The COLLAPSE of Unconditional Love Under Patriarchy

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Last week, I posted a video talking about the concept of unconditional love and how it does or doesn't show up in romantic relationships. And I had a lot of people in the comments kind of challenging unconditional love as a concept. And I wanted to talk about that today because I actually feel like the people saying that are talking about conditional love and not unconditional love. So, let's break it down because I do think that this concept is extremely important to understand when it comes to your relationships with other people. In my opinion, it even ties into all the discourse that we're having around the accountability of social media creators, the way that we talk about imperfect women, etc., etc., etc. So, I actually think that this is a very important discussion and I really want like everyone possible to benefit from it. So I want to make a couple disclaimers first. Okay, let's just be like intellectually honest in the discussion.

[00:00:59]So I first want to clarify that when I talk about unconditional love and let's not pretend like most of us are not neurode divergent here, okay? But I need y'all to resist the neurode divergent urge to kind of boil things down to its most literal and practical application.

[00:01:17]Okay? Sometimes we are just talking about concepts and the literal and practical application is part of that but then there's also the mental and emotional application of things which again as a nerd divergent person I know we sometimes we struggle with. I have a hard time believing that it's real or applicable in that situation but I want us to sort of fight that urge a little bit because it just simply isn't the best way to interpret things all the time. Okay. Secondly, I do have notes. I will be looking over at them. I've been accused of reading a script before, but honestly, like I make long videos. I need notes. And my last request, because I know this is going to be very, very tempting, but I would really like to not make this a bioessentialist conversation where it turns into something that it doesn't need to be. You know what I'm saying? Like, I know this is a feminist channel. I know we discuss men versus women a lot, but this isn't necessarily a men versus women. Even though the type of unconditional love I want to talk about is something that men definitely struggle with. However, that doesn't mean they're incapable of it. It doesn't mean that there's something like wrong with them biologically that they can't give or receive unconditional love. Me personally, having been a teacher, I see how a lot of this [ __ ] is socialized at a very young age and I refuse to be bioessentialist about these kinds of issues because I think that that is ultimately an unhelpful and defeist attitude. I believe we're all humans and at this moment I'm willing to give the kind of unconditional love that doesn't exclude people from this conversation based on their biology or based on even how they're being currently socialized.

[00:03:04]Again, I know it's kind of a hard turn from all my other content, but sometimes we have to stop and like talk about these things as concepts and talk about things in ways that are not necessarily super practical, practically applicable or whatever. Those are kind of the disclaimers. If you want to engage, which I do want you to, just be aware this is the perspective that I'm coming at it from. And let's just keep it simple. Because on the one hand, while I know that the term unconditional love can be misconstrued and has been misconstrued and misused in order to make women perform over-the-top behaviors for men who don't deserve it or used to trap women in situations where it's unsafe. And it's very very very important to know that like that is not the proper application of that term or of that concept. And at the same time, the reason I believe it's very very important to get clear on what it is and isn't is because it's very very closely tied with our humanity. Unconditional love, yes, believe it or not, is very closely tied with the concept of humanity and who and what gets treated as a human being. And because we live in a society that dehumanizes both men and women, this really muddies up the concept and makes it very very confusing for people when you talk about it or when you talk about like women wanting that in relationships. It it just can become like a very triggering term when you talk to people about unconditional love. Like some people just absolutely like immediately get triggered and they're like no that doesn't exist and like blah blah blah. And basically the whole concept of unconditional love can be defined as consistent care and goodwill towards someone that is not dependent on their behavior, mood, usefulness or whether they meet your expectations. Okay, I know I know that's a lot. So let's talk about it. And like in fact I agree that it is a very triggering like term and definition especially because of sometimes the way that men talk about it because I have and I know you have probably as well seen men say things like women and children and pets or whatever are the only ones who receive unconditional love. Men are expected to like perform and produce and provide and all of that in order to be loved which means it's conditional. Now, the obvious irony here is that when you really think about it, there are more limitations, stipulations, and expectations placed actually on all three of those like categories. Women, children, and pets that in fact make it not unconditional. Especially when men say that term, like they don't really mean unconditionally. They just mean like not in the same way as me. When they say like women are loved unconditionally, they really mean a man pays for your thing and like nobody pays for my things. When they say that children are loved unconditionally, they mean people feed you and house you for free. Uh when they say that pets are loved unconditionally, they really mean because people think that they're cute or it's not like pets have to go to work and bring home a paycheck like a man does, right? However, if we take a realistic look at things, we'll find that often times, even though yes, men are sort of dehumanized by this expectation that they perform employment and they perform sort of like materialism and they perform providership and all of that. A lot of men actually go out of their way to ignore and misunderstand in bad faith all the ways that women have to perform in order to be loved, accepted, etc. But they don't understand that women are also performing. Women are also being deprived of full access to their own humanity because women have a role to play under the patriarchy too. So the whole conversation is very frustrating, demoralizing and dehumanizing I think for everyone involved. The pets, the children, the men, the women. This all comes from the misunderstanding first of all of unconditional love and second of all of the fact that what most people think is unconditional love actually isn't. For example, women would never be loved unconditionally by most men if first of all they didn't perform femininity. A lot of men while complaining about the fact that they have to perform masculinity still think that femininity is something that comes naturally to women. They really really think that while there's so much pressure on men to be tough and to perform and to be masculine and to work and to prove your worth and like all of that, they see that side of it, but they don't see the other side where women have to do the exact same thing except for in a different font. Like they still have to prove things about themselves.

