You have to love yourself before you can love another person
An open letter to Sheena Sharma and everyone else who believes you can love someone else before you love y0urself.
Dear Sheena,
Actually, you Do have to love yourself before you can love another.
Sometimes articles are so full of implicit wrongheaded density that replying to them in jest, dismissing them or calling the writer on just one point isn’t suitable or helpful. It just contributes to the fogginess of the writers’ and the responders’ intended messages.
And it sure doesn’t help the reader.
Most of the time, I imagine responders just throw up their hands, knowing how much time and energy it will take to respond properly. So they don’t respond.
Then what happens on line is what Mark Twain said about newspapers:
“If you don’t read the newspapers, you’re uninformed.
If you do read the newspapers, you’re misinformed.”
That’s the case here.
Sheena Sharma, has an article in Elite Magazine, entitled, Actually, You Don’t Have To Learn To Love Yourself First Before You Love Someone Else in which she shows herself to be a searcher (which is good) but simultaneously proves herself wrong (which is not so good) and castigates people who believe the truth, the opposite of what she thinks (which is not so good).
My reaction was one of both frustration and compassion I understand where she’s coming from but it isn’t a good place and it doesn’t lead to good conclusions.
So I am responding.
Sheena is candid and self-revelatory and says:
“I’m immature, I’m emotionally unavailable, and I deserve to be with men who are also emotionally unavailable. As true as those first two statements may be, I let the third have such a hold over me that it keeps me from getting serious with someone. It’s as if I’m actively playing into my own worst nightmare. I dislike myself, so I can’t like someone else, I’ve decided.”
Well, she’s right about the first part (immature and emotionally unavailable) but not the part about deserving bad things.
“You don’t love yourself!” Gigi (a friend of Sheena’s) shouted to me across the dinner table.
“You’re right,” I (Sheena) said unapologetically… “I’m not denying that. I’m just waiting until I start loving myself, and then I’m sure I’ll find someone.”
“My eyes darted around the room. I wasn’t sure anyone believed me. And to tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure I believed myself.”
Well, waiting until you love y0urself is not a good game plan. It will never happen.
Love is an act of the will towards good. You have to recognize good and act on it.
If you have not been taught self-love, you must do it yourself, you must act.
Then she writes that her friend, Gigi said: “I think you use not loving yourself as an excuse to avoid a real relationship.”
Sheena says: “I clammed up. See, I didn’t want Gigi to be right, but she was.”
Yes she was. But Gigi is not quite right. It is not an excuse, it is a valid reason.
(She –Sheena– then said that she makes bad decisions about her life.)
“And my unwavering belief that I deserve something — someone — bad stops me from having anything worth having,” she adds.
“I’m immature, I’m emotionally unavailable, and I deserve to be with men who are also emotionally unavailable. As true as those first two statements may be, I let the third have such a hold over me that it keeps me from getting serious with someone. It’s as if I’m actively playing into my own worst nightmare. I dislike myself, so I can’t like someone else, I’ve decided.”
Right again, and I began feeling for Sheena. Then she says this:
“The trouble is we’ve been spoon-fed the same piece of advice since the dawn of time: the ever-so-famous line, “You have to learn to love yourself before you can love anyone else. But does anyone fully ever love herself? I certainly don’t think so. So when Gigi told me I was using lack of self-love as a weapon to defend myself, I was more confused than I’ve ever been.”
Now I like her and want to talk with her. But here is where she gets into trouble.
“I don’t love myself,”she says, “but I also don’t hate myself. Some days, I’m pleasantly satisfied, and other days I feel like an epic embarrassment to myself. No feeling I feel is permanent. I am static and ever-changing and unsure and certain all at the same time. I think it’s naive to definitively say “I love myself.” And if you can say that and mean it, well, I call bullsh*t on you.”
So she doesn’t understand the concept of self-love and she doesn’t think you can love yourself all the time and if you say you do, you are a bull-shitter. I get it and my heart goes out to her. And she’s right about people not going around all day saying they love themselves. But nobody ever said they did. She is hurt and lashing out. I understand and sympathize.
THIS IS A HUGE ISSUE FOR MANY
But let’s restrict ourselves to this one column (much of which is here already; the whole of which is linked to below).Sheena is confused about what self-love is and since she doesn’t love herself, she worries about the future. Well she might.
Here’s her whole column: http://elitedaily.com/dating/you-dont-have-to-love-yourself-first/1482784/
But look first at her past. She writes:
“When I was 19, I was diagnosed with body dysmorphia. It changed my life. Having it made me realize that I had incredible amounts of work to do on myself. Now at 25, I’m still battling the same demons, even though they’re not quite as evil as they used to be. But they are still very much alive. They’ve transformed, even, branching out into other problems, like f*ckboy-hopping and having so much anxiety that I can’t sleep at night. I’m still working on myself, and I don’t see “Project: Self-Help” ending anytime soon.
