Conditional Love
The most important lesson we learn from our families is how to love. Each family has its own dance of intimacy, meaning they teach us the rules of how to interact with people, especially about love. We download our immediate and extended family’s version of love. We don’t think about it and don’t evaluate if it works; it simply is how the world works.
Then we go out into the world and assume this is how everyone else does intimacy. Sometimes, their version works, and often, it does not. Again, based on our family’s intimacy dance, we either step back and evaluate these different interfaces or decide if their or our family’s dance is right.
One of the most common methods of parenting is conditional love. When a child does something wrong and needs correction, many families will admonish and punish them in some way, like spanking, isolation, inflicting physical pain, blandishment, and other forms of rejection. All of these, in one form or another, are abusive and a form of conditional love. Correcting a child without them feeling as though their survival or the parent’s love is at risk is possible.
If there is no reassurance of continued love, assuming it is not at risk, the child, thinking in only good and bad realities, will assume that the parent does not love them. Given that a child’s survival depends on the parent, this can create deep anxiety in the child about their survival.
Repetition of a message by the parent, as the child interrupts it, it becomes their truth.
It is not just parents who do this. It is common in religions, cults, and other closed groups that love-bomb people. Once they have them, they turn the screw and make that love conditional on acceptable behavior. It usually starts with the parents, and then the child/adult finds this group with the same dance of intimacy as their families, and it feels like home. They deeply understand what is required to be acceptable and not discarded.
Once a child is convinced that the only behavior that the parent wants will keep them receiving love, this becomes how they exist in the world. They extrapolate it to their schools, friends, workplaces, extended family, etc.
It disables the child as, deep down, they don’t deserve love, at least for who they are, only for being what the other person wants them to be. This leads to codependence, narcissism, substance abuse, etc.
When I see a client who had a horrific childhood and, yes, has a strong sense of self, I ask them a question: Who in your childhood loved you unconditionally? No matter how bad they were, they were still loved. It might be a teacher, a grandparent, someone in the extended family, a neighbor, a coach, or a mentor.
These people saved that child’s life. They demonstrated real love, which the child could take in. This gives them a foundation to become themselves and navigate the world without being disabled by shame.