[00:07:59]They still have to go against the misconceptions that society has for them as a standard, etc., etc. So, all that to say, a lot of the times that we're talking about unconditional love, we're not actually talking about unconditional love, we're basically talking about a performance that grants you access to the patriarchy, both by men and women.

[00:08:21]And this is why when I first brought it up, I was bringing it up in the context of Don and Betty Draper because they were the very they're like the very people that this misconception is pretty much based on. Don definitely has this kind of like provider masculine cowboy kind of mindset and Betty definitely has the mindset of his counterpart and they're both trying to perform for each other but they don't love each other unconditionally. Okay, so let's tie this all together and let's break down what unconditional love is and isn't. So unconditional love means that you can still value someone as a person even when you're disappointed in them or disagree with them or even when they're not giving you anything back. Okay? It doesn't mean you approve of everything they do and it doesn't mean you stay close no matter what. It means that the way you relate to them is not I love you if but I care about your well-being as a person even when it may not directly benefit me or even when things are difficult even when I maybe don't want to. And basically it's the difference between I care about you when you act in ways that I want and approve of versus the unconditional love version which is I care about you as a person because to me you have personhood regardless but I may adjust my boundaries based on what is healthy and or safe for me. Okay. So we need to clarify that unconditional love is about your emotional state or stance. like this is how you emotionally relate to other people. Not to be confused with unlimited access and tolerance of bad behavior or unlimited help or unlimited perseverance. It doesn't mean any of those things. I do think a lot of people hear unconditional love and they picture an abusive situation. Especially like exchurch people will hear the words unconditional love and actually picture an abusive situation because this is straight up what they will teach you in church is like you just stay and you continue to give and give and give and give and give to this person despite the fact that things turned abusive and exploitative a long time ago or maybe even started out that way. So not to be confused with that. Okay. So for example, when it comes to romantic love and romantic entanglements, unconditional love is often misinterpreted as you stay no matter what or I stay no matter what. And that stance actually cannot be defined as love. That stance can be defined as like codependence or unhealthy attachment, abuse or something like that. But that can actually not be defined as love because it doesn't include the practice of selflove. So I think in order to have truly unconditional love, it has to come from a place of self-love and knowing that you have everything in you that you need and therefore love for you is not a limited resource because once again it's an emotional stance. So, the whole like love is a verb thing doesn't really apply here because we're talking about the kind of love that can be had truly without conditions. Like truly truly without conditions. And later I'll get into how that all ties into the would you love me if I was a worm question.

[00:11:55]But while we're on the topic of romantic relationships, basically you need to understand that unconditional love does not look like staying no matter what.

[00:12:04]And that's not what I ever ever ever mean when I'm talking about the concept of unconditional love. Even when I'm talking about it between men and women, that is not what I mean. So the more practical definition here, and you'll we're about to see how this ties into self-love and why the concept of self-love is essential to to the concept of unconditional love, but it's basically the idea that I value your personhood and well-being even if our relationship may need to change or end.

[00:12:31]And I've actually been talking about dstigmatizing this for the longest time because I genuinely think it would heal us as a society to stop thinking of love and marriage and all of these things as this concept of I stay no matter what.

[00:12:46]And then when we like celebrate 30, 40, 50 years, then that's when we made it.

