This topic might get a little deep.
I saw a meme on Facebook the other day that read:
“Stop telling people that they won’t find love until they love themselves. Stop telling people that they can’t find love because of their personal struggle.”
It got my dander up.
Let me rebut this.
First off, no, that piece of wisdom is not telling people that they can’t find love because of their personal struggle. What it IS saying is that you have to have your own house in order before you can invite someone else in. Otherwise, they won’t want to stay for long. Or if they do stay, they aren’t likely to clean up after themselves when they see what a slob you are.
There’s been this whole movement online of people dealing with mental illness or other emotional trouble. The movement involves people with issues demanding that friends and family simply deal with it. And here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter what your trouble is or how it affects you, that’s not a reason to expect special treatment or treat others badly and expect them to take it.
Let me explain a little further: There is explaining what you’re going through and trying not to be a crappy human and asking for understanding; that is brave and vulnerable and 100% acceptable. Then there’s acting bad and treating people poorly and blaming your behavior on your illness. I have run into the latter far too often. And I’m starting to run into a bit of entitlement when it comes to people’s illnesses. And I am simply not okay with that.
I had an anxiety disorder for the first 20 years of my life. It sucked. I finally found a good therapist after going through several really bad ones and got some real help. After about five or six years of therapy and hard work, I got better. A lot better.
I still get anxious about things, but I get anxious about normal things, like speaking to large groups or getting on stage or confrontation, and I can manage my anxiety and get through the situation that makes me anxious. Previously, I would literally hide in my closet and refuse to leave the house. Going for a walk was a heavy challenge that left me racing for home, breathless and shaking. Even worse, I didn’t know why normal activities scared me so much, so I was depressed as hell, too. And I was a crappy human.
I didn’t mean to be. It was the anxiety and depression. But I was rotten to my friends, I was demanding and flaky and clingy and emotional, and most of my friends from that time ditched me a long time ago. At the time, it hurt, and I wished they could understand what I was going through; but looking back, they had every right to bug out on me. I was a bad friend. I absolutely did not love myself.
So that’s my background with this.
Now, let’s delve into the meme a bit, shall we?
Here is why you actually will NOT find love until you love yourself, and why this tidbit gets passed around:
If you do not love yourself, you will certainly be attracted to people and people will be attracted to you. You will certainly be able to date, and you will certainly have feelings for people. But if you do not love yourself, it will go wrong. Because people who do not love themselves are not very good at choosing other people to love, or treating them well when they do.
Way #1 that people who do not love themselves will sabotage themselves in love:
Hurdle-setting-up.
Because this person does not love themselves, they will find it hard to believe that the person dating them loves them. After all, the primary symptom of not loving oneself is believing that the self is simply unlovable. And so the person who does not love themselves will set up tests and hurdles for the person dating them, to “prove” their love. Tests and hurdles like, “Stop spending time with your friends and only hang out with me.” “Do all the housework.” “Buy me nice things.” “Have sex with me whenever I want it, even if you don’t want to.” “Propose to me, whether you want to or not.” “We need to have children, whether you want them or not.” “When I hit you, don’t get mad at me for it.”
The trouble is, a person who does not love themselves will lose confidence over and over, and need constant reassurance that the person with them does, in fact, still love them. And so one or two or three hurdles passed will not be enough. The hurdles will keep coming, and they will get bigger, and if the person jumping the hurdles doesn’t keep doing it, there will be tears and accusations that they don’t really love the person setting the hurdles up. And the person jumping them will get sick of it, and they will leave. A person who simply keeps jumping hurdles also does not love themselves, and two people who don’t love themselves together is just a recipe for resentment and hollowness.
Way #2 that people who do not love themselves will sabotage themselves in love:
Hurdle-jumping.
Because this person does not love themselves, they will accept proclamations of love from literally anyone, even people who are abusive or seriously mentally ill themselves.
Society often repeats the tidbit of wisdom about helping others if you feel bad about yourself. I hate this little nugget, too, because people who truly do not love themselves at all will hear it, and throw themselves into being total doormats for others around them in the hopes that this will somehow fulfill them, or that if they give everything they have to those around them, the people around them will reciprocate and take care of them, too. This is absolutely not how this works. When you give of yourself in the hopes that you might somehow feel better about yourself, you just wind up being taken advantage of. And that doesn’t feel good, either.
So sometimes people who don’t love themselves set up the hurdles, and sometimes they jump them. And being the hurdle-jumper is demoralizing and demeaning — that’s why most hurdle-jumpers leave relationships in which they have to jump hurdles, even if it takes a while. The demoralization can only go on for so long.
This is the basis for abuse, whether physical or mental. People who don’t love themselves wind up taking it out on others or letting others take things out on them. At best, it just makes for an unhappy, resentful relationship that’s doomed to fall apart.
Now, I get where this meme comes from. There’s this sweet, romantic notion that not loving yourself can somehow be fixed by someone else loving you, or that love can somehow find you no matter where you are, no matter what emotional state you’re in.
Bottom line, that’s a nice thought, but it’s B.S.
Not loving yourself is not cute, it’s not charming, and no one else can do it for you. Not loving yourself does not make you “smol” or “harmless” or “pathetic enough to be lovable.” It’s sad, in all the meanings of the word. I have never met anyone who did not love themselves who did not behave in one of the two above ways — including myself — and it’s not okay. And frankly, we are all human. We all have warts and make mistakes, we all have likes and dislikes, we all have stuff we are good at and stuff we suck at, and we ALL deserve to love ourselves.
I tell you truly, if you cannot forgive yourself for being imperfect and love yourself anyway, you will absolutely never be able to forgive another person for being imperfect and love them anyway. And that’s not fair, because literally no one is perfect. Even if you’ve done terrible things in your past, if you can’t forgive yourself and try to do better and love yourself for trying, you’re not going to find real love.
So no, you will not find real love until you can love yourself. But I do promise, you deserve your own love. I know it can be a struggle to get there, but it’s so worth it when you do.
