without losing myself. Always remember that change in the world has to start with change in ourselves.