"It's about falling in love with you and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you instead of looking for love to make up for a deficit in self-love." ~ Eartha Kitt
I always found the concept of self-love embarrassing and terrible. If I just thought about it, I would wince. It felt completely wrong and I didn't understand what it was about. To be honest, I felt disgusted with it and thought it was an invention of the new age by self-centered people who wanted more opportunities to be selfish.
Sure, I was young at the time, but I can now also see how this reaction reflects the truth about the absolute absence of self-love in my life.
At the time, I was not aware that my lack of self-love affected many other areas of my life.
I struggled particularly in my romantic relationships, although that was the area that I valued most and focused on. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than a loving and fun relationship.
I wanted someone to feel loved, safe, and happy. I wanted to live a fantastic life with someone else, but I couldn't see this happening alone. Every time I had difficult feelings or bad moods, I felt disappointed, slightly angry and angry because I blamed my partner for causing my misfortune.
I accused them of letting me down in my eyes. If they would do better to be a supportive and loving partner, I would feel better, wouldn't I?
So first I tried to change and fix my partners. I tried to get her to give me the relationship that I didn't give myself.
Obviously I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know there was a relationship with you.
Most of the people I'm talking about don't know that either. We don't usually think about it or are taught at school. And so we live as if we don't care. We don't pay attention to ourselves and try to get from others what we don't give ourselves: sense of value, affirmation, consideration and love.
I have lived most of my life like this.
I didn't know I was in a relationship with myself. I didn't know that was a thing at all. I definitely didn't know that the relationship I have with myself affects the quality of all my other relationships.
And so I struggled through my relationships and endured experiences that I would not have had if I had loved and valued myself.
I struggled with the pain and despair of unmet needs, but could not see that I could give myself what I wanted and needed. By being blind, I made myself dependent on others, which usually didn't end well. The addiction dominated and ruined my relationships.
While I was recovering from being dependent, I had a lot of insights that paved the way for the development of honest self-esteem. The ideas of self-love that I had previously rejected so now come of their own accord. They simply make sense.
And so I want to share with you some insights that have helped me improve my relationships, feel good, and fall in love with life in the hope that you can see what your relationship looks like directly on your relationship with others.
Your self-esteem determines your relationship standards
If you don't like and love yourself, you don't value yourself, so you will have low standards for how you get treated. We just don't protect and don't care about what we don't value highly.
The way you treat yourself and how you let others treat you shows you how much or little you really value yourself. So pay attention to the standards you set. Pay attention to what you tolerate. Here you can find out if you value yourself if you are not sure.
Note that you can practice this in your relationship. It's a constant exploration where a partner can also help you by giving feedback on how they see you, how you treat yourself.
If you want to learn how to treat yourself better, think about how you treat something or someone that you value and that you really appreciate. Then set healthy standards for how you treat yourself and what behaviors you accept from others.
For example, note that you are doing without something you want or need and making a different choice. Find a solution that you can give yourself. Be proactive when it comes to enjoying yourself or supporting yourself.
Or, if someone talks to you in a degrading and disrespectful way, remember that this is no longer acceptable because you are now protecting what you value: you.
Your level of self-care affects your well-being.
So far we have found that we care about what we value. Your care is therefore an expression of your conviction of yourself.
I am quite open about the lack of self-care and call it self-neglect.
If you don't take care of yourself, give your partner a neglected version of yourself, which will certainly have a negative impact on your relationship.
It can also put pressure on your partner to take on your responsibilities. Your rescue tendencies may be activated and you create an unhealthy victim-rescuer or parent-child dynamic. You may feel too exhausted to go out, participate in activities, or have fun.
It is absolutely important that you take care of yourself. Not only is it for your benefit, so you are able to actually enjoy your life and relationship, it also benefits everyone around you.
Remember the next time the thought "self-care is selfish" swirls around your head. It is completely wrong. You deserve your own time, attention and care. It is healthy and necessary.
Others cannot fill the gap created
If we neglect ourselves, we deprive ourselves of what we need: attention, consideration, care, support, affirmation, connection, encouragement and love.
We then tend to look at others to make it available to us. We mistakenly believe that pain is something only they can alleviate or heal.
I think that's true if we don't do it for ourselves. The problem is that others cannot do it for us. You cannot fill the gap we create by depriving yourself of self-sufficiency.
Other people can support and support us from time to time, but they simply cannot do it for us because their efforts come up against a gap and simply disappear into insignificance.
If we don't like each other, we don't understand why others like us. If we don't like how we look and someone compliments us, we don't believe them. We believe that they are lying to us or are just nice.
If we do not love ourselves, we cannot receive the love of others because we do not trust her. We don't believe it. It doesn't match what we believe in ourselves, and so our brains reject it. It doesn't feel safe and suddenly our relationship is based on fear.
Neglecting ourselves and expecting our partner to do our job for us is the biggest relationship killer. It prepares us for endless disappointment and unpopularity because another person has no access to what you have access to – your inner self – and therefore cannot meet your specific needs as you need them.
You are not emotionally safe for yourself
All relationships require emotional security. It allows us to express ourselves honestly, openly and authentically. We know that our partner gives us room to be simple and express who we are at the moment and to respond lovingly.
If we do not value ourselves, we do not respond to ourselves. We deny what we feel, want and need. We don't mind in our own lives. We can put others' needs above us and often we don't even know what we want or need.
This is a sign that we have no emotional security in our relationship with ourselves.
It is not safe for me to tell myself that I want something if I am ignored, judged or put to shame for it. It is not safe for me to be vulnerable and open to myself when I am told to go, avoid my feelings and desires, or when someone else is more important than me.
The problem is that because I am not emotionally safe for myself, I cannot be emotionally available to others because I simply cannot go there. I cannot be honest and vulnerable. I can't open myself to another person if I don't open myself. I can't share what I'm too scared to see.
If I am not emotionally secure and available to myself, I can only have limited contact with my partner, which has a negative impact on the level of intimacy that we can develop and experience. Intimacy needs openness and emotional attachment and cannot exist without emotional security.
I am a co-creator of my relationships
Relationships don't happen to us by accident. We help shape it. We are always in a relationship – even if it is the one we have with ourselves.
And it is what we have with us that informs everyone else. I understand that we are all conditioned to search for "The One" and believe that there is one person who will heal us and improve everything for us.
So it can feel like a great loss to learn that you have to learn to take care of yourself to have the relationship you want. It can feel like an impossible task, especially if you think you have to learn everything before you are in a relationship.
I believe that we learn when we participate. We learn through and from our experiences and adapt our behavior and our decisions accordingly.
I do not advocate a relational withdrawal to end dependency or to improve the relationship you have with yourself. I support each individual's decision and understand why recovery requires that many are and remain single. It is probably the easiest way to start from scratch.
It is also possible to learn to like and love yourself in a relationship and to have that relationship change and improve as a result of your transformation because you will eventually create it.
The relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for all other relationships you have in your life.
The good thing is that you are responsible for it now. You have the power to decide how you treat yourself.
Will you continue to deprive, neglect, or abuse yourself? Or are you ready to really change your life by changing your relationship with yourself?
The choice is yours and yours alone.
Say "yes" to love – say "yes" to self-love because it changes everything.
About Marlena Tillhon-Haslam
Marlena loves people and life and is passionate about finding ways to make our human experience as fulfilling as possible. She works as a psychotherapist, relationship trainer and clinical director. She loves to connect on Instagram or through her Facebook groups and pages. She is an expert in human relationships and sees her as the elixir of life for a meaningful existence.
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