Unconditional love does not require unconditional acceptance
This is a bit of a prickly topic to write about. Many people in the world feel like they have not experienced unconditional love from the people who should have unconditional love from the people who should have given them that, and certainly that can be true, particularly when we are children and teenagers. However when we are discussing the idea of unconditional love I think it is important to untangle it from the idea of unconditional acceptance, or perhaps unconditional support. I want to be really clear that what I am talking about here refers specifically to adults. Children and adolescents have very different needs from adults because they have less agency and power over their own lives and life circumstances.
The story sometimes goes that if someone cannot accept all the parts of who I am then they do not love me unconditionally. That expecting someone to change anything about themselves sits contrary to unconditional love. I get where this comes from, a lot of it is push back from juedo-christian ideas of loving the sinner but hating the sin. For example many queer people have grown up in families that claim to love them while simultaneously reviling their queerness. Often they have been told they must reject this part of themselves to be worthy of remaining in community or in relationship with their families. This of course is conditional love, to be worthy of receiving the material realities of love (rather than an abstract idea of it) you must shut down or ignore an essential part of yourself. However, what if something else happens? What if I still receive the material realities of love (inclusion, care, etc…) but my family is unsupportive of my queernes? For example, they are scared about what might happen to me, or are ignorant about some parts of what it means to be queer, or have some time grieving the life that they thought I would have. Does that mean that they don’t love me?
I don’t think it does! If we change the stakes a bit and make the situation a bad partner, perhaps the distinction makes more sense. In a situation where someone is in a bad relationship. Where someone is in a toxic or abusive relationship, making the bar for unconditional love, unconditional support, more clearly seems a bit dysfunctional. In that situation if we love someone unconditionally we might feel compelled to say clearly that we do not support their relationship, and perhaps set some boundaries about how we interact with their partner. Not supporting that relationship does not mean that we love the person any less. We cannot exist as humans without sometimes making bad decisions, or even just decisions people who care about us disagree with. However, unquestioning support is not a condition for love. I think that the foundations of good community are love, but we cannot conflate love and support if we are going to be able to engage well in community. There needs to be space for nuance and disagreement if we are going to engage in community well. If we assume that love is revoked when there is disagreement, there isn’t the space to do that.
We get to decide when and where we need support, for example, I might decide that 100% support regarding my queerness is important to me, and express this need to my family, and if they cannot get on board decide to change my relationship with them. We all get to decide what our non-negotiables are, and it’s ok for these to shift and change with us. What I think is important is not to assume that just because someone doesn’t support or agree with me means they don’t love me. The whole point of unconditional love is that it exists beyond our disagreements and difficulties with one another.