[00:12:50]Like that's the prize. You know, that all sounds codependent to me. That all sounds unhealthy to me. And like I said, I've been working to kind of destigmatize this idea that every relationship needs to be like a lifelong commitment and that you can't just have relationships with people that maybe even have an expiration date that you're both aware of, you know, that maybe don't last very long, uh, that maybe don't work out. I think that's part of like the decentering men conversation, especially within marriage or like long-term relationships. That is part of the desentering men conversation is to be able to say, "I know we're married or I know we're like super committed. We've been together for a long time, but we're people and things change." Like even if you don't plan on things changing, obviously I don't think hardly anybody ever does, you know? And I think it would behoove us to maybe like have that mindset a little bit more that things can change and in fact to anticipate the way in which things can change and not become attached to the outcome of we're still going to be in a relationship regardless of whether it benefits one or both of us because the relationship, you know, everyone thinks we have this unconditional forever love and like blah blah blah. when the unconditional love is like the underlying part that should precede basically all of your relationships. You know what I'm saying?

[00:14:19]Like that feeling of I value your personhood and I value uh you as a person even at the point that you can't do anything for me like physically I still value you as a person. That should be inherent. And in my mind, this is actually the most surefire way to to keep boundaries intact, to keep personhoods intact, to not reduce the other person into like their worst moments. I'm really glad that we as a society have kind of embraced this idea of mutual breakups and, you know, breakups where there's not necessarily a lot of hard feelings. And it's exactly because the other person like held their boundary and was like, "This just isn't working for me." Like that's exactly what's that kind of unconditional love is exactly what's going to free you from contempt, from the emotional backlash, from overinvestment, all of that kind of stuff, right? It's basically you can leave the relationship without having to take it to the level that you have to tell yourself this person is a worthless evil monster and that's why I have to leave. You can leave that relationship as the bigger person even if they've done you wrong because it's not about them. It's about you.

[00:15:36]Unconditional love is about you first and foremost because check this out.

[00:15:40]under the pretense of conditional romantic love, boundaries or compatibility really just sounds like, "I love you as long as you meet my emotional and or behavioral expectations." So, anytime that you're thinking like that about something, you can almost guarantee that this is like deeply and inherently how you probably feel about yourself as a person. It's not that you're saying to someone, I love you as long as you meet my emotional or behavioral expectations.

[00:16:12]You're actually saying to yourself that I am only worthy of loving as long as I meet other people's emotional or behavioral expectations. And you've probably been functioning on that sort of premise the entire relationship. And as women, we're very prone to this because we are taught to like read the room and walk on eggshells. were taught that male approval and all of that is like really important. So, it causes a lot of women to inadvertently walk on eggshells around men and put their own needs on the back burner and ignore what they want to do. And all of that leads to like an extra level of attachment and overinvestment and eventually leads to resentment.

[00:16:56]Unconditional love sounds like your worth as a person is not revoked by failure, conflict, or incompatibility.

[00:17:03]And that doesn't mean unconditional access. That doesn't mean that we that there's no boundaries. It just means that I don't feel like you're worthless as a person just because our romantic relationship like failed or we had a conflict or we ultimately turned out to be incompatible. And again, that has to come from within. you actually have to feel that way about yourself. That my worth as a person is not defined or revoked by failure, conflict, or incompatibility with others. And I've actually recently talked about this.

[00:17:38]This is one of the traps that neurode divergent, high achieving women fall into. I've been talking about this a lot with Marissa, who's a reality TV show contestant. She's been on Love is Blind.

[00:17:50]Currently, she's on Perfect Match. And she's basically a case study for this, for the internalization of her worth as a person being tied directly to her real life accomplishments and her real life accomplishments being tied directly to being in a relationship or having a successful relationship, like finding that perfect match, so to speak. And so the way that Marissa acts, you can tell that she's constantly overextending herself. She's convinced that there's like things she can do right or wrong to ensure compatibility, lack of conflict, and avoiding failure. Like she is convinced that if she does the right things, then she'll be able to avoid getting hurt. And that's just not the reality. But again, that's because Marissa doesn't have unconditional love for herself. That's the mother wound, right? Obviously for most people their mother is their primary caretaker and the sort of the giver of conditional or unconditional love. And unfortunately, daughters of narcissists, and I can speak to this, but daughters of narcissists often have this sort of like I am completely unworthy wound. And they project that onto other people. And they project the fact that they work so hard to be worthy of love and to cross that threshold of unconditional love once they've done enough things for the other person. And then it's like, you can never question my love again because I did this and this and this for you. But that's codependency. That's unhealthy attachment. That is inshment. That's what your mother taught you with that sort of mother wound with that conditional type of thinking because you figured out as a child that your worth is revoked by failure, conflict or incompatibility. And the incompatibility would have been with your own mother because there was a type of way that she wanted you to be and you were not that way. And so at one point your access to unconditional love was abruptly and brutally probably revoked by your mother. Like I'm sort of done investing in you because you're not the child I want. I wanted a different child and that's you're you're going to carry that wound with you for the rest of your life. But it doesn't mean that there's no unconditional love.

