Excerpted from:
http://www.zetatalk.com/rules/r11.htmConditional love: A mother loves her children, and this is for many reasons. They are an extension of herself, and their achievements reflect on her upbringing and genes. They promise to grow up and take care of her in her old age. They assist with the household chores, and can be relied upon in emergencies. They liven up her life, bringing friends into the house and news and jokes and always the unexpected. Life is not dull. The mother feeding and clothing her children is considered automatically to be a loving mother. What happens when the child refuses to fit into one of these expectations. Perhaps one of the children is uncommonly independent, and refuses companionship to the mother when she desires this. The child has his reasons, but the mother only sees this as rejection. She feels much resentment, and finds she is reluctant to do the special things formerly done for the child. She has stopped loving this child, as her love is conditional on his meeting her expectations.
Unconditional love: In this same situation, where the mother finds one of her children to be a disappointment, the mother does not stop meeting the child's needs, as formerly. This does not mean that she does not feel disappointment, or even air her grievances to the child or others. This does mean that the loving support she gives to this child continues, whether or not the child has disappointed her in some way.
Conditional love is therefore seen as a lever, to force another to cooperate, and unconditional love allows the issue to be deal with squarely, as the only issue, and not be clouded by other issues. For instance, in the above example, the mother can loudly complain about lack of companionship, and this issue is lt with openly.
In conditional love the companionship matter may be dealt with, openly or not, but in any case other issues have arisen, such as failure to feed and clothe or pass messages along or whatever the mother formerly did for the child. This in fact prevents the issue from being dealt with as a single issue, as it becomes weighed in the mother's favor. The issue is clouded by secondary issues. The mother, by applying conditional love, is being in fact dictatorial.
