By Rachel Puryear
There’s a modern adage which says that in order to love someone else, you must first love yourself.
There’s also another one that says in order to be loved by others, you also must first love yourself.
But are these words of wisdom really true? Well, they’re rooted in a deep truth – but at the same time, there’s more to them than first meets the eye. Let’s explore them more deeply.
In short, it is of course possible to both love others, and be loved in return, even if your level of self-love is less than optimal. After all, many of us won’t get to that optimal self-love point for a while, and few of us will reach that level consistently – but that doesn’t mean a better love and social life has to wait that whole time.
The point is to encourage cultivating self-love – but not to put pressure on anyone to reach a possibly unrealistic standard, and one that can at least take a long time and a lot of work for most people.
However, your relationships will tend to be much better and healthier if your level of self-love is also improved – and you will notice continuing improvements in your relationships as you go along, rather than having to reach perfection first (that doesn’t exist, anyway).
The key is make the effort at greater self-love, not to be perfect. Don’t beat yourself up if it’s hard to get there – that’s counterproductive. And no one will ever be perfect. And quite often, it’s the effort that counts more than achieving an ideal level of self-love.
Here are some things that can happen, however, if you don’t make any effort towards improved self-love:
Co-Dependency
People who lack self-love and don’t make effort at cultivating it are at risk of entering into co-dependent relationships and friendships – either where they are a co-dependent to someone else, or another person is a co-dependent to them.
Cultivating self-love reduces the likelihood that one will (often unconsciously) form relationships where either person acts as a co-dependent to the other.
People in relationships involving co-dependency can genuinely love one another, but the dynamics of such a relationship are inherently unequal and unsustainable. Therefore, such a relationship is at very high risk of being deeply unhappy, as well as fraught with frequent problems and less likely to succeed in the long term.
Dysfunctional Relationships
In addition to co-dependency, there are other ways a relationship can also be dysfunctional. They can be abusive, or controlling. Someone can be just using another person. There are also more subtle kinds of dysfunction.
People who really don’t love themselves – or try to – are at risk of attracting controlling and abusive partners, because people who love themselves won’t put up with that kind of treatment. That doesn’t mean the person who doesn’t love themselves is unlovable, but they may instead unconsciously choose people who reinforce their own negative, and undeserving, perceptions of themselves.
Abusive and controlling people typically isolate their victims as one of the first items on their agenda, and want to keep their victim away from anyone who might challenge the abuser or urge the victim to leave – or even simply tell the victim that they could do better. For this reason, the victim soon doesn’t have anyone else left around them but the abuser – and anyone the abuser approves of, which is probably someone who sides with and enables the abuser.
Accordingly, it can quickly feel to the non-self-loving victim like no one really loves them – even though that’s an illusion carefully crafted by their abuser.
This can create a cycle of non-self-love that’s really hard to break. It takes a lot of strength – and hopefully support from someone else who’s left on their side – to break it. For some, spirituality can also help – but it’s important that it’s a healthy and accepting spirituality, rather than one based on shame and demanded obedience.
But It’s Very Normal to Just Want to Be Loved
You can know, on a logical level, that loving yourself can benefit you tremendously in your relationships with others – and yet, for your own reasons, still have trouble getting there on your own.
It’s much easier to get there if you receive love from others first, which helps you in turn learn how to love yourself. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to find.
If you’re very lucky, someone will reach out and give you love, even if you’re not there yet yourself – it happened for me, and I was very fortunate for that. Someone very dear and special to me saw something in me, before I could see it for myself. The trick there is to actually let them do it – and it took me a while to get there, too.
But it also made all the difference in the world for me.
Spirituality was also important for me in learning self-love. The notion that a higher Being could know all of us completely, and love us as we are, and accept us inspired me in that journey. It made me realize that if that Being could love me, then I could also learn how to love myself.
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Thank you, dear readers, for reading, following, and sharing. Here’s to loving yourself, and others, as well as being loved. If you enjoyed this post and want to see more like it, please hit “like” and subscribe, if you have not already.
Check out my other blog, too – Free Range Life, at https://freerangelife.net. It’s about road trips to the outdoors, traveling while fat, wealth and economic philosophy, remote/passive income streams, and van/RV life.
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World Class Hugs 
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