[00:20:10]It just means you have to find that kind of unconditional love for yourself and then it'll be very easy for you to see where you can give it to other people so that you avoid killing yourself with resentment with bitterness with this like sense of failure etc. Now when we talk about this unconditional love in connection with parenting that is sort of one of the more obvious places where we can see this idea of unconditional love. So most parents like I don't even think this is that hard unless you're high on the narcissistic scale. Most parents are able to experience the kind of unconditional love where the child's belonging in the relationship like in the parent child relationship is not contingent on performance, behavior or compliance. If your belonging in your relationship with your parent was ever contingent on performance, behavior or compliance, that's why you don't understand the concept of unconditional love. That's why, and again, I'm not saying this no no shade, right? I'm I'm saying this as somebody who's coming from that very same place and has had to go through all the five stages of grief about this to come out the other side and be accepting of the fact that unconditional love is good for us as humans. The people that lack the concept of unconditional love are depriving themselves of their own humanity. And again, I'm not saying unconditional unlimited access, unconditional unlimited the labor. I'm saying unconditional love. I'm saying you're a person and regardless of your behavior, regardless of your performance, you are worthy of personhood. That's all that that means. And a lot of this has to do with your idea of stability and how your parents expected you to perform in order to give you stability in return. So this is like another place where this gets really tangled up, right? Because again, if you are coming from a narcissistic family system, this idea is very embedded in your mind of like performance to receive love. And the idea of unconditional love being a thing that allows your abusive parent unlimited access to you, where essentially you have to betray yourself in order to become an unlimited source of supply to your narcissistic parent.

[00:22:39]And there's this idea that your love towards them is supposed to be unconditional, but their love towards you has every right to exist very very conditionally and based on your attitude, your behavior and like a secret third thing that they can like make up at any point. So the opposite of that would have looked like being corrected and not rejected as a child.

[00:23:02]So like when your narcissistic parent possibly would tell you things like see this is why you're a bad person or like see this is why we don't get along. See this is why I call you names or like this is why I say these things about you. That's rejection. Correction would be like hey I love you very much. You're my child first and foremost. Like nothing's ever going to change that. But what you did back there was not okay.

[00:23:27]That's correction. That's very easy.

[00:23:29]That rejection of you as a person, that misrepresentation of you as a person, that you are just bad and guilty and all of that through and through, that's what makes you want to project that onto other people. It gives you this different standard of fairness or like self-p protection that you have to believe that there's no such thing as unconditional love. And that's just that's not true. Other things narcissistic parents do is equate every mistake with your identity. So, you lie once, you're a liar. You forget to do your homework once, you're a lazy and you're a bad student. You don't pay attention one time, now you're an airhead. A healthy parent would be able to evaluate your behavior. Hey, I noticed that you're doing this. Hey, I noticed you're forgetting your homework.

[00:24:14]Like, what what can we do to be helpful?

[00:24:16]Hey, I've noticed that you've been having a hard time telling the truth. Is there something you're afraid of? Can we talk about it? Those would be like evaluating your behavior, but making things to be part of your identity.

[00:24:29]That's where you know you're dealing with like a narcissistic parent. Another way you know if you're dealing with a narcissist or a narcissistic parent is that relationships can only persist after serious conflict if you betray yourself and you agree to like whatever their version of events is that happened. with a normal adjusted parent, you don't have to worry that your relationship at some point is just going to be cut off with no explanation. Um, but you do have to worry about that with a narcissistic parent. It doesn't even have to be serious conflict. It can just be like, you know, one of those last straw type of things for them. You set a boundary and they perceive that as betrayal and it caused serious conflict and now you guys don't talk. Been there.

[00:25:14]If you've ever felt like you had to earn your place in the family system as a child, you were likely raised by a narcissist and you likely struggle with the idea of unconditional love towards other people because again, you were made to believe that love is something to be earned and performed for. But again, that's not to say that being a good parent is letting your kid get away with whatever. No, it's basically like strong boundaries plus this idea that you belong regardless. You'll always be part of this family. Are there times that we may need to utilize like time out or taking away privileges, like things like that? Sure. But that doesn't mean we don't love you. That doesn't mean you're not part of the family, right? Children can't like have internal stability if they risk like being cut off all the time. Like internal stability can only come from love not being conditional on performance. You can still have structure and discipline.

