Unconditional Love

Most people who read this know I've been dealing with some stuff lately. I’m trying to work through this concept, so bear with me and let me know if you have any insight...any comments are welcome.  I’m trying to figure out how love gets turned on/off, specifically concerning relatives. For whatever reason, generally speaking, you automatically love your family, even if for no other reason than they are family. Your family is your family. Even if you have nothing in common with a brother or sister or don’t even get along with them, you still love them. Now taking that to the next level, when you have children, you love them instantly. Before they are even born, you love them. The second they leave the womb, you feel a bond to those children that only a parent can really understand. Even if those children end up as murderers, you will still love them.

What is that bond? Why do you love children so much? Many will probably answer that the instant connection is partly due to the fact that they are something you helped create, they share your genetic material, and consequently, they are part of you. However, this doesn’t account for the tremendous love and bond that parents who adopt feel for their children. They feel the same connection and love for their children even though they don’t have a blood or genetic connection, so that can’t really be the cause for such tremendous love.

A more likely reason that the love between parent and child is so strong is due to the responsibility bestowed on the parent to care for, nurture, and teach the child. I think the love is a result of the dedication, sacrifice and responsibility involved with raising a child.

So, what I’m trying to wrap my head around is…let’s say you have children. You were there every step of the pregnancy, watched them be born, and experienced that instant connection with your babies. You love them unconditionally and would do anything for them. Then it turns out they aren’t your children. You have no genetic connection to them whatsoever. But you still love them just as much. Your feelings for the babies didn’t change at all. Then it turns out you have no legal, financial or any other responsibilities for the children. Now what? Your feelings still don’t change. You still love the babies just as much. Why? So it isn’t the genetic connection or the responsibility causing it. There must be something else causing this connection. Where does this come from? How do you turn it off? Should you turn it off or even want to turn it off? How can you have the unconditional love of a parent one day, and then remove it the next day? That’s the problem with unconditional love…its unconditional. It’s a crazy emotional conundrum where an unconditional emotional bond was created under false pretenses, but since the bond in unconditional, it can’t be removed, even once the conditions of that bond being developed are determined to be false. You can’t stop caring about someone it’s unhealthy to care for. It’s like emotional check-mate. What do you do with that?