If I waited until I truly loved myself I’d still be a virgin. If I waited until I loved myself I would have never dated. If I waited until I loved myself I wouldn’t have had a single relationship. If I waited until I loved myself I’d be…
Dead. Or worse, boring.
That quote — “You can’t love someone until you love yourself” –is the perfect example of old time narcissism disguised as New Age aphorism. It’s an excuse for navel-gazing, a feel-good defense of romantic failures.
Whoever came up with that quote got on the Grey Goose bus and misshed their shtop. It’s like saying you can’t get on the field until you’re good enough to play. Ah, not quite. The only way to get good enough to play is to get on the field.
It’s interaction not introspection that builds self-esteem. Love ain’t a spectator sport. You don’t score by playing with yourself–that’s emotional masturbation. Any time you see the word “until” in the same sentence as “love” you know it’s a bunch of crap.
You can put conditions on a lot of things, but love ain’t one of them.
you missed the entire meaning of the quote darling, it isnt that you cant date and try and find love becuase the other partner looks for that trait, they dont need you to love yourself to love you its about the fact you cant fully give your heart to someone when you dont know whats in it
you cant give yourself to someone when you dont even understand what that entails
more then anything you cant choose who you want when you dont know what your looking for
February 9th, 2009 at 8:39 pmgood point but here’s mine: Waiting to love someone until you love yourself is a convenient way to sit on the bench while the game’s going on. If you want to score (however you want to take the phrase) you can’t do it off the field.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:36 pmHey buddy. It’s not really ‘WAITING’ that is implied in the quote. It’s more like learning. If you view love as just a score, then you’re just throwing the meaning around and not really looking at it.This quote doesn’t just go out to partners, it also applies to family members. I will be out for the rest of the day but please get back at me on this!
August 7th, 2009 at 5:23 pmIt IS waiting–that’s what’s so wrong about the quote. We learn to love ourselves by loving others. Waiting is just an excuse…
August 8th, 2009 at 10:14 amthink of the quote this way: how can you expect someone else to like you if you don’t even like yourself?
learn to love yourself, make yourself interesting, be excited about your own life … others will become interested in you … and then you can learn about them and maybe come to love them.
make sense?
August 16th, 2009 at 3:13 pmI think the quote is ridiculously overused, and as you say “bullshit”.
Some of the most loving people I’ve known have had terrible self esteem.
And some of the most interesting people I’ve known have been very self destructive.
People really love their Cliché quotes, and they really stand by them.
Kudo to you for pointing out that this one is rubbish! You are fully right.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:34 amLove is about compromise. It is about having human compassion. It is about acknowledging that you are imperfect. It is about acknowledging that just like you, others are imperfect. It is about lowering expectations and loving another human being.
“Knowing what you want” smacks of a filtering process. It’s this “sorting out your preferences” and “what you look for in a partner” before dating that ruins the dating process. You cannot know someone until you’ve spent a significant amount of time with them. Having preset expectations (based on fantasy) shoots the plane down before it takes off. Love isn’t necessarily about you, it’s about spending time with another human being and enjoying them.
This is a big adage that stems from our culture of narcissism. Someone who knows their faults and problems will more likely have compassion for others because they know the pain. Someone who is always striving to better themselves and live up to an ideal has no compassion for others because they expect the same from others as they do of themselves. Thank you for posting about something that is really wrong with today’s beliefs.
August 7th, 2011 at 8:10 pm*Not just enjoying them, but enjoying what comes out of you and them together, the time, the relationship, the occurences, the memories.
August 7th, 2011 at 8:11 pm