In Relationships Is Loving Yourself First Important?

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When you commit yourself to loving another person for life, do you need to love yourself first? Let’s explore what different people think about this idea.

In Psychology Today, Leon Seltzer argues that self-acceptance and not necessarily self-love can provide deeper connections in relationships: “Having resolved old feelings of anxiety, shame, inferiority, and unlovability, you’d no longer fear being “unmasked”—and thereby repudiated.”  Seltzer believes that relationships are able to form without self-love or self-acceptance, but it is only through self-acceptance that realtionships can deepen.

Juliana Breines, another writer on the Psychology Today website, also agrees that “It’s not just that people lacking in self-love view their relationships more negatively—they may also enter more negative relationships in the first place, selecting and staying with partners who don’t treat them well.”  This type of negative reinforcement and low self esteem may impact the person’s ability to be happy because they may not feel that they “deserve” to be happy.

Circling back to the idea that you need to love yourself in order to love others, we can see that both of the articles listed above come down on the side of self-acceptance or self-love in order to increase positive connection in relationships.  Self-acceptance can also do more than help deepen our connections to our loved ones according to The Daily Love – “Rather than judging ourselves for what’s going on inside, or telling ourselves we shouldn’t be feeling this or wanting that, acceptance is a gentle nod of, “Yes, this is how it is for me right now.” It’s making space for all our feelings, all our emotions, all our longings and needs, all our experiences – for the full width and breadth of the human experience.”  The author argues that this type of acceptance can change not just how a person relates to themselves or people in their life, but may also lead to changes in that person’s life.

What do you think? Can self-acceptance help us deepen existing relationships, develop new connections and improve our lives? Let me know in the comments or on facebook.