How true is it that you have to love yourself first before you can love someone else in a relationship?

23 comments

1. 1000% true. Love yourself or just fail in anything really

2. It makes interpersonal relationships a bit more difficult when you aren’t self sufficient/confident. I would definitely recommend being comfortable with yourself and harnessing your self confidence first because otherwise you’re fairly likely to project fears and insecurities onto your partner.

3. I have loved people without loving myself before, but my wouldn’t exactly call those relationships healthy since I seeked every ounce of attention, reassurement and affection just to get the feeling that at least someone loves me and after a while that always annoyed the shit outta my partner

   By now I’m more confident in myself and stopped pestering my partner for reassurance and confirmation of love

4. Depends a lot on how you define “love”.

5. You can potentially self sabotage a relationship yes. But that’s not to say you can’t grow to love yourself while in a relationship and actively working to make those changes

6. very

7. No, because this basically states that people with low self-esteem are unworthy of love. I believed this for a long time and shut a lot of people out because I heard this repeated so often.

8. Absolutely not true. You can love someone else without loving yourself. They’re not connected.

   That said, a relationship is going to be really difficult if you don’t have a decent amount of self-worth. It leads to so many different problems.

9. Its an absolute.

10. Sometimes It’s total bullshit. What they’re really saying is “your lack of social success is your fault because you didn’t love yourself enough”. Look, I take care of myself. I like spending time with myself. I do things for me. But because I’d rather be on my own and don’t want to settle and date someone abusive or unattractive, it must be because I don’t love myself?

    Now sometimes it’s said at people struggling with a mental health issue, and maybe it seems to make sense there. What they’re really saying is People don’t want to be around someone that’s a mopey buzzkill, and if you were happier with yourself you’d find it easier to attract companionship. But honestly it’s kind of a cruel thing to say in that case. What if they’re miserable because they’re alone and it’s justifying why we leave that lonely person alone? But even then “oh just love yourself more” as a solution to fighting a mental health problem is just about as useful as “have you tried not being sad?”

    There’s really no situation I can think of where telling someone they fail cause they don’t love themselves enough is both a true and kind thing to say.

11. I don’t know about that, I always heard that it’s impossible for someone to love you if you don’t love yourself. I think that’s true, I mean you know yourself more than anybody else will, and if you hate yourself then surely anybody else will. Gotta fix that before you become somebody that people will love.

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    Don’t agree with your statement though, I’ve definitely felt what I think must have been love while hating myself.

12. Very true. The reason being is that you end up loving people who aren’t good for you. I guarantee you a shitload of people who stay in abusive/toxic relationships have low self-confidence and don’t love themselves enough to break away.

13. 100% true.

14. Extremely true, even if it sounds hokey or trite. The real core of the issue is better exemplified in a similar idiom: “Hurt people hurt people,” meaning people in pain will do harm to others.

    One of my main bits of advice to anyone looking for love is always start by making sure you’ve worked on yourself first. Too many guys (and girls) think that a relationship is supposed to fix them, plug their holes (*metaphorically speaking*), et cetera. It’s not.

    You gotta make yourself the best you can be before you go looking to *share your life* with someone. Otherwise you’ll just end up sharing your neuroses and repeating negative patterns.

15. Yes, you can, but it’s not going to end well. If you base your self-worth on someone else they can leave at any time and take everything away. It’s much better to be happy with yourself, and then you’ll attract other people anyway.

16. Without loving yourself you’re severely at risk for codependence. That’s not healthy. You learn that you’re worth something, that you yourself are enough and worthy of love, then you enhance it with the companionship of another.

17. To be honest…I don’t understand the “love yourself” concept at all. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of myself in a positive or negative way at all…I just am. To be clear, if that means something to someone and is helpful to them then I’m all for it…I just really don’t get the concept.

    Which, I suppose, means that I’ve got some level of self confidence, enough that I don’t have self esteem issues anyhow.

    I do think that anyone getting into any relationship will be better off not needing external validation, so I suppose that’s similar to what you’re asking. The more one needs from the outside the more draining they will be on those around them, at least in my experience.

18. No, those people who actually take that seriously tend to use it as an excuse to be insufferably self absorbed.

    You need to feel good about yourself, or perhaps, just not be so negative that you resort to posting on Ask Men… But “Self love”? Careful, that easily can be code for narcissism.

19. Think less of “love yourself” and more “be worth loving”. If you don’t love yourself, then there are qualities about you that make you unlovable to others.

20. I think it’s only kind of true. I don’t love myself, I barely like myself if I’m being honest and I literally have a post history riddled with examples of this. And I’ve been able to find relationships and women interested romantically and the relationships have been happy until they reached their end like all do.

    I think the biggest thing is that I’m okay with being single and not being in a relationship, I don’t feel like I *need* one or them in my life. Really that saying says you need to *love* or be happy by yourself, and that your happiness can’t be determined on a relationship itself

21. No, not true at all. It’s *preferable* to love yourself, obviously, but it doesn’t prevent you from loving others

22. it’s a bunch of Bull.

    It’s a saying that incentives to work on your self esteem, but in a relationship you can 100% love another person while hating yourself. and that relationship might be the actual catalyst to start loving yourself.

23. It’s not true, it’s just good advice.