Loving yourself and being in a relationship

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Is it really that important to love yourself to be in a good relationship (to love someone else)?

I'm starting to see it may be true.

And, knowing that I'm worth it is basically the same as loving myself?

You are the most important person to yourself. Whatever you can't do for yourself, you can't do for someone else.

If you can't support support yourself, you can't support others

If you can't fight for yourself, then you can't fight for others.

And if you can't love yourself, then you can't love anyone.

It's as simple as that.

i dated a couple of guys who would get super depressed about themselves, and they never believed how much i liked them, no matter what i said or did.

take it for what it's worth

Reviewing that various "I can't get a girlfriend" threads that have been posted in the last year or so, it seems applicable that those who have no love for themselves are the most likely to have trouble entering and maintaining a romantic relationship with another person.

Of course, I'm referring to people who claim to actually want such a relationship, and not those who claim to have no interest in any relationship at all -- misandrists, misanthropes, misogynists, et cetera.

^^^

I seem to have no trouble getting into a relationship. It's keeping them.
I've only had one relationship where the man didn't want to get into my pants or have unrealistic expectations.
I couldn't believe him.
And, I broke it off.
Now I am learning.

My girlfriend hates herself & I still love her & think our realtionship is pretty good for the most part. I wouldn't say I hated myself when I was single but I didn't really like myself much in lots of ways but I feel a lot better about myself in a realtionship. I guess that's one of the reasons me & my girlfriend are a good match for each other. We both feel like the other would be better off with out each other sometimes but we're both committed to each other & both do our best to reassure each other. We're also both very affectionate with each other which also helps.

Depression can be a major issue when it comes to relationships. You can get to the point where you feelings are all dulled and you can't respond properly to anything happening around you. That in turn can easily turn people off.

Love exists on two different levels. There’s a purely emotional, subjective level that exists somewhere in the ether that we cannot objectively know, and then there are the consequences of having said feelings. What one DOES out of an expression of love for someone IS measurable and objective, so you can look at that and say, “hey, that’s REAL.”

It’s the effects of that I’m most concerned with, not what one feels, but what one does about it. Self-love (emotional) isn’t strictly tied to self-esteem, because how do you know for sure what one’s state of mind regarding himself is? But if someone keeps himself in good health, proper grooming, well-fed with a balanced diet, financially independent (no debt), etc., you might say he is in the act of loving himself. Self-care (outward) and self-love are one and the same. Self-love (outward) may be practiced independent of emotion, i.e. no corresponding or causal emotion is required. All that matters emotionally is whether one is happy. If a person doesn’t value a person, object, or activity to the extent that he is happy, he doesn’t love them. If you do not take care of yourself, if such doesn’t make you happy, you do not love yourself. And so it often happens that people who neglect physical needs and lack desire for independent thought or action towards that which DOES make them happy are most often lacking in self-esteem.

People, and I’m not talking just about romantic partners here, naturally benefit when others do well enough to support them in their own interests. I have better food sources when my grocery store is making a lot of money. They need support. I need support. We work together. Everyone wins.

If you don’t love yourself, among other things you see no REASON to be supportive of others. Why? Because if you’re doing nothing to love yourself, you have no use for other people. You have nothing to gain from supporting them or making yourself useful to them. It’s not that you can’t do good other people, or love them. It’s that you will fail to love them adequately. You will appear to others as a parasite, and you will tend to neglect others once you’ve gotten what you wanted. That’s called greed. A person who loves himself will want to earn the love and respect of others, and that requires being the kind of person to make that first step.

Taking care of yourself is a positive indication that you don’t need other people for that. You’re not the kind of person to ask for what others know you don’t deserve. So seeking out the company of others is a matter of desire, not a cheap way to fill a need. It’s a choice you make to be with others despite lack of need for others. You WANT to be with them; you don’t HAVE to be with them. And that shows others that you VALUE them, i.e. you LOVE them.

If you don’t love yourself first, it’s UNLIKELY though not impossible to love someone else, at least in the way another person deserves to be loved. In a similar kind of way, those who don’t practice self-love are often low on others’ priority for reciprocation. In other words, if you don’t love yourself, who will?