[00:26:16]It just is not contingent on performance. Like love isn't taken and given. Maybe privileges are maybe you know whatever else is but not love not belonging. And with friendship this can basically look like goodwill and caring about a person without the entitlement to closeness. So, if you've ever had a really good friend where you can go weeks, months, maybe even years without talking and then you can pick things up right where you left off. That in my opinion, that's one of the biggest blessings in life. Like a lot of people understand friendship as something that has to always be consistent, you know, just kind of like that same fallacy that we have with relationships. It's like we have to walk through life, you know, holding hands, make it as many years as possible just for the sake of saying, you know, we were together for x many years. And like the biggest goal is just to never separate. I don't think that that's a healthy way to look at any relationship. You know what I'm saying?

[00:27:19]And so even with friends to me it's like you don't necessarily have to go through some long drawn out conversation where you're like hey like I let's not talk for the next 5 to 6 years and then let's like randomly reconnect. But we all know that that [ __ ] happens sometimes. And part of that unconditional love that can show up in friendship is just being understanding of that. Being like I am still interested in your ultimate good as a person even if our friendship like changes or weakens over time. You know, sometimes people have kids and then that like reorganizes their life in such a way that no longer meshes as well as when you were both single, you know, or like had no kids. It means you can disagree or drift apart without hostility. We're both really busy right now. And so it's just the matter of the fact is I'm probably only going to hang out with people at work or people that live in my apartment building or people that I like live in close proximity to and you know maybe for the next few months or the next few years I'm just buckled down and I'm working on something and I don't necessarily have time for such a close friendship. You know, I think something that's like become trendy, especially lately over time, is moral superiority in conflict.

[00:28:48]And I think this applies to more than just friendships. I think this applies to especially a lot of the situations we've seen recently with female content creators where the more politically charged our everyday situation is, the more politically charged our relationships become, whether they're real life relationships or parasocial relationships. There becomes this need for like moral high ground and moral superiority and conflict. And it comes down to I'm just going to reduce this person again to their worst moments, to their worst takes, to their worst traits. And because the ground we're walking on is literally like politically charged, almost like electricity.

[00:29:34]Everything is very volatile. And that is a way of going about things. But I think we've seen that in the long run, it causes more harm than good. It silences more women than it allows to speak. And while again, you can have moral disagreements with people that cause you to be like, "We can't actually hang out anymore. We can't be friends. I don't relate to you. I would never say that. I would never do that." And yet you can do all that without completely demonizing a person. Completely having to reduce them to like appearance-based insults or making moral judgments on their entire life, their entire platform, etc. Right?

[00:30:16]We're losing the art of like not dehumanizing somebody before we like step away from that friendship or again that parasocial relationship, whatever.

[00:30:26]Like you can absolutely trash somebody, badmouth them, write them off as like an evil monster, reduce them to like their one character trait, reduce them to the one thing that they did to you or the several things that they did to you. You can absolutely reduce them to that. But again, the reason that I worry about that and kind of like speak out about that is because at the end of the day, it's an inside job. like everything you do to others. You're prone to thinking that way about yourself. And I just think that we can do better and I think it would produce better results for us as a society if we can do these things if we can have disagreements and you know live life with others without this need to dehumanize them. This is where I want to talk about the would you love me if I was a worm question and I want to quote one of my favorite I guess philosophers. I don't I don't really know what his official title is, but this man named John Verbakei who did this uh incredible series about the meaning crisis and he talked about this core idea of unconditional love, agape love that was sort of introduced into the religious sphere but also into our consciousness from this Christian idea of unconditional love. And he actually talks about the worm idea, but also the fact that it's this sort of unconditional love from one person to another that makes us human. He talks about the fact that a baby when it's born has all the sort of like physical abilities for only a short period of time, but has all the physical abilities and the physical kind of like presence of a slug. like it's it's literally just there to eat, sleep, poop, cry, you know, and the baby's not doing anything for anyone. Other people are doing things for it for no reason unconditionally. But it's that that gives a person agency. It's that kind of love that gives a person agency. And basically the core idea is that love is not just a feeling toward a fully formed person. It's a participatory relationship that helps constitute someone as a person within a community of persons. So if we all were to look at babies and say, "Well, what do you bring to the table?" Then we wouldn't have like community, we wouldn't have humanity as we know it. Unconditional love is the stable participation in another's personhood even when their behavior is unstable. And this is what prevents a lot of people from wanting like social safety nets too, right?

