Do This Before Attempting to Love Anyone

I have always believed that everything that will last must have a solid foundation. This includes love. The most authentic foundation for love is self-love. Except this foundation is in place, all our external attempts at loving will fail. Here are a few reasons why loving yourself is a vital priority:

IF YOU FAIL AT LOVING YOURSELF, YOU ARE NOT LIKELY TO SUCCEED AT LOVING ANYONE ELSE. This is because we can only treat a person as good as we treat ourselves. In many cases, self-haters make the worst kind of lovers, because all our strategies for love are derived from how we love ourselves. It is the limit of all our external expression of love for anyone. Since we are most familiar with ourselves, the more familiar we become with a person, the more we tend to treat them as ourselves. This is both true in a positive sense as well as in a negative sense. This is why I recommend that you first discern how a person treats themselves, before giving yourself to them. In fact, it is more appropriate to say that you can predict how a person will love you eventually, by how they are loving themselves right now. This is why the best preparation for love is learning to love you for who you are.

The second thing is that IF YOU DON’T LOVE YOURSELF NO AMOUNT OF LOVE SHOWERED ON YOU BY ANOTHER WILL BE SUFFICIENT. I have noticed that some people are like bottomless love pits. They demand all the love they can get but never seem to be satisfied. This is because of the inner void in them, that can only be filled by self-love. No one can love you like you, because no one knows you like you. I am not advocating selfishness or self-worship but a healthy appreciation of yourself. Those who don’t love themselves make the most demanding love partners. This voracious demand for love creates resentment and frustration in those we are in a relationship with.

SELF HATRED IS THE BREEDING GROUND OF ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS. The more you love yourself, the less tolerant you will be of any form of abuse in your relationship. On the other hand, if you hate yourself, you are most likely to be comfortable with abusive partners. This is because their negative treatment of you, confirms the lack of value and worth you feel for yourself. Sometimes this can manifest itself by indulgence in sadistic and destructive sexual activities. Most of those who tolerate these extremes even view the abuse as a way to get back at themselves for the hatred they feel within.

So we must learn to love ourselves. It is the greatest thing we can do for our love lives. Hopefully, as time goes on, I will share with you how you can do so practically. Good day.

THE GREATEST IS LOVE