Relationships
"I Need to Love Myself Before I Can Love Others"
Why the "love myself better" approach typically fails.
Posted January 31, 2025 Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
Key points
- Many men and women blame their failed romances on their inability to love themselves.
- The idea that learning to love oneself before being able to love others is misguided.
- Growing a greater sense of self-respect and self-compassion is a better way to prepare to love others.
If you want to solve a problem, the first step is to identify what is causing it. If you get this wrong, you'll likely be frustrated by the solutions you come to employ.
One area where this often arises is in romance. Many people who struggle to build satisfying romantic relationships conclude that the real problem keeping them from building a healthy romance is a lack of self-love.
This is reflected in statements like, “I need to learn to love myself before I can truly love someone else.”
On the surface, this idea seems plausible. In reality, it just leads to more heartache. Why “I need to love myself before I can love someone else” makes no sense.
The belief that one must learn to love oneself before loving others overlooks fundamental aspects of human development. Consider infants and toddlers. They start life as little bundles of self-centeredness. To become healthy adults, they must transition from a "me-centered" outlook to an "other-centered" approach.
A great deal of parental effort is dedicated to helping their children strike a healthy balance between their own wants and the needs of others. When this effort fails, children grow up to become either self-absorbed narcissists or painfully submissive people-pleasers.
When successful, however, it is because children have learned to love themselves in a mature way by first being loved by their parents.
“Loving myself” into maturity is not part of the program.
Love: More Than a Feeling
At the heart of love lies a desire for another person’s well-being, accompanied by an appreciation for their unique qualities and feelings of deep affection.
This should not be mistaken for simply having a strong emotional attachment or a desperate urge to be in someone’s presence. While these feelings can create an exhilarating experience, they are merely the typical precursors to romantic love, not love itself.
Rather than being indicators of love, they more often reflect infatuation, lust, and social ambition (or a good cigar, speaking from personal experience).
Why the "Love Myself Better" Approach Typically Fails
A major obstacle to willing oneself to love oneself more is that we are all too familiar with our own flaws. The embarrassing secrets we keep hidden from the world, the shortcomings that cause us to cringe, are all too visible to us. Our imperfections are often displayed on a mental carousel, causing us to wince each time they come to mind.
A constant internal chorus of self-criticisms can beat someone down to the point that they selectively (often unconsciously) enter relationships that are predominantly unhealthy. The people they become involved with tend to be self-centered, controlling, and critical.
Because the individual seeking self-love is already focused on their own personal shortcomings, they feel incapable of standing up to a harsh friend or romantic partner. Their reaction instead is to submit and try to win approval by improving themselves.
This creates a downward spiral from which the only escape is to end the relationship. Repeated over time, you arrive at the point where someone understandably concludes, “I need to learn to love myself before I can give and receive love from others.”
A Better Solution: Earn Self-Respect and Cultivate Self-Compassion
Instead of trying to convince yourself to feel more self-affirming and affectionate, it would be more beneficial to work on building self-respect and self-compassion.
Cultivating self-respect is generally easier than generating warm feelings towards yourself. Start by considering the character traits in others that you admire, such as diligence, reliability, kindness, bravery, etc. Think of someone you know who embodies these qualities and write down what they have done that reflects these traits.
Next, ask yourself when you have also demonstrated these virtues. Write those instances down. Now, think of ways—big or small—that you can exhibit these virtues in the coming week.
Commit to doing so and keep a record of these interactions in a journal. Regularly review your progress without being critical. Instead, view your examples of virtuous character through the eyes of a trusted friend. Over time, you’ll begin to see yourself differently and strengthen the character qualities you admire, creating fertile ground for boosting your self-respect.
To develop greater self-compassion, you can begin similarly by reflecting on times when you have shown compassion to family or friends. Ask yourself if you have extended the same compassion to yourself in similar situations.
Likely, you have not. Start the practice of viewing your mistakes from the perspective of a close friend or family member. This does not mean making excuses, but it does require you to stop harshly punishing yourself for every misstep. While this may be challenging, if you persist and approach it with honesty, your tendency to be self-critical will slowly recede.
Conclusion
If you believe that the solution to your ongoing romantic heartaches is to learn to love yourself, take a moment to reconsider. Instead, focus on building greater self-respect and self-compassion. Although this process will take time and hard work, the rewards will be far greater and more enduring than merely trying to cultivate self-love.
