The Dangers of Loving if You Don't Love Yourself
The fascinating world of love, health, and happiness: what mysteries does it hide? What dangers are in it? One of the riskiest things is to love others when you don’t love yourself first.
A good relationship with peace, understanding, and self-fulfillment is going to be one essential building block. It’s an absolutely essential part of our relationships with others. Not just romantic ones — all of them.
If you doubt yourself or have inner conflicts and project them onto others, you probably won’t even see them. It could make us think that the problem is our friendship or marriage or dating relationship. When the problem really lies in the relationship we we have with ourselves.
What can I give others if I don’t even know what I have? How am I going to allow others to make me happy if I don’t even know what I want? F irst and foremost, we need a genuine, fulfilling relationship with ourselves. Then and only then can we then incorporate it into the relationships we have with others.
The idea is to expand this positive energy into our relationships with others. By socializing and building friendships or romantic relationships, we can learn more about ourselves. Social relationships show you yourself because it’s reflected onto the other person like a mirror.
Learning to be alone: love yourself
Knowing how to be alone opens the door to intimacy. Getting to know ourselves and what we like, what we want, our strengths and weakness, will make us more authentic.
The point of the journey is to learn to love deeply and with eyes wide open. What’s the point of blind love? Loving yourself, respecting yourself, taking time out for yourself, and letting yourself feel: they’re all fundamental.
If we learn how to be alone, we can then to decide to enter into a romantic relationship. Because it will add something to our lives and help us grow as human beings. But we won’t need it, because we already have love within us.
One good step to take in order to learn how to be alone is to differentiate between being alone and feeling lonely. Loneliness has a negative connotation that being alone does not have.
Feeling lonely implies isolation, distance from the outside world, and solitude. Being alone, on the other hand, is a decision. It entails exciting, rewarding self-discovery without isolation or grief.
We are complete beings
I feel good about myself and I choose to share my life with you. I love myself and you love yourself. It’s a life with two complete beings who love each other, not two halves who need each other to feel complete. Loving each other will always be a decision, not something done out of desperate need.
It’s dangerous to feel something missing and try find it outside of us. When what we really need is time spent listening to ourselves. We need to learn how to love ourselves and get to know ourselves if we want to find what’s missing.
Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking the problem is external. Let’s look within ourselves first, work things out, and then look outwards.
I don’t want other people to complete me, I want them to accept me. Just like I will have to accept others as complete and integral beings. I live a complete story all on my own, and I do it with the best company, yours truly.
Others aren’t there to fill in what is lacking. They’re there to share life with me. And to give me the opportunity to get to know myself. Because love and each person’s unique story never ends. We simply write new chapters as time goes by.
