On cutting it out.
“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” – RuPaul
The sentiment that you have to love yourself first before loving another person never rang true for me. There are dark places in me, places where I use my own face as a dartboard and trample my own spiritual tulips because bitch stole my sweater. Oh, and also because when we get right down to it, I’ve never cared for her much.
But with other people, I can be very loving. I try to plant and nurture their tulips, lend them sweaters. Once I get warmed up, I love unstintingly and honestly and sweetly. I’m really rather good at it. Until it blows up in my face. A lot. Every single goddamn time. Maybe that’s the point of the adage. Maybe you can’t successfully love someone else until you love yourself.
But then I see all these people in seemingly successful relationships and I wonder if I’m really so much more messed up than they are. Don’t we all secretly loathe ourselves1? How many people on the planet actually love themselves? Are those sixteen people the only ones capable of real, healthy love? I don’t buy it.
However, I do generally like the idea of loving myself. So there’s that.
I’m afraid of it too, though. As far back as I can remember I’ve worked tirelessly to avoid arrogance and self aggrandizement. Maybe it was because early on, a lot of flashy things like getting good grades and the arts came naturally to me; maybe at some point someone told me to keep my head down and stop showing off and I took it ridiculously seriously. I don’t even know. I just know that I became convinced that overconfidence is more repugnant than crippling self-abasement. I no longer actually think this is true, though. And if it is, I’m pretty sure I no longer care.
I’m usually good at projecting confidence even when I don’t feel it. I’ve also mostly avoided outright self-destructive behaviors; I’ve always been terrible at giving up and pretty good at finding silver linings. And I have to admit that I do often suspect I’m rather awesome. I think my nature is probably fundamentally confident, but I’m afraid to really commit to it, and instead I’ve taken on a lot of fucked up beliefs about myself.
This isn’t even about my romantic life, although I have been told multiple times that my self-esteem issues are by far the least attractive thing about me. Really, I’m just sick to death of being so hard on myself. It’s irritating to spend so much time with someone who doesn’t appreciate me. And yes, it is worrying that I have consistently sought out relationships with people who one way or another end up treating me how I feel I deserve to be treated2, and I would prefer that that change. Honestly, though, me treating myself like I’m worthless is more troubling, by far.
So I’ve started working on all that self esteem shit, more aggressively and purposefully than I’ve ever done before. If I overcorrect and start seeming at all egotistical as I work through things, I hope you’ll understand. I’m trying out this new thing of not being a dick to myself, you see.
I think these kinds of sayings are less than helpful. But you’re getting the point. If you don’t rate yourself you’re letting yourself in for people who don’t appreciate you, so you give your ‘love’ and get what you expect in return. Disrespect and lack of appreciation. So was it really really love you felt? (note, get into complicated need to define types of love, limerance et al… yikes).
I don’t think loving yourself is about being perfect. Its about being accepting. It’s certainly not about arrogance or agrandisement. Think of someone you have truly felt you loved. Were they perfection personified or did you accept their foibles and flaws. Loving yourself is about saying “Yes, I have a hot temper, I am intolerant, I eat too much chocolate because my willpower fails me. But hey, it’s all stuff I can improve upon if I’m kind to myself and less judging.” That’s true love. Being you and being the best you that you can be and then presenting you to the world as a whole person whom they can accept and respect. Sounds to me like you could apply some of that loving acceptance you’re so good at to number one!! Go for it. Just for a day. See how it feels.
*hugs*
It’s hard to stop being hard on yourself.
I am working on this myself. I can relate a lot to this post and to you.
Since my last relationship ended, I’ve been focusing on myself and how to handle myself, how to chase away shadows and be happier. My problem lies in finding happiness in others.
Good luck!
These days, I choose to define “loving myself” as being able to “accept the things I cannot change” (mainly my past and certain physical atributes) as necessary parts of the path that have led me to where I am, which just happens to be on my way to awesomeness. I love all the bad experiences, heartbreak, scary stuff and so forth simply because what has happened is the only thing that *could* have happened. The troubles that lie ahead will teach me necessary skills and maybe even include valuable rewards. It’s like life is one giant RPG! lol. I combine that with a healthy does of faith that I’m doing the right thing, listening to my heart and the universe and all sorts of other woo-woo shit.
