When We Don’t Love Ourselves, We Can’t Be Loved By Someone Else
When we don’t love and accept ourselves fully, we can’t ever have a great relationship or a happy life.
Our partner may whisper, “I love you so much” and we won’t believe them. We’ll always be looking for evidence that they are secretly losing interest.
Did they call us when they said they would? (If they didn’t, it’s because they don’t love us.)
Did they initiate sex, or cuddle like they used to, or hold our hands when we walked down the street? (They are losing interest. They’ve met someone else. I’m less desirable than I was ten years ago.)
We can’t tell them our secret feelings or fears, because it will push them away.
We feel like we “aren’t good enough” to date our crush, or we settle for someone who is “safe” or “fine” but who doesn’t make our heart leap with joy.
We don’t trust our partners (they aren’t telling the truth). We think they are cheating (where was she last night?)
We carry around the pain of never feeling good enough to have the kind of love other people experience. We doubt ourselves; we doubt our partners; we doubt love.
We let challenges demoralize and deflate us, and it’s not long before we realize we’re a much smaller version of ourselves. We won’t ask for a raise; we’ll stay in dead-end jobs.
We’ll lose weight and feel fatter than ever. We give up on our health, thinking it’s too hard or takes too much effort.
We’ll look for quick fixes to make ourselves feel better: a new haircut, a one night stand, a bottle of bourbon, a brownie sundae.
But none of these fixes fix us at all. They leave us feeling lonelier, emptier, sadder.
And we will remain that way until we stop looking for other people to give us the love and care we yearn for and deserve.
After all, why would someone else love us, if we don’t think we are worthy?
