Do I have to love myself before I can truly love/become loved?

It’s not necessary.. but whoever it is you are loving will notice the difference. It’s tedious when someone despises themselves. It reflects on their entire personality, IMHO.

You just have to love yourself period.

It’s not necessary but it helps. If you love yourself first, you have a better chance of choosing someone else for healthier reasons. Having said that, I don’t think many of us do choose lovers for healthy reasons most of the time…

If you think you aren’t lovable, why should anyone love you? I know I’d follow your lead, seeing that you must know more than I do.

In my opinion; love comes to those who already love. One of the greatest loves you will ever know is having a genuine love and appreciation for yourself. You will glow, be happy and beautiful because loving yourself brings an amazing joy to one’s life.

Focus on you and loving yourself for exactly who you are and love will find you <3

Basically, yes.
If you don’t love yourself, a relationship with another won’t last.
If it does, it won’t be a healthy relationship.

There are so many different kinds of relationships that use the word “love” to describe them, it is really impossible to say. I know of people who have found their “true love” because their partner takes good care of them – or because their partner accepts that they can stand on their own two feet, and be independent.

The definition of “love” can fit many different lives.

Well, there are people I genuinely love. And there are people who love me. But I pretty much hate myself. So I’m gonna go with “no” here. The numbers would probably be higher if I had any self-esteem at all, but… it’s not necessary.

I think it depends on the person…..really.

Sometimes, a person who doesn’t love himself will find someone who sees his beauty and brings it out. The archetypal “Beauty and the Beast”.

Sometimes a person who feels unloved will just project it onto their partner and that usually leads to the crazies.

I think that it depends on the person you meet and your own issues and ability to heal yourself in the process.

Well, I would say yes, but than again there are some exceptions. For example, my mom will alway love me even if I hate myself.

I never did, and I’ve had plenty… PLENTY.. of women fall in love with me. I don’t expect I ever shall love myself, either. I think that loving or not loving myself is kind of irrelevant. I love, and I express that love in whatever way I can, and she either responds, or not. It is my great pleasure to love. It is what seems most meaningful in my life. It causes trouble, but there is nothing I would rather do.

It is the love of many women that has made me feel lovable. Or at least, that I have something to give; something women appreciate. The thing that amazes me is that even when I have stopped loving them, they continue to value my company, and continue to say they love me.

So I wouldn’t worry about it—at least, not as far as loving someone else is concerned. If you are unhappy that you don’t love yourself, that’s another thing. But it has nothing to do with whether you can fall in love or not.

When I was in my teens and twenties, I heard that bromide so many time. “You have to love yourself before you can be loved.” It was utter bullshit! It was the other way around, if anything. Through the love of others (which I hadn’t experienced growing up), I came to feel I was a decent and valuable person, whether or not I loved myself.

@daloon: Amen. <fistbump>

Plenty of women fell in love with you, but how many loved you enough to spend a lifetime with you?

Loving oneself implies accepting oneself for who one is. I know that in my life loving myself means: forgiving myself, giving myself the benefit of the doubt, listening to my thoughts, accepting my body the way it is, setting up ways for myself to grow, give myself healthy food, provide healthy relationships, push away stuff that isn’t good for me, spend time just with myself, nurture myself when I am sick, and probably many more things.

Loving myself allows me to more easily ‘be’ myself in every relationship as opposed to being the ‘me’ that I percieve ‘they’ want me to be in whatever group I am entering. I used to be a chameleon; adeptly changing (slightly or greatly) to match the dynamics of the group I was entering.

The implications of this realization effect every relationship. Loving myself allowed me to finally find my soul mate.

Instead of discovering who I am married to in the years following the marriage, the fact that each of us loves ourselves, we were able to know each other before we were in a serious relationship.

Finding your soul mate is completely dependent on loving oneself completely, the way one should love their natural children. The feelings of love can be experienced with a different person everyday, I am not referring to that kind of ‘love’.

Note: I am referring to the purest love, the love that seeks the best for the other, whether they are acting their best or not.

That’s always difficult to know, @pdworkin, but I suspect that five of them would have married me. I never asked, so I can’t be sure. In any case, what does that (or the soul mates comment) have to do with the question?

It has to do with how one defines “love” in the context of human relationships. There’s no way to know if anyone “would have” unless they did.

@pdworkin I’d just like to point out that love is different from marriage. They did love me even if they didn’t marry me. And they loved me despite my poor opinion of myself.

Who mentioned marriage?

This guy <points to self>

I may never be able to say that I love myself completely, but I’ve learned to love the parts of myself that I’m proud of. It has taken a long time for me to get to this point, but I’ve realized that being proud of certain areas of my character or personality helps in defining what kind of relationship I’m willing to invest in. I’m still learning about myself (I’m pretty sure that will always be an ongoing process) but knowing more about what I’m not willing to sacrifice of myself has allowed me to make better choices, and I’m much happier as a result. So in answer to your question, no it’s not a requirement for you to love yourself to love or be loved, but I think having some progress in that area only increases your chances of having that love be more than just a memory somewhere down the road.

<gives @pdworkin a shock controller>

Use it with Love my friend.

I think it’s easier to find the right person for you when you love yourself. As for finding love, sometimes that just happens…

yes. yes yes yes. my last significant relationship was destroyed because of my poor self-image. yes, they can still love you, but the relationship will fall apart if your self-loathing interferes with your love for your significant other.

I think we attract and love or are loved by people who have complimentary neurosis and the same depth of madness.

So if you don’t like yourself, that is not healthy, you are not healthy and you will not attract a healthy lover. You will attract a fixer or a codependent or some other perhaps loveable and loving but not healthy individual.

I was thinking about this today on my walk. It seems that many of us don’t learn to love ourselves until we are in our 40s or 50s, if then, so that would be a long time to wait to love or be loved. Ideally, you are healthy enough in your 20s and 30s to choose a partner or partners that you can learn from and grow with but of course, this is not always the case. There is a subtle dynamic between learning to love yourself on your own and learning to love yourself because you are loved; it’s not wholely one or the other.

@janbb You have a very valid point. Loving oneself is not really a point you come to, it is a process that one commits to. The depth of your commitment is proportional to the ‘amount’ you are able to love yourself. The act of committing to the process of learning to love yourself generates the feeling of love for oneself, thereby creating more emotional currency to invest in oneself.