—
Why so much fuss about finding a love partner if precisely self-love brings peace, happiness and a sense of wholeness, thus a second person in the equation doesn´t have that much weight when it comes to fulfillment.
|
Since the first moment I was presented with the concept of loving yourself to be loved by others as a general result, and to find your romantic partner as a particular goal, I was bewildered by the lack of logic in this statement. First of all: if we practice self-love to be loved by others, it is not self-love at all, as the ultimate goal is to feed on others´ love, and that denotes a means based on emotional dependency, which is far from being a trait of self-love achievers. Secondly: what is it with this idiosyncrasy of the moment we love ourselves we´ll find the right partner to love us back? That doesn´t make any sense; it is incongruent propaganda. There is even a semantic problem here: if we love ourselves, why would we care about being loved by a particular person? We already love ourselves, the meaning of love is understood and its fruit rains upon us, what is the need of introducing a second factor, which more often than not would bring complications to the relationship we have with ourselves?
You´ll guess this is one of my favourites questions to open a debate with obnoxious spiritual couples who want all of us to be partners and, whenever they find a singleton, they are quick at pointing the lack of self-love as the reason of singlehood and not having a significant half.
However, the truth is that I don´t often, if ever, discuss these matters with obnoxious spiritual couples. I do it with the smart and kind people who surround me. Even though I don´t show it (a matter of childish pride), I also enjoy very much when one of them can shut my big mouth up with plain logic, and a coherent explanation that disarms my arguments, or at least doesn´t agree with everything but presents another point of view as valid as mine — under my perception, me being the instigator of disagreement.
Once we mix our ingredients and we bake the cake, we become a whole cake, nutritious and very tasty, which can be served on its own. However, some people like icing.
|
Yesterday I was discussing with a friend this matter, in which my stand was that to find a love partner cannot be the motivation to aim for self-love, as the expected result would jeopardise the validity and use of the means. Also, why so much fuss about finding a love partner if precisely self-love brings peace, happiness and a sense of wholeness, thus a second person in the equation doesn´t have that much weight when it comes to fulfillment. Until this point, we both agreed. However, she would insist that romantic love has a real place and far from being an annoyance as I present it; it is the icing on the cake. As always, food similes can tame my mind in the most unexpected ways and change my perception of things.
My friend is an amazingly compassionate person who also has the ability to explain things in a very simple way. She said we are cakes. When we work our self-love, we are mixing the ingredients of that cake. All ingredients must come from our own sources, the moment we take an ingredient from another person to make our cake taste better because we think it would taste better not because it would really do, we are betraying ourselves and giving that person power over our happiness. We are also jeopardising our self-love recipe, of course: if the ingredient that comes from another person falls apart at any given moment, the cake might have a sour flavour, or won´t rise in the oven, or will be too hard…
I still think icing might be too much of a hassle, and many of us are more than happy baking a cake without any extras.
|
Once we mix our ingredients and we bake the cake, we become a whole cake, nutritious and very tasty, which can be served on its own. However, some people like icing. The icing doesn´t really make the cake better than it is, it simply adds a new flavour and makes things a bit more interesting. That´s all. And if the icing melts and falls apart, the cake is still whole and tasty by itself. That is the cake of self-love, it doesn´t depend on extra flavour or decorations, but if one feels like adding them, it is also ok.
I like very much this reasoning to have a romantic partner. I still think icing might be too much of a hassle, and many of us are more than happy baking a cake without any extras. The icing is always a choice, and it is good that being the cake a well baked whole thing, it can add nice things if on the cake, but it cannot really take the real goodness if it melts and falls apart.
Originally Posted on Single, Own It
—
Photo: Getty Images
Yep, but when was the last time anyone served cake with no icing? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. I know, I’m the official GMP wet blanket, but to me the icing completes the cake, which hearkens back to images of, Jerry Maquire with his tear filled eyes saying, “you complete me”, and I can’t dwell on that too long if I want to keep my lunch down. I can appreciate the friend’s use of metaphorical prose, but when I hear, “self love” I picture some weight lifter guy posing in the mirror while his wife waits patiently on… Read more »