Love Yourself to Love Others

Maintaining healthy relationships is difficult, be it romantic ones or simple friendships.

There are many aspects of ourselves we need to work on in order to lay the preconditions for a healthy relationship to thrive. We need to become good listeners, do activities or attend events we are not interested in, be kind, and not expect anything in return for what we give.

At the basis of all of these qualities lies a very important skill we need to cultivate: self-love.

The path to self-love starts by understanding what self-love means. We then need to practice it, and only when we have mastered it can we extend the love we give to ourselves also to others.

The meaning of self-love

When talking about self-love, it is easy to misunderstand what it means. With the word love, we associate a romantic feeling fueled by the attraction we feel towards another person. We tend to be drawn to someone who feels special to us, whether because of their appearance, personality, or the circumstances that surround them. When we feel romantic love, we are fueled by a need to get to know the other person, to help them, and to connect with them on a deeper level.

However, we can not see self-love in a romantic way. We can not feel attraction towards ourselves. How can we? We already know ourselves with our flaws and imperfections: we are an open book, not a treasure to unlock.

A better comparison of self-love is the love parents feel for their children. Parents are not driven by attraction; they do not change their feelings based on how their children compare to others. Their love is unconditional.

All they want is the best for their children. They express their love by doing their best to guide them in that direction, helping them to learn and grow, regardless of how smart, good-looking, or athletic they are.

In the same way, we should love ourselves. We can not choose who we are, how we look, or how talented we are, so we should not make our self-love dependent on how we are in comparison to others. We should love ourselves exactly because of who we are; we can not be anyone else anyway.

Our focus should not be on putting ourselves down, channeling our energies toward those who are, in our eyes, better than us. Just like parents love their children unconditionally, we should prioritize our well-being over anything else.

Practicing self-love means doing our best to have the best life possible within the boundaries we find ourselves in.

The practice of self-love

Self-love means becoming aware of all our insecurities and imperfections, accepting them, and trying to work on them in a healthy way without being harsh on ourselves.

Loving ourselves means giving us words of support and creating the surroundings we need for long-term well-being, not for comfort. It means finding the motivation to grow and seek discomfort within ourselves; no one else will do it for us anyway.

To develop self-love, we need to give to ourselves not what we want but what we need. Self-love means doing the necessary introspection to distinguish what we want from what we need, what is just short-term gratification from what is necessary for long-term well-being.

Health, fitness, financial stability, mental resilience, and growth are all areas we should work on without getting distracted by lust, external validation, greed, or laziness.

Self-love also means having the courage to set healthy boundaries by saying no to situations we know are damaging us. We don’t need to keep on loving someone who is not reciprocating our feelings. We don’t need to sacrifice our afternoon to help someone we know doesn’t care about us. We don’t need to work long hours to impress someone who sees us just like a working machine.

We should say no to toxic romantic relationships, toxic friendships, and toxic work environments. We can focus on our well-being only if we set healthy boundaries.

Our well-being starts with our physical and mental health. We have to be healthy to serve others. The better our shape, the more energy we can devote to loving others.

When we are feeling well on our own, we can love selflessly without expecting anything in return. Only by doing so can we find true love.

To selflessly love others, love yourself first.

The extension of self-love

Only if we have developed enough self-love can we love someone else without expecting anything in return. We can extend the love we have for ourselves to others to fulfill our deepest needs, those that can only be fulfilled if we focus on helping others and not ourselves.

When we love others selflessly we can fulfill our need for connection and fulfillment. We can give meaning to our lives by diving into the depth of someone else’s soul and having a positive impact on others through our actions.

When we love others selflessly, we do not need to receive motivation, support, praise, or comfort. We can find everything already within ourselves.

The more needs we can fulfill on our own, the healthier becomes the relationship. If we have found self-love, we will search for connection and fulfillment in our relationships. If we lack self-love, we will need others to help us through difficult times, to address our insecurities, and to make us overcome our fears.

Love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitude of love towards themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others. Love, in principle, is indivisible as far as the connection between objects and one’s own self is concerned.

— Erich Fromm

Self-love is the basis of any healthy relationship. If we prioritize our well-being by doing enough introspection to know what we need for physical and emotional stability, then we can take the necessary steps on our own. We will see love as a gateway to connection and fulfillment, not as a transaction with the sole goal of solving our unaddressed problems.

Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you.

— Erich Fromm

Just like we should aim for mature love, so should we look for a partner able to reciprocate the same type of love. Immature love leads to toxic relationships that will be draining us in the long term. Only if we have enough self-love will we have the strength to move on and look for mature love somewhere else.