A few weeks ago a friend of mine was having issues in relationships. He had told me that he asked his wife to help him learn to love her again. What he did not realize until just then, it was not her who was broken. It was him. We went on to talk about what made him happy, what he needed to do, and what the future holds for him.
At one point I asked him “How do you expect her to love you when you do not love yourself?” He went competently silent. I knew I hit something with that question. We both knew it had been a very long time since he was happy with himself. I knew when it happened but I wanted him to see his own path. Seeing the road you have walked yourself makes it easier to see where you need to go. There is an old saying “How can you know where you are going if you do not know where you have been?”
Many things can contribute to falling out of love with yourself. It can be because you are grieving for the loss of a loved one. It could be due to living an unhappy lifestyle. It can be you blame yourself for a broken relationship. It could just simply be depression. After a while you can not even smile at yourself in the mirror. Instead of a person, you are more of a shell just going to through the daily motions. Life then is more about the duties instead of the moments.
Here is what I had my friend to do to reconnect with himself.
1. Write down 5 things you feel like you have lost along the way.
2. For each of the 5 things, write 3 ways on how to fix or achieve that again.
3. Post your list somewhere visible.
4. Read the list often and motivate yourself to do better.
When you write it down it makes your goals tangible. When you look at your goals often it keeps them constant in your brain. The more you think about them, the bigger chance you have of doing them. If you do what is on your list to improve yourself, you will start to love yourself again. It is all about the perception. Great things happen to those who think greatly. Steve Jobs did not become who he was by wanting to be mediocre and neither should you.
It is important to love yourself first. Then you have the love to give someone else and the feelings of taking in someone else to your heart. If the heart is cold and closed to yourself, then it is closed to everyone else. It is not selfish to think about things that make you great. It is not selfish to act or promote the good sides of yourself. What you love about yourself, others will love as well.
You are so right. We need to love each other so others can live us and we can live others. Great points for your friends to conside hope he get to have a nice valentines!
I strongly believe you cannot love someone else until you love yourself. Great advice.
Wow! This is such an inspiring post. I’m going to try this method that you used to help your friend. Not that I don’t already love myself. I’m inspired! Thanks for sharing!!
This is so very true, thank you and thank your friend for allowing you to share. I think we all have these moments, the important thing is overcoming them.
My best friend is going through something similar. I will have to give him these 4 tips.
I think the important take away here may be not to depend on others as your source of fulfillment. Your fulfillment can’t come from other people. I’ve been reading about loving out of strength versus loving out of weakness.
When you love someone out of your strength, you love them because of who they are, not for what they can do for you or how they can make you feel etc. I think this may be two ways of addressing the same issue… perhaps?
You are very right! If your fulfillment comes from others you will never be full.
Yes, I agree-unless you are happy with yourself then you can not be happy with another person or your own life in general. I hope you were able to make him become aware of what was troubling him so that his life will get back on track.
I totally agree with you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else,if you can not love yourself how are you supposed to give someone else the love and attention they need.
I completely agree with that statement. If you are unhappy, how could you possibly effectively make anyone else happy.
So true. I tend to tell this to my friends who seem lost as well. A lot of people say it but rarely do they apply in their own life – it’s truly important to love yourself first.. after all, you can’t expect someone to love you and make you happy when you yourself are not happy and loving at all
I think this is a great way for reconnecting with one another! And it opens doors to WAY better relationships
you are so right about this- you have to love yourself first so that others could love you.. Very important and it can solve many problems related to relationships.
I love this post! One can live their entire life feeling a void by attemtping to fill it up with external things. We must turn inward and internally fill ourselves up with love. There is a quote that I like, it’s something like this…. “If you live by another person’s compliments, you will die by their criticism…” Thanks for an inspiring post!
Such great advice! I like the idea about writing it down. Somehow it makes it more real when it’s right there staring back at you.
Thank you for posting this. So many couple lose themselves when they get married and have kids. It is so hard to find yourself again.
That’s great advice and some great tips to get in a better place of mind. You should always love yourself first
This is a great post. It’s so important to focus on yourself sometimes so you don’t lose sight of yourself.
A great post to leave a lot to think about. I like your steps to finding acceptance and love with one’s self. Those are great steps.
Loving yourself, feeling good about yourself is the very first step into having any kind of a relationship. I know when I am not happy with myself… I am mad at the world.
Great post – I definitely feel awful outwardly when I’m not feeling great about myself it does all play with each other. x
Great post. Very thoughtful article. At times it is hard to love yourself, so these are great tips. I hope your friend find happiness.
Great tips, it is impossible to be in a relationship with someone and ask them to love you when you do not, especially when you do not know who you are anymore because you got lost somewhere along the way.
This is something that people struggle with. You do have to be happy with yourself before you can expect others to feel same way.
Great advice!! I definitely agree to create a list and make sure it is visible!
I agree with you, it is so important to empower oneself when it comes to relationships.
Such great advice. I always think that when people have major drama issues with others, they need to check themselves first and make sure that they have healthy solid footing before blaming someone else.
I really enjoyed this read and even book marked this page. I have been asked and even told these very same things regarding relationships in my life. I guess the person was telling me some truth. :O)
I completely agree that you have to love yourself. Without that, nothing else will fall into place.
This is such a common thing when two people just seem to fall out of love with each other. Loving yourself first and respect goes a long way to a strong, loving relationship
You are 100% correct. There are so many ways that we fall out of love with ourselves. Once this happens the people around us make change opinions simply because we change from the loss of love. I hope your friend finds his way.
I’ve always told myself that I need to write things down. It holds me accountable whenever I do things like that. This is a great post. Thanks for sharing.
Great points. Healthy self love is the foundation of every thing else we do. If we self hate then it is translated to our relationships. Love your advice ti him.
Eliz
This is such a great–and incredibly true–post. In order to love, we must first learn to live with and love ourselves. I think we often lose sight of that. I feel sorry for your friend, because when you are in a relationship (like he is) he can make the other person feel as though they are responsible for someone falling out of love with them. And that can be very damaging. I hope your friend gets the help he needs and that he can come to love himself again 🙂
Stopping in from SITS Sharefest!