Love Yourself First

You probably hear this all the time, "love yourself before you love anybody else" or something like that; and I'm sure a few of us have questioned it. When I first heard it, I didn't understand it, but I do now. It isn't saying that it isn't possible to love anyone if you don't love yourself, because you can. It is just too unhealthy to love a significant other if you don't love you for SEVERAL reasons:

1) If you have 0 love for yourself, you will love them more than you love yourself and you should NEVER love someone more than you love yourself.

2) If you're unhappy with something that they're doing, you'll let it slide because you don't want them to leave you.

3) If they want you to do something and you don't want to, you may go along with it because what makes them happy is more important to you than what makes you happy.

4) It effects every decision you make with them, you'll be more likely to do what they want rather than what you want, because you believe that what you want doesn't matter when in reality, it does 101%.

5) It's easier to push you around when you have no self love, it makes you more vulnerable, and those aren't healthy traits to have in a relationship.

6) Not loving yourself but feeling loved by a significant other makes you feel more whole, which makes it so much harder if things don't work out. You'll be so used to the love that they're giving you because it makes up for the love that you aren't giving yourself.

7) When you love yourself, you realize that you don't NEED anybody, you're perfectly fine just by yourself, you can want to have someone, but it isn't a need. When you don't love yourself, it's more likely that you find having someone as a need, and that isn't good.

8) If they leave, since you don't love yourself, you will most likely blame yourself, making you dislike yourself even more. Even when things aren't your fault- a break up will never be YOUR fault.

9) It may also bring your significant other down. They can be a great significant other but seeing you not love yourself can hurt them, they want to see you love yourself and know that you're important. They may even try to help you learn to love yourself but what some people don't understand is NOBODY can help you love yourself or get better besides YOU. You have to aspire to do so in order for that to change.

10) "We accept the love we think we deserve" is one of my favorite quotes because it's true. When we don't love ourselves, we don't believe we deserve anything good, so when bad things happen your mind will tell you that you deserved it, but no one deserves to be treated poorly. If things end, when we love ourselves, we realize that we deserve better. You need to love yourself in order to accept the love you deserve, and get rid of the love that you don't (the bad kind).

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I hope that each and every one of you love yourselves because no one is going to love you better than you love you, and you're stuck with you for the rest of your life, no one else. People leave, you can't walk away from yourself, you have to love who you are in order to be completely happy. Remind yourself of your good traits, remember that we all have flaws, we all make mistakes, and no one is perfect, but that is no reason to ever dislike yourself.