[00:33:04]They're like, "Well, this person's behavior is like they're addicted to drugs and like we've we've tried to give them a home and they couldn't keep up with it or like these immigrants, you know, they're flooding our country and like blah blah blah." And talking about people in that way is exactly what causes us sometimes, unfortunately, to see other people as like animals or as vermin or as just basically this inconvenience that we shouldn't have to deal with. And the problem we need to realize with that is that we're used to thinking of things in like a trickle down sense, but the truth is things really trickle up. So the moment you take away humanity, agency, all of that from like another person, you are doing that to yourself inadvertently. It gives somebody else the permission to do that to you. Which is why this idea of unconditional love is very important, very pertinent to us right now as a society. A lot of people who survived their battle with addiction or homelessness or like mental instability or whatever, they will all tell you, pretty much every single one of them who didn't pass away or take their own life, pretty much every single one of those people will tell you at some point I was acting all sorts of wrong and crazy. I was in and out of jail. I was not caring about the well-being of others, let alone my own. I was a big like burden on my family. I was a big disruption to other people's life, etc., etc. But those people still saw my humanity. I was still my mother's daughter. My dad never disowned me or my dad would come and visit me in rehab or my friend or my aunt or uncle, you know, somebody somebody recognized that humanity in me and it gave me the strength towards that final push to recognize my own humanity and to love myself enough to get off the drugs or find stable employment or, you know, whatever it is. Now again, does that mean that this person let you crash in their house all the time and like do drugs there and commit acts of debauchery? No, it doesn't mean that. It just means that like time after time, like your relationship, your unhealthy relationship with drugs or with other people or what whatever alcohol, whatever it could have been, didn't make you less of a human to them. It just it changed your relationship probably. It probably made things unpredictable, probably made things unstable, etc. But in the midst of that, they were still able to see your humanity. They didn't need to dehumanize you, demonize you, and cut you off in order to not enable you, right? Cuz a lot of people have this idea that unless you demonize, dehumanize, and cut somebody off, you're otherwise enabling them. And if you actually study addiction, that's actually like not helpful. again. Does that mean they were giving money for drugs? Does that mean they were like driving you to your dealer? Like, no.

[00:36:17]No, it doesn't mean any of that. It just means that they believed in you, that they had this sort of unconditional like trust and love and all of that for you.

[00:36:27]And they weren't attached personally to the outcome as if it's somehow their doing, you know, or as if it's like somehow their job or whatever. They gave you the space to be human, to make mistakes, and to still be loved and to still be accepted and to still be viewed as worthy and as human ultimately and not like some rat vermin on off the street. And that's really what it takes for a lot of people to overcome their addictions and their sort of lack of love and care towards themselves. They basically need permission from another person to love themselves unconditionally. But that's why it's important. And so bringing this back to the original topic and especially the way that this manifests in romantic relationships and why it was such a popular question for young women to ask their boyfriend or husband like would you still love me if I was a worm is because in that lies sort of the encapsulation of the idea of unconditional love. A lot of women can sense that men don't love them based on this idea of like independence and their own humanity and their you know unique like features, thoughts, actions, behaviors like a lot of women can sense the fact that if they stopped performing femininity, if they stopped performing like uh patriarch patriarchal concepts for men, and if they stopped, you know, birthing children and keeping the house clean and looking young and beautiful and all of that that their romantic partner would not have anything else about them to love. And a lot of women pick up on that because their boyfriends and husbands and all that dehumanized them to begin with because again, like I talked about, a lot of men don't have unconditional love toward themselves.

[00:38:24]And a lot of women mistake unconditional love for unlimited access, unlimited chances, and unlimited self-sacrifice.

[00:38:32]That's where the question even comes from. Because it's like to a lot of women, a man is already a worm that they love. Like no offense, but to a lot of women, a man is already a worm that they love because they don't have a a deep emotional connection or foundation with that man. He doesn't care about them.