One of my mentors called the part of my path that lead me here “learning to date myself” after my split from Mr. Rawr. By dating myself and wooing myself (yup, homemade fancy dinners for one, decadent baths, candlelit reading sessions in my giant pile of pillows on my bed and time set aside to masturbate on PURPOSE not just before bed or because I’m bored) I learned to love the way my body feels. I learned to love the peace of mind that eventually came when I stayed in as a treat to myself on Friday nights. In loving myself, I’m finding my confidence grow every day and my relationships even with friends are healing.
Does this mean I like who I am every day? No. Does this mean I don’t fuck up? No. Does this mean that I don’t still have LOTS of problems I’m working on? Not one bit. But it does mean that despite all that I try to accept who I am and love myself regardless. I’m my best family member. I’m my best friend. I’m my own best lover.
I hope you figure out however it is that you need to love yourself and others. Safe journery, fellow traveler!
” Don’t we all secretly loathe ourselves1?”
Every. Day.
I think that, if you can’t understand why someone would love you, then you’ll be more prone to sabotage relationships where they do and more prone to accepting relationships where the other person doesn’t love you.
Part of it is squaring away with yourself the idea that you have qualities that could be attractive to someone, that someone could love you for the whole package, and part of it is learning to trust a partner if they say they like you or they say they love you.
That’s not remotely easy to do sometimes, but even just being aware of it, of trying towards it helps.
It was so hard for me to accept that I deserved love or compassion, a few years ago, that my then-new therapist assigned daily selfcare as homework. The thought made mercy hysterically.
But I would not have said I hated myself or pushed people away or refused to accept care or believed that I didn’t deserve good things in my life. I thought I was trying so very hard and was becoming so awesome and nobody could see it and that was why I cried.
Yeah, right. On a fundamental level, I did not believe I deserved good things or the people around me, no matter how hard I worked to be awesome.
I got into mindfulness and out of a bad relationship and out of a bad job and just managed to get healthy enough to be able to accept the love that my once and future husband offers me. This, despite a rampant case of imposter syndrome, occasional panic attacks and the periodic days of being utterly unable to cope.
The thing that makes it work for him, in addition to how doing all that to become awesome did make me awesome, or at least awe-something, was that I had learned to tell when it was a Real Thing and when it was brain weasels fucking with me. Almost magically, learning about the brain weasels made them less severe because I stopped believing them as much, I stopped giving them privileged positions in my head.
In a moment of panic and hysteria, I can be all ACK I AM PANICKING and make it worse, or I can notice that huh, I am panicking, but it usually passes in half an hour and will go easier if I eat a cookie. I may not be able to eat the cookie, because of the hysteria, but the very same panic attack that would have wiped out a whole day four years ago is now a half hour long annoying cookie defienciency. Not easy, but effective for me.
I think the problem with trying to love when we don’t love ourselves is that deep down, we reject the thing that we are most desperate for. We seek out that love like water in the desert and refuse to accept it when it’s offered. Something must be wrong if it is offered to us, after all. But most people in healthy relationships need to have their love accepted. If we are too unworthy to accept it, well, people start to feel rejected and unloved, even as we feel like we are pouring ourselves out to love them.
Also when we hate ourselves we are shit for setting and maintaining boundaries but that is more a problem about wrong relationships, not breaking the right one, I think.
Anyway, no matter who does or doesn’t love you, life is more pleasant when you do not hate yourself, so I hope you can get there.
Be well, and maybe have a cookie.
I can relate to this post SO HARD. It’s…BORING hating yourself, eventually. You start to want a more interesting relationship with yourself. And you start (or how about I start using “I”) admitting that I am competent at some things, a few things. But yeah, I’ve never been able to feel really loving towards myself, and it definitely spills over into my relationships and things. I notice that enforcing my boundaries better makes me love myself more! So there’s that. :D