Self Love

I hear the phrase “love yourself” on a regular basis. One example, “You have to love yourself before you can love someone else.” The statement makes no sense to me. What does it MEAN?

Often, I hear the statement made in the context of someone who has stretched themselves too thin and needs a break. I THINK what is meant is that you can’t properly care for other people unless you avoid burnout or physical collapse. In the context of the sentence, loving yourself is just a means to an end to be able to serve others. Where does self love come into this?

Let’s get real. If your kid really needs you, you put them first even if it means a second job, no sleep and one less kidney - NO kidneys if you've got sickly twins and you can talk the doctor into it. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t really be too enamored of yourself, would you? Nope, if you let the kid suffer because you "love yourself" we're talking SOCIOPATH and BAD MOTHER. I've met these people and if they love themselves perhaps that is good because the rest of us can't stand them.

Let's see - "Kid I'd take a bullet for you but I love myself just a little too much." Oh please. The same person who insisted that you have to love yourself before you can love others would call CPS. You'd bump Governor Spitzer and Obama's pastor from the headlines because the media would have found an even more horrible person. People like me would be utterly reviled and not even get an offer from Playboy to make up for the aggravation.

Alternatively, in the context of finding a decent mate, you hear that you have to love yourself before you can love others. I THINK the idea is that you won’t get a good mate if you don’t think you deserve someone who is good for you. I still think this is a stretch in the use of the language. We love people all the time and not for any particular reason and loving them doesn’t make them a better person or more likely to attract a good mate. If that is what is TRYING to be said, I think it makes far more sense to say that you have to respect yourself before you can reasonably expect to make good choices regarding romantic interests. But even that doesn’t make sense. The fact that it is so convoluted to get from “love yourself” to the underlying sentiment suggests that this is a phrase that should be retired.

I wonder if the sentiment of “loving yourself” is supposed to suggest that you should treat yourself as a dear friend and make good choices because if you love yourself, you want yourself to be happy and making good decisions is a good way to achieve that. Also, it is nice to indulge our friends. Way too twisted for me. I think we are better off just saying what we mean and avoiding confusing and odd statements that really don’t make a lot of sense.

Have a good one.

photo - another view of the Oklahoma property