[00:38:50]Women very often date below their league and looks. So frankly, a lot of times like when women are asking, "Would you still love me if I was a worm?" And men are like, "No, cuz you wouldn't have tits, an ass, or a mouth for me to [ __ ] You wouldn't have a pretty face that I could go show off to my friends or family or co-workers, whatever." And that's the part that they're not going to say out loud. Whereas to most women, it's like, "I already love you despite that. You already don't have a pretty face. I'm already dating down. you already don't give me orgasms or anything like that and I love you anyway. So the worm question is basically do you love me specifically or just the version of me that fits your needs? Like if I was a worm and if you couldn't bring around this pretty blonde attractive fit woman to like work events or networking with your boss or whatever, would you still love me? For a lot of women, this means if I was infertile, would you still love me? Cuz obviously you can't have babies with a worm. So it's like if I was a worm, would you still love me? It's also the fact of like if I was chronically ill, would you still love me? If I like could never have sex with you again, at least the traditional way, would you still love me? If I was like mangled in a bad accident, you know, God forbid, would you still love me based on these kind of immutable characteristics? Like based on my humanity? Would you still be able to see my humanity? Would you still be able to see that I deserve love and care and everything like that? Or would you just toss me out into the dirt to fend for myself even though I don't know how to be a worm and I no longer have access to being a human being? You know what I mean? And like I said in that video, a lot of men would they would absolutely just toss you onto the ground and forget about you. And a lot of men leave when their wives become like terminally ill or get cancer. Like whenever they have to put forth any effort, a lot of men are like, "No, like I don't love you anymore because you don't do anything for me." And so that's kind of the essence within the if I was a worm question. is basically testing whether romantic love is fully tied to appearance, to identity, to the way that you're able to function for that person or is it tied to some deeper like essence, you know, like is there something some X factor that's inexplicable? You know what I'm saying?

[00:41:19]Because of course, like the difference between being a human and being a worm makes it impossible for you to participate in the structure of like a relationship where you have like emotional sharing and like language and physical connection, all of that, right?

[00:41:34]And so, romantic love probably wouldn't persist in that scenario because it's like a different kind of love. But what a lot of women are asking is like, if I couldn't be that perfect romantic counterpart for you, would I just be completely useless? Would you just throw me away? And again, at the end of the day, the answer is usually yes. And women want to know. It's like, what drew you towards me in the first place? Like the worm question has some element of that, too, because it's kind of like, were you just drawn to me because you're physically attracted? Because I'll lose that eventually. Were you just drawn to me because I'm popular, funny, you know, well-liked, whatever, cuz I could lose that. What if I lose my ability to like speak, function? What if I have some sort of degenerative disease? Would you basically withdraw my status as somebody that matters to you? But at the end of the day, it's really about the recognition of your humanity. So even if you couldn't function, if your relationship could no longer function on this idea of attraction, attachment, a romantic framework, would there still be a recognition of personhood? Like you matter as a being?

[00:42:42]Anyways, all this to say, I really think we've lost the art of this as a society.

[00:42:46]And I am going to blame it on men and the patriarchy. Absolutely. They're one of the most like pervasive sources of conditional love and also the stripping of humanity from other human beings. So, I do blame it on that. But I also want us to challenge ourselves like what this would look like if we were to apply it the best way we could right now. And that's sort of where the conversation wraps back around to women in the public eye and to these sort of like parasocial relationships that we've normalized between a creator and their audience, for example. Because me, I would argue that feminism is inextricably tied with this idea of unconditional love and unconditional personhood because it's rooted in unconditional equality, right?

[00:43:38]and the demand for equal rights, equal personhood. So to me, it's extremely patriarchal what we've allowed to happen within feminism, which feminism exists under one unconditional principle that every human being deserves rights, equal rights, and that's the unconditional love of it. And where we go wrong, where we as a feminist community tend to take that like sort of patriarchal like left turn and veer completely off the path of like heading in the right direction and we start heading in the wrong direction towards the patriarchy is where we dehumanize women and like reduce them down to the worst thing that they've ever done. And because this is all happening under the patriarchy where women are already seen as less human, less equal, uh less deserving of rights, etc., not only do men like live with active misogyny in their hearts, but women also live with internalized misogyny. And again, it's that lack of unconditional love and acceptance for yourself and your the ways in which you've been a pickme, the ways in which you've participated in the patriarchy, the ways in which you benefit from the patriarchy, the ways in which you use your pretty privilege, all of those things, right? You avoid that narrative, right? That's why there are so many women always in the comments of like, "This would never be me and blah blah blah and don't show us if you're not going to leave him." You're depriving people of the ability to not be reduced to their worst moment, to their lowest moment, because that's all you can see.

