Loving yourself and being in a relationship

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Love and a relationship is a two way commitment. If yours or your partner's heart isn't in it then I doubt it would last. I think loving yourself is important, otherwise it will show. I've been there. If you don't love or like yourself it's noticable.

Could it be a fact that if you're hurt and not loving yourself it can be easy for a person to use that against you or to his/her advantage when he/she doesn't see eye to eye with you?

It's so hard to find a man who'll say what he really means or wants without the whole blaming me when things go wrong, or trying to change me, or using it as an excuse to leave when things go hard for HIM after opening up about a thing like depression.

For some men, starting to love myself is like a big turn off. Even when he is the one encouraging me to do so.

hmmm...posts are getting deleted. How nice!

I'm guessing that's due to statements that might have been perceived as harmful. Ok, fair enough. If my comments are viewed as abusive, or if the idea of violence towards your wife is offensive, or you're embarrassed by your wife's philandering, then it follows that the emotions you feel from that have an external CAUSE. You feel what you feel for a REASON. Logic is at play.

When you make a lame statement such as "Love isn't and shouldn't be something rational," you are, in effect, making an ethical statement that love should have NO objective cause, NO conditions whatsoever. It necessarily follows, then, if you avoid being violent towards someone you believe you love, or if you avoid people who are violent or abusive towards you, you are exercising logic with regard to love--which you say "isn't and shouldn't" be rational.

The topic here is "loving yourself and being in a relationship." I have said on more than one occasion that one can tell a lot about a man's self-esteem by the woman or women he keeps company with. I can remember your deleted posts almost well enough to retype them word-for-word, but since the mods are apparently trying to send me a strong hint, I'll simply say the stance you take makes you open for abuse and belies such other statements you make (that have NOT been deleted), for example:

No...I really don't think you do. Considering how you've lashed out at me for doing nothing more than pointing out the obvious, I think you're in serious need of help. You DON'T love yourself, and I think you could. If I'm the problem and causing posts to get deleted, then I can take a hint and stop with the shock tactics. But before I get called in to the principal's office, I suggest you re-read my longer post here, the one you supposedly disagree with.

I never said you had to work on attractiveness or status. I never said you should become an NT. What I have said, and often DO say to people like Marknis, is that loving yourself only means taking care of yourself, doing what's best for yourself. I don't think anyone should lose weight or work out to attract the opposite sex. I think everyone should lose weight who NEED to and work out so they can live healthier, longer, happier lives and feel good in their own bodies. If you can't/don't desire to, that only means you don't love yourself in those areas of life. I think that's potentially a mistake, but you may have other things you value that make you happy, or you may be disabled such that you physically cannot do those things. You don't love yourself because you CAN'T in that way; it doesn't mean you don't love yourself in ANY way, and perhaps it's the abilities you do have that matter the most. So just focus on THAT and you're head and shoulders above any self-hater out there. What often ends up happening--and I can't emphasize this point enough, that doing so will NOT necessarily get you more dates--is that a focus on self-love ends up making a person attractive to others and may alter or enhance social status. That is not the goal. It's nothing more than a natural consequence of progressing from doing something you enjoy to being exceptional at doing it.

I don't hide that I'm an introvert, that I'm socially awkward, or that I lack competence in things that seem to be second nature to most people, especially NT's. My special interests are no secret: Women/romantic relationships, psychology, philosophy, religion, and music. I work part-time in worship ministry at a Baptist church (SBC if you're wondering) and in education (Catholic school). I survive not by "being NT," but by limiting conversation or keeping the spotlight on the other person, and when someone has a need within a special interest, I act on that need and do the job better than anyone else is willing to. As weird and creepy as I am, people still want me around. And since I'm generally lacking in dignity anyway, I've taken up distance running. It's not to prove how athletic or manly I am. It's just a way to try to be healthier. I let my beard grow out back in November out of a show of solidarity with friends of mine who are going through cancer treatment. My wife, and many other people besides, said she liked the beard and that I should keep it. I trimmed up just enough that I wouldn't look like a Central American warlord, and it's funny to me how people have changed in how they have conversations with me. I didn't grow a beard to make people take me seriously. But...people take me more seriously. Because I was trying to be attractive? No. Because I had my own reasons. It just happened that making changes I wanted to change for my own reasons happened to be something that resulted in me becoming more attractive to other people. It's foolish not to capitalize on newfound strengths.

I haven't gotten any official warnings yet, but the deleted posts are warning enough. This thread is really about caThar4G and how she's feeling at the moment. Let's try NOT hijacking a thread for a change.

Let me assure you that I have nothing to do with posts disappearing. I'm pretty fine with a harsh discussion climate, but some people on forums are not.

It might be that there could be some logic behind why you fall in love with somebody, but that's not important. It's the feelings that are important, not why they started. It is also not true that if I avoid violent people, that is logic. Quite to the contrary. That's an emotional decision based on intuition. I avoid them because violent people create bad emotions in me, and so I don't want to be around them. And love and violence can never co-exist in my world. As soon as aggression or violence enters the picture, love will be lost. I simply cannot love somebody that is aggressive. And this is not logic, but feelings & emotions.

What I mean when I say that love should not be rational is that people shouldn't treat looking for love as a job as this would miss the point completely. If you select a partner based on rationality rather than feelings, you will end up in a friendship or arranged marriage and not a romantic relationship. Sure, if somebody wants to have it that way (I know some that do), then I'm fine with that. I'm not somebody that wants to dictate how people run their lives.

If we go back to the topic of the thread, loving yourself, it's pretty obvious we have different ideas what that is, but your examples simply don't resonate well with your advice. I stand by my opinion that loving yourself has nothing to do with self-improvement or fitting in. It's all about liking yourself for who you are. If you like to be a weirdo and don't want to adapt to society, you love yourself. You don't need to work on not being a weirdo. OTOH, if you don't like to be a weirdo, but still appear like one, then you don't love yourself. In that situation, trying to improve yourself not to be a weirdo is not about loving yourself, but if you succeed and are happy with not being a weirdo anymore, then you love yourself in your new state. So, if we talk about people that are unhappy about themselves, it's possible that they can start to love themselves if they become more attractive to the opposite sex by working on appearing more NT, but it is equally plausible that they can start loving themselves by going the opposite direction and just ignore all the NT thinking. We never know that in advance.

Also, I do take care of myself and do what is best for me. At least according to my value system of what is best for me. I despise dating and I enjoy passionate love, and so I go after that. I'm pretty fit, but that's not because I go to the gym. It's because I'm out walking several hours every day and play games with my loved one, something I find a lot more pleasurable than lifting weights at a gym.

^^^Lifting weights just SUCKS. I had to quit because it was interfering with my running. I was getting some nasty hip pain while I was doing squats, and I was having pain in my feet that was only getting worse. In a few weeks I’ll be running much, much less. I’m going to do speed work while getting ready for my next half marathon in hopes of getting my PR down 5 more minutes. I felt really confident going into my last half, and by mile 9 everything started falling apart. I’m just going to focus on doing my best at this marathon I’m running in two weeks and having fun with it.