So you say you love your spouse, your boyfriend, or your generic term for person you are in a relationship with? Well let me ask you this: Do you love the other half of your relationship too? Do you love yourself?
I know it sounds like some mushy bullshit, but it’s a surprisingly important question to think about. When Haley and I first asked ourselves this question early in our relationship, it brought a bit of an uncomfortable feeling, mostly because we never really thought about what it actually means. And honestly, I had never heard of anyone saying that their love for their spouse was enabled by their love for themselves.
Early on, Haley identified that her self-love was a little low. She certainly hoped it wasn’t nearly as important as I have now made it out to be. Famous vulnerability researcher Brené Brown reveals in her insightful book Daring Greatly that she, like Haley, struggled with loving herself because of self-doubt and shame. The last thing Dr. Brown wanted to conclude from her research when investigating love was that she had to love herself first to love her husband to the fullest. A few pages later, she writes that the data did not listen to what she wanted to find. In her definition of love that she spent years developing, she includes that “We can only love others as much as we love ourselves”. She also shares that by practicing self-love in her own life, she has vastly deepened her love for those around her. So why is self-love so important? How does it allow us to love so much more strongly?
I avoid answering my own questions and instead use scare tactics and a list of negativity
If you have no love for yourself, it is a lot easier to fall willy nilly into all sorts of stereotypical unhealthy relationships. You likely won’t have the independence required for a healthy relationship. You may develop some sort of dependency on the person you claim to love, because you will feel the lack of love that you are supposed to give yourself and try to suck it out of your partner. Or perhaps you are going to roll over and let your significant other steam-roll you because you don’t properly give a shit about yourself.
Ok, so obviously if you have a low self-esteem and dependent behaviors, things aren’t going to work as you wanted. And you won’t have time to spend on someone else if you are a mess yourself. But what about someone who does have their shit together and is more or less independent, but still doesn’t really care for themselves that much?
Surely I’ll stop being such a downer and get to the good parts… After a quick discussion of shame and self-worth
The key is self-worth, or self-esteem. Self-esteem is a person’s idea of their own worth as a human, and their worthiness of having the good things that they do in their life. A person can be great at independence but still see themselves as unworthy of love.
And this leads us back to Brené Brown, esteemed researcher of the cheerful and uplifting foundation of self-worth: shame and vulnerability. In her work, Dr. Brown concludes that low self-worth is typically the result of a person who feels a lot of shame. When they make a mistake, they say “I am a screw up” rather than “I screwed up”. The people who can separate their single actions from their overall self-worth, saying “I screwed up (but I am not a screw up)”, have higher self-worth. She then concludes that, “If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging”.
A person with low self-worth, or someone who doesn’t love themselves, can still act lovingly and feel love for their partner. However, their experience of love is almost certainly more limited. How can they say, “I don’t feel love for myself, but I do love you” or “I am not a worthy human, but you are?” At some point, their significant other will notice that they don’t love themselves and feel like the love they are receiving from them is less than it could be. And the love they are receiving will feel like it is lower in quality and not worth as much.
I know this sounds quite harsh, but it is very real and true. There have been very distinct times where Haley has less love for herself that I can easily tell that she has less love to give to me. To me personally, it feels a lot less meaningful as well for her to try to show me love when she is not feeling so hot about herself.
Loving yourself has the same foundation as loving someone else. Maybe less talking and physical intimacy. Maybe not.
What does self-love even look like? I’m not suggesting narcissism, where you are in love with yourself more than anything else, but it is more than simply not hating yourself.
Self-love starts with a healthy level of self-worth, and an understanding of your inherent value as a human. Everyone compares themselves to other people, and many people use this as an opportunity for some narcissistic self-deprecation to say, “See they’re this awesome person who does all these great things, and I’m a total loser”. Not only is this kind of thinking pure and completely illogical nonsense, it is the antithesis to self-worth. You have no idea who that person is, you have no idea what they have done in the past or will do in the future, and you are completely susceptible to overvaluing them and undervaluing yourself. Doesn’t seem like a very fair comparison.
Also, your value system for comparing them is probably completely screwed up. If your definition of success is still external factors like popularity or money, I strongly encourage you to step back and think about whether that makes any sense, and read Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck to redefine your value system.
Self-love also takes a solid level of independence and an appreciation of your own ability to handle life and get shit done. As I wrote about earlier, having dependencies leads to a need and a craving for love rather than an honest choice of loving someone else. Author Anthony de Mello writes in another brilliant book Awareness, “Can you be said to love me if you need me psychologically or emotionally for your happiness?”
Making yourself a priority, giving yourself enough attention, and taking care of yourself are all crucial to both independence and self-love.
Love is a choice with yourself, too.
Something most people don’t think about or realize is that loving yourself is just as much of a choice and requires just as much effort as loving other people. In the same way that you have to choose to love someone else once the Honeymoon stage is over and they start to get on your nerves a bit, you have to choose to love yourself even when you don’t necessarily feel like it. One way to do this is to give yourself as much grace and patience as you do with others. If you can tolerate it when someone else falls short and forgive them for it, why can’t you do the same with yourself?
Haley has made huge strides in her self-worth and self-love since the start of our relationship, and she still has a ways to go. The progress she has made is very visible to me because she puts herself down less and is better at giving me real, meaningful love.