Is conditional love junk food for the heart?

Carl Rogers, the pioneering therapist, emphasized the importance of unconditional positive regard in successful therapy. Unconditional positive regard is an attitude of acceptance without any conditions attached, seeing the other person's feelings, thoughts, and experiences as acceptable parts of them. This acceptance fosters self-awareness, self-acceptance, and personal growth. As Carl Rogers found for himself, “… the curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.”

Conversely, Rogers emphasized that conditional positive regard, or “conditions of worth”, where love or acceptance is contingent on meeting certain conditions, leads to a fragmented, distorted self-concept because we reject experiences – and ultimately the parts of ourselves – that don't align with those conditions.

Conditionality, therefore, can really be damaging. One common parenting problem is the use of conditional affection for discipline. Research has shown that when parents withdraw affection, either intentionally as a crude tool for discipline or unintentionally through a lack of emotional regulation, children grow up to have issues with self-esteem, emotional regulation, and people pleasing.

Conditionality can also spill over into romantic or intimate relationships. Instead of the idealised unconditional love that we all crave on some level, some people only offer conditional love.

How bad is conditional love? Is it better or worse than no love? The answer, of course, depends. A good parallel would be to ask, how bad is junk food?

Conditional love and junk food are similar in many ways.

Compared with the alternative, either no love or no food, they seem fantastic, as they meet basic biological and even emotional needs. Loneliness, like hunger, is a deep existential threat.

Both conditional love and junk food can create a cycle of dependence and addiction. Conditional love makes individuals constantly strive to meet conditions to receive affection, like how junk food triggers the release of dopamine, making people crave more to achieve the same "happy" feeling. Just like snacking provides a steady, and unhealthy, trickle of dopamine throughout the day, “getting it right” with a conditional partner can provide validation and dopamine through little tokens of validation.

Junk food is largely void of nutrients – you can become obese on junk food and still have nutritional deficiencies. Similarly, conditional love isn’t nourishing; you could become entirely enmeshed in a conditional relationship and never know the joys of true nurturing and acceptance.

Both are unhealthy in the long-term. Just as junk food can hinder physical development and lead to chronic health issues, conditional love can stunt emotional and psychological growth, leading to long-term difficulties in self-esteem and relationships.

And yet, we all, at times, routinely indulge in junk food. In fact, to insist that we only eat clean 100% of the time is, in itself, neurotic. Just like with junk food, we all have different tolerances for conditional affection.

The key question, for any of us facing conditional love, is one of awareness. How aware are we of our response to conditional affection? In the same way that we keep track of our junk food intake if we want to avoid weight gain and health issues, those of us in conditional relationships need to be aware of the emotional and psychological impacts.

And just like we can compensate, to some extent, for food indulgences through healthy eating choices at other times, exercise, supplementation, and health checks, there are things that make us somewhat more resilient to the negative effects of conditional love, too.

The first is a strong sense of self-compassion and self-love. This, like many good traits, needs to be cultivated through practice and dedication. The other is a network of connections – it’s always fraught to rely solely on one person for our emotional needs and for our self-image. Multiple perspectives are needed to cater to the diversity of selves within us.

And, ultimately, a strong sense of self-awareness, recognizing our worth, and not internalising harmful sentiments is crucial.

But ultimately, just like how you can’t outrun a bad diet, maybe you can’t really escape the effects of conditional affection?

Carl Rogers, 1969. On becoming a person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy. Plume (Penguin).