That's because generally people who strongly desire unconditional love do so because they're not particularly secure and want someone else to make up the shortfall. And people who love "unconditionally" are generally people with poor boundary-setting skills who are willing to put up with more than they should for the people they've selected as targets of that "love."
Love should be conditional. This is not an excuse for emotional or physical abuse or neglect - in fact, loving people conditionally is a pretty good way to select for people who will not abuse or neglect you. Some people love conditionally in really fucked up ways â bigots who reject their queer children, fathers who only love sons, partners who only love you when you're well, etc â but that's because they've chosen the wrong conditions to care about, not because loving conditionally is, in itself, wrong.
If my partner went out and killed a bunch of people I would stop loving them. If they treated their friends or family members poorly I would stop loving them. If they treated me poorly I would stop loving them. If they decided the Republican party's values represented their own I would really easily stop loving them, because I don't think I could love someone attracted to such a hateful ideology. I chose them because they're kind, and curious, and loving, and because we share certain values we're not interested in compromising. I chose them because I know that any hurt they caused me would be unintentional, and swiftly remedied. I will keep loving them if they become ill, if they stop being fit, if they make less money, if they don't age "gracefully," whatever that means. But I don't love them unconditionally. There are changes I would not accept, except in the case those changes are truly involuntary and I still have a duty of care (dementia, for instance, might make someone pretty unlovable but not worth abandoning), and in that case I would not feel guilty about no longer feeling what I feel for them now â I would still do my duty to the person I loved, who had no choice in becoming someone I couldn't, but I wouldn't expect myself to feel love in the same way.
Unconditional love, in most real life cases, tends to lead to a lot of disfunction, pain, secrecy, and cruelty, and in many cases the people around the person you love unconditionally are the people who pay for that love. This is how you get cases where families silence child sex abuse victims in service of protecting a beloved adult or older child. It's how people become victims of domestic violence or long-term emotional abuse. It's why some spoiled children grow up to be violent or cruel adults. It is fair to withdraw your love from someone who proves repeatedly that they are neither worthy of that love nor interested in becoming worthy of it. That goes for romantic partners, family members, friends. A few years ago, a friend treated me so egregiously poorly that I abruptly stopped loving her. Had I witnessed her treating ANYONE else this way, I'd also have stopped loving her. I don't feel badly about it. I don't hate her. I just don't love her anymore, and I didn't want to take her shit or be around someone who treats people that way, so I stopped being friends with her. That's allowed.
Loving yourself unconditionally is also a pretty good way to turn into the kind of person who hurts people. You should have a sense of what's acceptable behavior (the rules you live by don't have to be other people's rules, but you should have some rules) and guilt and shame â while venues of abuse in many hands â are actually adaptive cultural tools with some value in some contexts. I think we ought to focus less on loving ourselves generally, and more on approaching ourselves neutrally. You should take care of yourself. You should be kind to yourself, as you would to anyone. Loving yourself unconditionally is not attainable for most people who aren't significantly impaired in some way, and it shouldn't be the goal, because you're not a special kind of person different from other people, and it's not useful to treat yourself as if you are. If you're being a miserable asshole, it's probably useful to not "love yourself unconditionally" in that moment, and instead ask yourself "do I want to be around a miserable asshole, or someone who's kind" and then be kind and not a miserable asshole so that you can be around yourself without feeling terrible.
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