Is Love Unconditional? New Book Defends Compassionate, Unromantic Love

The following is an excerpt from On Romantic Love: Simple Truths About a Complex Emotion by Berit Brogaard. The text proposes that love can be rational and controllable, in spite of popular conceptions.

Compassionate love is more likely to survive obstacles than its romantic counterpart. Few parents stop loving their child even in the grimmest of circumstances. Their love persists even when the misanthropic monster is found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder. They love their child for the reason that he is their child, their bloodline, their creation. The explanation for this unbending steel bond may be biological, or it may be cultivated by our family-obsessed society. But the fact that parental love in many circumstances can survive almost anything doesn’t make all instances of this type of love rational. There can be circumstances in which loving one’s child is no longer justified. For example, in a New Yorker interview the father of Adam Lanza, the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooter, says that he wishes his son had never been born.

The Huffington Post