Conditional Love

The Expectations We Hesitate to Name 

It is often considered taboo to admit that we have expectations for our loved ones. Somewhere along the way, society began to equate “having expectations” with being selfish or ungrateful. But the truth is, expectations are inevitable. Love, in any form, is not just about feeling—it is about exchange. And I don’t just mean romantic or physical relationships. I’m talking about the daily acts of care between friends, siblings, parents and children, partners, and chosen family. At its core, love is both giving and receiving. To pretend otherwise is to deny the responsibility we hold to one another. 

Yet one of the most common misconceptions about love is that it comes in a universal form, that what feels like love to one person will automatically feel like love to another. That belief is not just naïve; it’s dangerous. It risks creating frustration on both ends: one person feeling unseen and the other feeling unappreciated. True love demands adaptation. The deepest measure of care is not how you want to give love, but how willing you are to learn the way someone else needs to receive it. 

Love as Learning 

To better understand this, imagine the way students learn in school. Some absorb information visually, others through listening, movement, or reading and writing. A teacher may prepare lessons with the best intentions, but if they only teach in one style, certain students will always be left behind. The failure, then, is not the student’s inability to learn but the teacher’s inability to adapt. 

Love follows a similar dynamic. When someone offers care in the form they are most comfortable giving, but it doesn’t align with how their partner, friend, or family member best receives it, the “lesson” gets lost. The love-giver may insist, “But I’m showing you I care!” while the receiver silently wonders, “Why can’t I feel it?” The breakdown is not a lack of love—it is a lack of translation. To truly love is to take responsibility for learning another person’s language, even when it feels unnatural to speak it. 

This requires humility. It requires noticing when your love is not being received as you hoped and asking, without defensiveness, “How can I meet you where you are?” In that moment, you are not just the love-giver—you are also the student. 

When Love Feels Hard to Receive 

I know this struggle intimately. There have been times in my own life when love directed toward me felt suffocating, even selfish. I would feel irritated or even resentful, wondering why the people I cared about seemed intent on giving me something I could not absorb. And for a long time, I thought the problem was me—that I was wrong for not being able to accept what was being offered. 

But I’ve realized that this isn’t about being ungrateful; it’s about misalignment. The truth is, love that is given without regard for how it is received can sometimes feel more like performance than connection. And while the act of giving may be selfless, what’s missing is the discipline of listening. 

Sometimes the most radical act of love is silence. Not rushing to fix, not overwhelming with gifts or words, but simply sitting with someone in their space—observing, attuning, and allowing their needs to reveal themselves. Love often requires patience, trial and error, and a willingness to be uncomfortable. You might offer love in ways that fall flat, but that is part of the practice. It’s in that experimentation that you begin to grow together. 

When people say “grow with your partner,” this is what they mean. Growth isn’t about reaching milestones or achieving perfection, it’s about expanding your capacity to adapt, to listen, and to learn. And while I use the word “partner,” I don’t just mean in the romantic sense. Anyone who chooses to journey alongside you—friends, family, community—becomes your partner in this practice. 

The Mirror of Self-Love 

Of course, this conversation would be incomplete without talking about self-love. If we do not know how we ourselves want to be loved, how can we possibly expect someone else to figure it out? Self-love is the mirror through which we discover our needs. 

It may sound simple, but self-love is often the hardest form of love to practice because it too requires effort. We want love to come easily, to be gifted to us without condition. But earning to give love to yourself—whether through rest, discipline, honesty, or forgiveness—teaches you the language you need in order to receive it from others. 

Self-love doesn’t just fill you; it reshapes your expectations. It transforms love from a craving into a standard. Instead of begging for scraps of affection from a place of lack, you learn to seek and receive love from a place of abundance. You stop asking, “Why can’t anyone love me the way I need?” and begin insisting, “I know how I deserve to be loved, and I will not accept less.” 

The writer and activist bell hooks put it powerfully: “Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself” (hooks, 2000, p. 67). Her reminder cuts through the illusions we often carry, that another person’s love will save us, fix us, or make us whole. Love begins with ourselves. 

Love as a Shared Practice 

What emerges from all of this is a deeper truth: love is not static. It is not a singular act or an instinct that we either possess or lack. Love is a shared practice, one that requires curiosity, humility, and resilience. To love someone is to continually ask, “Am I listening? Am I adapting? Am I willing to learn?” 

Having expectations for how we want to be loved is not selfish. It is human. The real question is whether we are brave enough to voice those expectations and whether those who care about us are humble enough to honor them. At the same time, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to extend that same effort, to adapt our own ways of loving to meet the needs of others. 

Love, then, is less about grand gestures and more about ongoing dialogue. It is not a one-time declaration but a daily choice: to show up, to listen, to adjust, and to grow. That is the beauty and burden of it. 

Reference hooks, b. (2000). All About Love: New Visions. Harper Perennial.