When she was a child, Natalie’s father would beam with pride when she brought home an “A,” but he barely acknowledged her when she didn’t. “I knew I had to be impressive to matter to him,” she told me. Now in her 40s, she notices a pattern: She’s drawn to partners who are hard to please, chasing the same elusive approval she craved as a child.
Similarly, Jenny recounts how Dylan swept her off her feet with constant compliments and grand gestures, only to grow distant months later. “I thought I’d finally found someone who loved me unconditionally,” she says. “But now I feel like I’m walking on eggshells, trying to get back to how things were.”
Conditional Love
These stories aren’t just anecdotes—they’re echoes of a familiar psychological dynamic: conditional love. For many of us, the love we received growing up felt transactional, contingent on achievement, behavior, or appearance. Unfortunately, this dynamic often doesn’t stay confined to childhood. Instead, it operates like a shadow, shaping our relationships, self-worth, and even how we define love as adults.
Conditional love mirrors a concept from behavioral psychology called intermittent reward—the idea that sporadic, unpredictable reinforcement can create behaviors that are almost impossible to break. It’s the reason people get addicted to slot machines: The occasional jackpot keeps them coming back, even after countless losses.
When a parent’s affection is doled out inconsistently—after a perfect test score, a championship win, or exemplary behavior—we learn to associate love with performance. Over time, we internalize the belief that love is something to earn, not something we inherently deserve. Unconditional love is an exclusive relationship based on ideal parenting when love is not predicated on transaction.
This pattern doesn’t disappear with age. As adults, we’re often drawn to relationships that recreate the emotional dynamics of our childhoods. The highs and lows of intermittent reward become familiar—even comforting. We tolerate inconsistency because we’ve been conditioned to believe it’s just how love works. Freud called this behavior repetition compulsion.
Love Bombing
Take love bombing, a manipulative tactic where someone showers you with excessive affection and praise to establish control. For someone accustomed to conditional love, love bombing feels like winning the ultimate jackpot. Many people I see in my practice report feeling “special” when someone quickly praises them specifically for who they are. This was the feeling they got when a parent only occasionally doled out love and acceptance.
But just like an intermittent reward, love bombing comes with a catch. The affection is often withdrawn as quickly as it’s given, leaving the recipient confused and desperate to return to the initial high. They begin working harder to “earn” the love they felt initially, trapped in what ends up being both a thrilling and heartbreaking dynamic.
Natalie, an accomplished professional, described how she fell for a partner who seemed to adore everything about her. “It felt like the love I’d always dreamed of,” she said. “But once I was hooked, he started pulling away, and I found myself trying harder and harder to please him. It was exhausting.”
Her story is a perfect example of how conditional love primes us for relationships where love feels unpredictable—where we’re constantly striving, never secure.
How to Break the Cycle
The good news is that recognizing these patterns is the first step toward change. Here’s how to start:
- Name the pattern: Reflect on your relationships—past and present. Are there parallels between the love you received growing up and the dynamics you experience now? Awareness is the first step. This is not an easy step because seeing our parents as anything but idealized can often be hard. It can be uncomfortable to realize you experienced conditional love growing up or that your parent(s) were selfish or narcissistic.
- Redefine love: Challenge the idea that love must be earned. Practice telling yourself, “I am worthy of love simply because I exist.” After too much time being exhausted chasing Dylan to get her “love fix,” Jenny’s self-esteem plummeted, and she had no choice but to understand herself better. Importantly, she needed to investigate why she was OK with the scraps of affection Dylan would dole out whenever she pulled back or threatened to end the relationship.
- Prioritize consistency: Healthy relationships are steady, not dramatic. Seek out people who show up consistently—friends, partners, or mentors who make you feel safe, not uncertain. Slow and steady may win the race, but it does not create the highs associated with the thrill of intermittent reward. Natalie had a tough time letting go of the emotional high of feeling special, but, with time, she found a partner who was less shiny or polished than the men she typically pursued and one who was there for her when she needed and also secure in himself.
- Mourn that you may never receive unconditional love: Yes, it’s a bitter pill to swallow. However, accepting that unconditional love is primarily parked in parent-child relationships is a critical step toward healthier romantic and friend relationships. The potent feeling of getting love bombed must be recognized for the emotional drug it certainly is. We can be loved and cherished, but as adults, we have conditions in our partnerships. That doesn’t mean we don’t love the other person. It just means we must also find a place of unconditional self-love.
Natalie and Jenny had difficulty accepting that adult love doesn’t feel like a drug-like high. But by learning to spot that familiar blissed-out feeling—of being special, or catching too much praise, or excessively positive feedback—early in a new relationship, they were able to catch love bombing or excessive attention when they experienced it and ran in the other direction.
The most profound reward isn’t found in love from another that feels like an addiction—it’s in learning to love ourselves, no strings attached.