If that’s difficult relating to casual acquaintances and friendships, think how much tension that’s going to generate in an intimate, romantic relationship. The stereotypical guy who has no career ambition working an entry-level job who spends all his free time eating Cheetos, drinking Mountain Dew, and gaming—he loves himself enough to pursue a few narrow interests, sure, but what about his health and intellectual well-being? He doesn’t love himself beyond the TV or computer screen or beyond minimum wage when he could (and should) honestly expect better. If he’s that neglectful of himself, what can a woman genuinely expect? SHOULD she expect anything?

And that raises a point that’s just as important: Should you love someone who doesn’t love himself? Only so much as that person is valuable to you. Only for his potential. Only for what you know you can expect, and you expect great things. You shouldn’t stay with someone who disappoints you. You shouldn’t stay with someone you don’t love. And you shouldn’t enable a person’s immorality by indulging them with your presence when they don’t love you, no matter how you feel towards that person.

And that extends towards marriage, though with a twist. In marriage, it’s understood that the package you’re getting and all that entails with all the ravages of time is what you’re signing up for. You’re making the choice to be with that person no matter what. Love, or lack thereof, is not enough. If your partner neglected you before marriage, she will neglect you IN marriage. If that’s not what you wanted, you shouldn’t have gotten married. And if you “fall out of love” with your husband, it’s immoral for you to stay with him—BUT the mere fact that you COULD ever fall out of love with the man you marry is a HUGE PROBLEM. If that’s a possible issue, whether for men or women, just don’t get married. It’s just that simple. Forget about what you FEEL and actually THINK for a change. Recognize and acknowledge who you are together, BE HONEST, and THEN look at long term prospects. If your potential mate doesn’t love herself, you can, rest assured, know YOU WILL HAVE PROBLEMS.

Finally, the kind of woman a man keeps is a solid indication of how he feels about himself. A man who doesn’t love himself will spend time with a woman, assuming he attracts a woman, who is greedy, parasitic, and lazy on one end of the spectrum or is vulgar and downright verbally or physically abusive on the other end. He’ll put up with her cheating because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to get another woman. Same thing if a man is a cheater—something is lacking in his view of himself that he willingly debases himself with multiple women. Nothing is ever good enough because HE is never good enough. He may blame his gf or wife for not satisfying him, but deep down he is slave to a need for a sinister sort of gratification he can’t even give himself, much less expect from any woman. A man who IS satisfied with himself first and foremost doesn’t have to cheat to prove a point. He CAN love the woman he’s with, and he loves himself enough to court only a specific type of woman. Cheaters don’t love anybody, especially not themselves. And, of course, those who tolerate it love themselves even less.

By the way...guess who in this forum has been guilty of cheating? One major turning point for me was finally understanding WHY I kept doing it. I finally reached a point that I decided NEVER AGAIN would I tolerate being made to feel guilty about ANYTHING. I didn’t need her. I didn’t need ANYBODY. And if being happy meant being alone for the rest of my life without HER, I would be just fine.

Those who love themselves aren’t going to cheat, nor will they tolerate cheaters. Those who love themselves will not verbally or physically abuse another person, nor will they tolerate abuse. If someone pisses you off, ask WHY. Don’t ask them to change, and don’t change for them. Move on. People do make mistakes and deserve compassion and mercy ONCE because they’ve already proven themselves. People who REPEAT mistakes do so willingly, however. If it’s behavior that cannot be helped, then those two people are incompatible. Move on.

The less you hear “I’m sorry,” the stronger the relationship. If you don’t love yourself, you’re open to a life of guilt, pain, and regret. You feel guilt less when there’s nothing to feel guilty for. When you’re with the right person, you’re not going to want to do anything you’d feel guilty about. Feeling guilt and grief within a relationship is a loud warning that something is wrong, that you’re with the wrong person. Love yourself, and her, too, enough to end it right away. Love yourself enough to recognize the right person when she shows up, and things like guilt and negative emotions will largely vanish from your vocabulary.

I strongly disagree with the definition of love yourself that Rho posted. For me, loving myself has absolutely nothing to do with NT stuff like working on your own attractivity, status or anything like that. Loving yourself is to be content with yourself, accept your limits and simply like yourself just as you are.
It's important to note that loving yourself has nothing to do with what other people think of you. It's completely internal, which means that NDs will not need to become NTs or act like one to love themselves.

Personally, I love myself, I have a high self esteem, but I have no desire whatsoever to work on my attractivity, social position or to become NT in any other way.

Also, pride, shame, earn, and deserve are mostly completely alien emotions that I simply don't feel. Yes, these ARE emotions and not real, objective things.