[00:45:17]And so, it's very easy for you to associate the whole of that person with a bad moment or with a bad take or was something they said or something they approached incorrectly or whatever. And that's where it comes back full circle into you don't love yourself, so you can't love others. And that's why like I often times bring this conversation of internalized misogyny to this bigger conversation of why is it so easy for us to demonize and dehumanize other women even as women. Why does it take so much more proof for us to ever pile onto a man and deprive a man of his humanity than it is for us to look at a woman and be like, I can't believe she said that.

[00:46:01]or even better recently it's been I can't believe she didn't say that and then it snowballs into she doesn't deserve to be part of the feminist community. She's a this. She's a that.

[00:46:11]All based on what somebody didn't say did not say. Literally dealing with this on TikTok right now. And it's been awful. It's been hell. And I genuinely think it's because young women are growing up in this very politically charged climate where it seems like every single thing is like very high stakes. And unfortunately, I'm here to tell you that at the point we've reached, it's actually better for us to not treat it as so high stakes. And it's best for us to sort of like figure out, are we willing to give each other humanity? Are we willing to give each other the kind of unconditional love that makes us human and worthy? Worthy of general care, etc. Now, what it doesn't make us worthy of, once again, and I feel like I have to I'm going to have to say this a [ __ ] million times, right? Now, what it doesn't entitle us to is unconditional access.

[00:47:10]What it doesn't entitle us to is an unconditional platform. What it doesn't entitle us to is unconditional and neverending forgiveness and support and all of that. Doesn't entitle anybody to that. But the fact that we will so often demonize women, dehumanize women, and reduce them down to only their worst traits is, I think, a net negative and I think is very patriarchal. So, all that to say, I wanted to lay out some of these thoughts on unconditional love because I genuinely think we associate it with all the wrong things as a society. And I want to make sure that when I do talk about it in the future that we all have sort of a common understanding of what it could mean if we were to stop like misusing and sort of bastardizing the concept to mean something that it doesn't mean. Cuz a lot of people in my comment section were under the impression that unconditional love means unconditional access, unconditional eternal forgiveness, unlimited labor, all of that. And that's not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about can you see someone as a human even when you don't like them? And can you still at the end of the day be interested in the goodwill and well-being of all people? Because that's that's really the only way forward. I hate to tell you this, but if we're going to, you know, sit here and talk about which people should be punished for what, rather than talking about socialization, rehabilitation, humanity, all of that. And I know there's bad people out there. I know there's bad people out there. But what it looks like to wish the best for someone who has, you know, committed unspeakable and heinous things, that still would mean to provide them with a society where people still see them as human. And because of that, the boundaries that get drawn around their behavior are actually humane. And this is very possible. Other countries do this. The prison system in Sweden, for example, is like very rehabilitationbased.

[00:49:14]And they have incredible results from it. When people get out, they are not likely to go back. And the prisons there are actually nice. Like it looks like a mini apartment. You get your own bookshelf. You get bed sheets. You get a desk. It's not the same thing as like American prisons because those are run for profit. So corners are cut, people are dehumanized. Nobody's interested in like rehabilitation because for people to go back into prison is not a bad thing because somebody makes money off of that, right? Is like a a private enterprise. It's not a government a controlled enterprise which would be interested in both saving money and rehabilitating people. like we have a for-profit motive system. Same with health care, same with, you know, work, access to shelter, access to anything, anything, right? And our society in particular is very conditional. And I think that that makes American society uniquely susceptible to the fear of unconditional love as this overgiving, overextending, over, you know, whatever.

[00:50:19]where it's really just the idea of not dehumanizing someone. Where it's really just the idea that people regardless of, you know, what they've done or what they've said or whatever shouldn't be treated like they're not human because they still are like regardless. And in the long run, it would be better for us to see their humanity. Again, not their goodness. Like I'm not saying that you should look at somebody who's done horrible things to children, for example, and be like, "Oh, but I love them." No. So the idea is they are still a human and the fact that they were able to do those dehumanizing things to other humans is should be concerning to us as a society and like what can we do to fix that? What can we do to discourage it?

[00:51:00]When we start thinking about things in human terms, it actually leads to solutions rather than just condemnations and demonizations. And it can also lead to the abuse of that same system to punish people that are doing the right thing. If it's not rooted in this shared idea of humanity, then it's we're not actually problem solving. Like we're not actually getting anywhere. So anyways, let me know what y'all think. And as always, stay safe out there. I love you.

[00:51:28]Godspeed. What?