Relationship Renewal, Part 1. Love Yourself Unconditionally!

Do any of these statements resonate with you?
 
… You have a hard time finding or sustaining loving relationships
… You have serial relationships, drifting from one to the next
… You’re in an unfulfilling, or even abusive relationship
… You isolate yourself from your friends or family
… You feel lonely most of the time, whether you’re alone or around others
… You often feel like you don’t belong

In this first part of a 3-part blog, I’m going to look at the role of self-love in relationships.

It might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but one of the reasons many of us struggle to form lasting, loving, meaningful relationships is that we don’t actually love ourselves.

How many of us can honestly say that we love ourselves unconditionally? That we are kind, forgiving, generous, and caring towards ourselves?

If you wish for more love and connection in your life, you first have to learn to love yourself. We can’t expect more from others than we give ourselves. 

When you are able to give yourself unconditional love you have taken the first step on the road to the close, loving relationship you crave.

But what does this actually mean?

The specifics will be different for each of us. For me an important step was the realisation that I had rejected the part of me which got upset and cried easily. Even though at an intellectual level I knew that crying could be a healthy release, I still felt that crying made me less-than. So loving myself meant accepting the frightened little girl who cried at the drop of a hat.

I know I’m not perfect. I expect you know that you’re not perfect either. But we’re both human beings so perfection is an impossible goal. We can love ourselves as we are; we can love our imperfections; and we can love the imperfections of the people we love. 

Then they in turn will love our imperfections; they will love us just the way we are (remember that old song?) - warts and all.

The problem is that many of us try to earn the love of others by being and doing what we perceive they want us to be and do. Unfortunately our understanding and expectations of others is programmed in early childhood and is largely unconscious. This means that, as adults, our perceptions of others are often more a reflection of those early childhood programmes than they are of the reality of the person standing in front of us.

If Mum and Dad only expressed love when you were kind and caring, or if they made it clear that you were not allowed to express your childish rage at your little sister, then you may have turned into a kind, caring, people-pleaser who puts herself last and finds it difficult to express her anger in a healthy way. And when you do get angry you may find that you're unable to love yourself.

And guess what? It is highly likely that your partner will only express love to you when you are kind and caring and will withhold love when you get angry.

I’m not saying this is easy. I’ve had to pull myself up short for my own self-critical self-talk on numerous occasions in the last few years. And then I have to remember to be kind to the part of me that was being unkind to the other part of me... Sometimes it feels like living in a hall of mirrors! 

But at least now I know what it is I need to do to keep the love alive between my partner and myself. (It helps that he does too!)

This is just a part of the journey of self-love. There’s also the question of your values, getting your needs met, making time to play. But all of these become much easier when you embark on the project of loving yourself.

In part 2, I’ll be talking about compassion and curiosity.

I’m currently working on a short guide called Three Steps to a Magical Relationship. If you’d like to get access to it, sign up for it here. 

When it's finished, I'll send you an email to let you know you can download it.