Every time someone speaks of unconditional love in the same context with romantic love, it raises the hairs of my neck. These two do not and should not mix. Romantic love is always, and should always be conditional. Unconditional love is reserved for one's children only - even the children cannot and should not love their parents unconditionally, even though the parents hope they would.
Let's back up a bit. Unconditional love is not superior to conditional love, far from it! Conditional love definitely feels better to the person receiving it, because they earned it. From the recipient's point of view, unconditional love is cheap. Since it comes to you unconditionally, you don't have to earn it, and what you don't have to earn is cheap. When romantic love is confused with unconditional love, what it means is that since there are no conditions, your lover can just pick up and transfer their unconditional love to anyone else - because there are no conditions. In romantic love, that should never be the case.
The essence of unconditional love is: "No matter what you say, do, think or are I will always love you. You cannot sway my love from you, and it will be forever." Beautiful, isn't it? However, this kind of statement should never be made to anyone but to your own children. Your children can't say that back to you, because there are tons of conditions for their love for you, and there should be, starting from physical or sexual abuse: "If you abuse me, I will not love you." The same goes with romantic love, both ways. "If you cheat on me, I will no longer love you." Or "If you beat me up, I will stop loving you and start fearing you." To even get to the position of lovers, there are countless of conditions to pass: "I will love you if I find you sexually attractive." "I will love you if you laugh at my jokes." You get the basic idea. When romantic love turns unconditional, it is half way to an abusive relationship. "I no longer care if you talk to me without respect, if you hit me every time you see me or cheat on me; I will still remain strong in my love for you. You can treat me as badly as you can, and my love won't sway from you."
Romantic love, even though it has conditions, can and will forgive flaws. You may be well aware of your spouse's annoying habits, but because he or she fills up your conditions for your love, you won't care that much. And since you know that there are conditions for his or her love for you, you will remain respectful, loving and caring; because you know he or she can just pick up and leave if you fail to meet their conditions. When we start expecting unconditional love from our spouses, that is when we start giving ourselves permissions to talk to them without respect, nag, treat them like children or inferior, and that is not a good way to go about a relationship, don't you agree?
If a lover of mine would tell me he loves me unconditionally, I would not like it one bit. Not one single bit. That would mean that whatever I was, whatever my personality was like, whatever I treated him like, wouldn't matter. Somehow he picked me as his girlfriend, and now he loves me unconditionally - without a reason. As lovers, don't we often ask our lovers the question: "Why do you love me?" And the answers are so sweet to hear. We want to hear our lover has reasons for loving us - unconditional love doesn't have such reasons. If it was a question of unconditional love, the answer would simply be: "Because you're my girlfriend." Although "because I am your mother" is a good answer, "because you're my girlfriend" is a horrible answer, don't you agree?
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