Is it just me, or when you see those things that say “You have to love yourself before you can love someone else” you just want to throw up? It puzzles me that there’s this unspoken requirement that you have to completely fall in love with yourself before you can love someone or they can love you.
Am I not worthy of love if I don’t love myself? I certainly don’t think so, but that seems to be how I feel when I see words like that!
I’m pretty sure no one loves themselves all the time. A lot of people have a hard time loving themselves even a little bit of the time. No one is perfect and has the most perfect self-esteem, and that does not make you unlovable!
Not loving yourself may cause an issue in a relationship – not being able to feel confident in the relationship and questioning why that person would want to be with you in the first place, thinking you don’t deserve them. But that’s something that can be worked through by both partners and doesn’t have to break the relationship.
I don’t love myself. Pure and simple. I have very low self-esteem – it’s something I have dealt with for as long as I can remember. There are times when I am proud of myself and happy with what I am doing, but I can’t say that I love myself. It’s something I’m working hard on, just like I work hard to have a good relationship with my boyfriend. And just because I’m going through this struggle with myself doesn’t mean that I don’t deserve to have a loving and caring relationship.
I am working every day towards the point I can say that I truly love myself. I definitely haven’t reached that point at all yet, but I am excited for that feeling when it does come. I never want to offend anyone’s opinions, so I am not judging anyone who does believe that they should be able to love themselves before they can love anyone else. That is a perfectly fine idea to have and I encourage individual thinking like that!
Personally, I don’t think it is necessarily true that the requirement for someone to be able to love you is to be able to love yourself. It’s my own thought, and I have experienced why this statement is not true. Someone loves me very much and tells me every day as I am working towards being able to truly love myself. I will get there one day, I’m just not sure what day yet!