She is right. (By the way, I checked out her post above and it came with a picture of her. She’s very nice looking!)
She says she has a “mental” problem and she certainly does.
I’m going to parse more of what she says about herself.
“I look around at my imperfect friends in good, healthy relationships. I covet what they have. As impossible as it seems to find someone who will not only love my imperfections, but love me because of them, I know it’s actually possible.”
No, Sheena, it is not possible; they won’t love you because of your imperfections–what planet do you live on? We don’t love anyone FOR their imperfection, and people do not have to buy into your neuroses.
No, they’ll love you in in spite of your imperfections. Come on, if you are the editor and writer you claim to be, you know words mean specific things.You are reacting emotionally, which is understandable, but you also have to edit. You haven’t.
WHEN SHE MEETS ‘THE ONE”
“When I meet “the one, (Sheena writes) I won’t expect him to fill those holes in me where wounds used to be. (Good.) But I don’t expect myself to fill them, either. Maybe those pockets of emptiness can’t be filled by anyone or anything, and that’s what makes us beautiful. (What?) Maybe two people don’t need to love themselves to be together, and maybe they don’t need to feel complete with each other. Maybe they can just … stay incomplete. Together.”
Wow, a lot to deal with here.
- First: there is no ONE, no perfect partner, no soul mate. No one person on earth that heaven has prepared for you. That is romantic hogwash.
- Second: no, he won’t be able to fill those holes in you. You are your own person. He will not “complete you.” Even if he could (he can’t) that is not his job. That’s YOUR job.
- Third: The pockets of emptiness may not be able to be filled–not all of them anyway–but some of them had better be, or there’ll be serious trouble. Like separation, divorce and a lot of pain. But you have to fill them, not him.
- Fourth: That emptiness is not what makes you beautiful. Many other things do, but not emptiness. Trying to fill the emptiness, OK, I’d buy that.
- Fifth: ‘maybe two people don’t need to love themselves to be together.’ That’s true, they don’t, but either
- a) they will not remain together or
- b) they will and be unhappy. No other possibilities exist.
- Sixth: Yes, they can stay incomplete together. Look around, many couples do. That’s a great solution, right?
Back to the beginning
Love yourself first
Her comment, “I think it’s naive to definitively say “I love myself.” And if you can say that and mean it, well, I call bullsh*t on you.” is demonstrably wrong.
You set up a straw dog and offer an (erroneous and even fatuous) interpretation of self-love, cut it down, then castigate anyone who doesn’t agree with you.
No one with an I.Q. above room temperature believes self-love is
- a) being “in-love” with yourself or
- b) believes you are in a state of ecstasy about loving yourself all the time.
That’s ridiculous.
Self-love means you love yourself, period. It means you have done interior work: examined yourself, analyzed yourself, know your strengths and weakness, are working on your strengths, have or will change what you can that you dislike about yourself, or want to improve, know yourself, accepted yourself, care for yourself, and can get on with life.
Of course, you are going to have days when you don’t feel loveable, we all do, but you understand that the love you feel is for your authentic self, not the presenting self that screwed something up today.
We all do that.
But those of us who love ourselves brush it off; those who don’t, frankly, do what you do (read your own article for details).
LOVE YOURSELF FIRST
- You must love yourself first, because otherwise you can’t truly love anyone else.
- If you do not love yourself, you cannot love anyone else because you can’t give away what you don’t have.
- Worse, you can’t accept love from anyone else because you “know” you are not loveable. It isn’t true, but you accept it and act on it as if it was true.
- You feel you are not worthy, so if anyone expresses love to you, you think they are kidding, lying, stupid or manipulative.
- You unconsciously push people away; you reject them before they reject you.
It is wrong-headed self-protection but sadly, it is common.
You are wrong about love, and yourself, and other people, but you believe, and feel, and think, that you are right.
YOU HAVE TO KNOW YOURSELF BEFORE YOU CAN LOVE YOURSELF
There is worse news.
If you don’t know yourself, three bad things will happen to you.
- You won’t be with the right person.
- You won’t be in the right work.
- You won’t be happy.
The last one follows from the first two.
You know this already, I’m just reminding you.
Finally, Sheena writes,
“No, I don’t love myself. But that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to love and be loved.”
That IS true; you do deserve to be loved.
But it won’t happen on a truly equal basis until you learn to love yourself.
I can teach you.
Visit me at Self-Knowledge College
Or email me: frankdaley@rogers.com
Frank
P.S. Sheena, I apologize for being a little rough on your arguments but you don’t get to be publicly wrong, insult others and be self-justified all at the same time without somebody calling you on it.
Em me: frankdaley@rogers.com and we’ll talk.
I’m serious. You can get through this.
P.P.S. Got a comment on this story? Please enter the conversation.
