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Conditional love problems · Head Shrink Inc.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, welcome to Hedgefrink Inc.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is Doc David, and Sally emails in and asks about conditional love.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Listen in.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: You are listening.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your answers to love.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Related.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, welcome to Head Trink Inc.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: and welcome to 2017.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is the first podcast of the new year.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's a new year, and I have a cold, so hopefully you can bear with me as I try to talk and hopefully not cough.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um so Sally emailed me and um asked me a question, and I'm just gonna go right into it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is my marriage over?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is the is the subject line.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um my husband has been treating me really cold for a long time.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: He said the way I treat our child turns him off.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: I am the main caretaker of our child and not as patient as he is to our child.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: When our child is not listening, I tend to raise my voice and I don't play with our child as much as my husband does due to all the housework.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: My husband doesn't do any housework.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Other than these, I don't I don't think I did anything wrong to our child.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: But my husband can't take these.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: He said, if I treat our child nicely, he will treat me better.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was so disgusted by his conditional love.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is no difference than telling a child what the pe that the parents love him only if he listens to his parents.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want his conditional love.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Every time when he treats me better, I will think this is the conditional love he mentioned.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: This makes me sick, I can't get over it, what should I do?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is our relationship over?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um just as a quick answer, I don't think your relationship is over.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think that um there's some challenges in your relationship that I think you're gonna need to address.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's talk about what conditional love is first.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: So conditional the opposite, I mean, pretty much everyone knows what unconditional love, it's love with no, I mean, just obviously love with no conditions.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um a person does something and you still love them even though they do it.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the conditional love is is usually where love is earned on um the basis of a conscious or unconscious condition, which is what Sally just described.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um unconditional love, love is given freely despite what the person is doing.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would say that Sally, you are stuck in a relationship where it does seem your husband has some kind of conditional love towards you.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now, those are just words that were described by of him by you.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so um that's where I mean who I don't know because I don't know either of you, but I'm just gonna take you at your word.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times what happens with conditional love, there's this if dot dot dot then dot dot dot.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like threats, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you do this thing, then I'm going to do this thing.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or if you don't do this thing, then I'm going to do this thing.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if you're in a relationship like that, I'm not gonna say give up immediately, but I am gonna tell you that that's not a relationship that's gonna be enjoyable for very long for you unless you have some serious um mental health issues or addiction issues or things like that that kind of keep you stuck.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, usually healthy people in good relationships, they want to make life better for the other person.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not gonna be putting limits on relationships, they're not gonna be putting conditions on relationships, um, they're not gonna be threatening people in those in those relationships as well.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um one of the suggestions I would give you, Sally, is that parenting in a consistent manner is important, and it sounds like perhaps there are times when you don't parent in a consistent manner, and when you're not parenting in in a consistent manner, it affects not only your child, but it affects um the person that you're in relationship to usually.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean in your instance it sounds like um your uh husband gets protective of your child, which then you take offense to.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so it doesn't sound like you guys are parenting um on the same page.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't sound like you're working together to parent your child.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's probably one of the issues that's going on in this relationship.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's twofold.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, from this brief email, is there's this threat that your husband makes about conditional love, which I think is totally inappropriate and it's something that he needs to consider and change.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and maybe he came from a household where that was appropriate.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if so, then that's a conversation that you guys need to have as reasonable adults that um are trying to solve a problem.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is the parenting in a consistent manner.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: If he plays with the kid and you're the one that's in charge of the charge of the discipline of the kid, that's not a good idea either.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that um you both need to kind of have some equality in how you do the parenting.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Your kid needs to be able to have fun with you as well, but they but they also need to be disciplined by you, and and I think the kid also needs to have fun with dad, but he also needs to have some discipline from dad because the outcome of that, if if you continue the way that you're going, the outcome of that with your child is that you're always gonna be the bad guy.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the kid is gonna look to dad as the protector, and you're gonna feel um hurt, sad, you'll have a hard a difficult relationship with your kid as they become a teenager.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so hopefully you, Sally, can have a conversation with your husband.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And my biggest suggestion is that you go to a competent marriage and family therapist to kind of work these issues out because when it comes to raising kids and it comes to love and relationship stuff, it's hard to do it on your own.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to figure it out on your own.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so my suggestion to you is that you seek out a competent marriage and family therapist who can kind of sit alongside you guys and help you struggle through these difficult issues of parenting and relationship.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, if you have a question, you can email me at Head Shrink Inc.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's in C at Gmail.com.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is Doc David with Head Shrink Inc.