Love yourself to get the love of your life
Dating tips can help one get a date but to get the love of one’s life, one needs a lot more. Self-introspection for lasting love can help open one’s mind, heart and body. It’s always easy to love or fall in love with someone. But when that love is not reciprocated with the same intensity, it can be quite distressing. It’s also very normal to feel dejected when a loved one or a friend doesn’t return a call or cancels some last-minute plans. Doesn’t take time to label them as uncaring or impolite. If this is a chronic pattern every time you befriend someone and the raised hopes are dashed, you need to make certain inner shifts through self-introspection.
It happens because one tends to demand, of course at an unconscious level, what one is most unwilling to give. It is very natural to seek love, respect and acceptance. It is equally natural to feel disappointed when it is not provided. The bottom line is, to seek love, one needs to feel that love for oneself. Or else no amount of love expressed by the significant other can suffice. No matter how hard your partner, even spouse for that matter tries, it will never lead to contentment. A wife kept receiving flowers and gifts from her husband regularly. According to her friends she indeed was a lucky woman. But she kept doubting her husband’s gestures – was he doing it to hide an affair, was he doing it because he had to, may be out of duty? Appreciation took the form of suspicion. Again, the feeling that the partner is losing interest, despite no apparent signs is common. Regardless of how intensely a partner expresses love – through expensive gifts or passionate declarations, if it is not evenly scaled by one’s own self-worth, it will always make things difficult. The feeling of not being good enough has a cascading effect on other relationships and even on work sometimes. The gnawing emptiness within due to lack of self-love can only be filled by loving oneself. It’s all about accepting oneself and one’s feelings. No validation from an external source is required to be considered worthwhile. Not to say one shouldn’t try and correct some unpleasant or faulty behavioural patterns hampering a relationship.
Loving oneself makes room for love to come into one’s life. Is it difficult to love oneself? Why the resistance, then? It’s not something deliberate. At times, past trauma, parental dysfunction or typical childhood experiences can be responsible for lack of self-love. Everyone deserves the love of their life. Through counselling or right therapy one can have a breakthrough and reverse the traumatic past experiences that block one from feeling in complete acceptance of oneself.
The need to love and be loved is universal. Everyone deserves to enjoy being loved by their loved ones, be it a friend, partner or spouse – coupled with the feeling to know that they are good enough just the way they are. You have the right to create what you want and to love deeply. Embark on a journey to love yourself first before you let anyone else love you. And see for yourself what love and life have to offer.