can you love another if you don't love yourself?

How can you give love when you have no love at all? Loving others is important but you have to be able to understand, accept yourself and yes love yourself to be able to reach to others and love them as well. Why? Because it creates confusion to your inner self if you keep on loving others and not yourself. When you have self contentment it is because you love yourself and love is easy to flow and be shared to everyone.

I have loved people before when I did not love myself, so it is possible, though because my own confidence in myself was weak, so was my relationship, so it did not last. Now that I have good confidence and like myself, I have a better inner strength and I don't just break. Now I am in a great relationship and I am so happy, when I did not have confidence I was always second guessing myself and was bendable. With my better confidence I can handle issues when they come up and problems are solved, though problems tend not to come up. A love for yourself, at least for me, gives your relationship more strength to endure things. It is not required, though it is recommended to love yourself

Take it from the voice of experience, if you don't accept yourself and appreciate your own qualities you won't be able to let go of all your faults and love someone else for who they are. Have you ever heard of the saying that we hate in others what we despise in ourselves? It's true. Yet, if we accept our own faults and are at peace with them we can accept others for who they really are and overlook things that would normally irritate us. If you love yourself, you don't NEED someone to "complete" you. You are secure and like your place in the world. You appreciate having someone to love but you are not needy and clingy, which can destroy a love affair. That's what it means when they say if you don't love yourself you can't truly love another.

people who do not love themselves tend not to accept themselves and the way they are- this means that they feel inadequate (even if they are unaware) and can seek to compensate by entering into a series of usuccessful and unsuitable relationships. When you dont love yourself you have low self esteem and this causes you to be attracted to people who are unsuitable and controlling often. Also you are an easy target as people who like power seek out people who do not feel sure about themselves. I used to think this was rubbish but life has taught me it is true. I see people all around in unsuitable relationships because they have not put themselves and finding themselve s at the top of their priority

It is really a hard question. I think sometime you begin to love yourself after you fall in love with a girl or boy.

Maybe it will be happen. But it seems to be a difficult things. Normally love yourself first,after that you can love another.

We can never give others what we don't have. If we love ourself only we can love others. I think that a person can never love others if he doesn't love himself or herself. Love others as you love yourself is the know words. So when can truly love ourself and care ourself more, we will certainly be able to love others.

Well for me your friend just said the right thing. Because only by knowing to love yourself will you know how to love others. If you always look for love of others you will never learn to love yourself as you will always be a slave to what others want in you. When loving there should always be and exchange of what the others like about you and you to him. If you don't love yourself there will always be a tendency to always give in to what the other is asking of you are just being used and abused in the end. So for me, I guess I would love myself first before I would commit to a loving others. Only then you can truly share the love and receive love from others. It is not selfishness, it is more like respecting your needs before others. It is about learning about yourself so that when you love others you know where to put yourself and the one that you will love.

I agree with them. As a person who learned to love myself with great difficulty I believe that if you do not love yourself then any relationship you are in will be flawed. You can love another if you do not love yourself but can you accept their love for you if you do not love yourself? I believe the answer to that is no. If you do not love yourself, or for that matter even like yourself, then you are not open to receive love from anyone and if you cannot receive love then the relationship is one way and it will end up in pain. As for not knowing what it means to love yourself, it means caring about yourself with all your flaws. Feeling positive about yourself. Not constantly putting yourself down. I would suggest looking in a mirror and talking to yourself. Tell yourself that you are sorry for always being negative about what you see are your flaws. I know it sounds silly until you try it seriously. I did this exercise on a weekend retreat I took to help me learn to love myself and it is quite amazing. I learned to stop thinking negatively about me. I used to always criticise myself for everything and never think positively about me in any way. Now I accept myself as I am with all my flaws and I think positively about me. If you cannot love yourself how can you accept that someone else loves you? And if you cannot accept that other people love you then how can you have a healthy relationship which requires two way love?

i don't think so. i kind of believe in the line "loving yourself is the greatest love of all". i mean, how can you possibly show love and affection to other people when you haven't even learned loving your own self first? it doesn't make sense to me. most things that we learn in life are from our own personal experiences. we teach ourselves in order for us to be able to teach other people too. i believe it's the same way in love, loving yourself first will eventually lead to love other people around you.

Hi sameroad! After more than two weeks that I have not been here in mylot, this is the first discussion that I've answered, :) and to start with it, loving is a giving, and you can't give of what you don't have...self-love is essential without this our ability to love others is greatly limited, we are left with our narcissistic and survival concerns, valuing other only as potential satisfiers of our needs. Without essential self-love we may easily become codependent, attaching to others to deal with our emptiness, self-loathing, or feelings of unworthiness. :) Happy mylotting !

Hello sameroad. Good day, I think if they can love another, they are just into it because they need some affection and love because you they cannot feel love because they aren't loving themselves. You know, before giving some love you just have to love and respect yourself because in that stage you will know if you are now ready to love not just yourself but other people as well. Being in love is important and it is not a joke. Because giving some love is giving some happiness. But there's this instance to get hurt. So you should be ready with it and face it. That is why you have to learn to love yourself because in the end its just you, you and you who will understand what you are, who you are, and your mission in loving people. Good day and Godbless.

My friend and I go over this subject constantly as well. I don't really know the definate answer, but both sides have important aspects. I mean what if your in a relationship that perfectly comfortable? You and your mate are perfectly happy except anytime any compliments come around you also disagree strongly and it always leads to an argument? When you don't love yourself that strongly, it cause problems for the people who do love you and that you in return love back. There are many cases where someone hates themselves to outrageous porportions, yet there are some cases whenre people often hate themselves very little. On the other hand loving yourself would be very benefical. I don't know to whatderee you and your friend describe as "loving yourself" but if that means you can't call yourself fat, isn't that a good thing? A lot of my guy friends say they especially hate it when girls are ALWAYS calling themselves fat, and if loving yourself means you don't care about it, isn't that good thing? Society has often taught generations after generations to hate themselves though, so I don't relly understand how anyone can really fully love themselves.

I can't love anybody if I don't love myself. When my first relationship didn't work, I sat and thought what was wrong. If it was me or him. I can't come up with a conclusion before. And then the same things happened with my next relationship. Then I suddenly realized one day that I think I have a problem. I don't know how to love my boyfriend because I don't how to love myself. Well, I stayed single for almost 2 years to learn loving myself. Now, I think I will be having a good relationship with my boyfriend.

OK-Sure you can "love" another. Is it any good? Will your lack of self-love destroy the relationship? Add more problems than needed because you don't feel good about you? OF COURSE!!!! When one does not love ones self, they have insecurities, they do not feel as if they are worthy of love-even if they want it. This leads to problems,maybe minor things like not believing/accepting compliments. Then it grows- fearing the other person is not faithful and accusing him or her of infidelity. That sure puts a damper on things. People get tired of issuing compliments to others who dispute it constantly. When you are accusing of cheating or other things (that if you felt better about yourself, you would not say) you are telling the other you don't trust them. When your partner can't even scan a parking lot without being accused of "checking someone out", it causes problems. When you don't love yourself, you will tend to attract people who won't treat you well. When you don't treat yourself with love, even the nicest of people will begin to follow your lead-if you can't handle yourself with love why should anyone else? If you are doing crazy things for love that aren't good for you, that is not being truly in love, that is believing you need to behave like that to get love, because you aren't worth mutual respect. When you don't love you-you WILL end up pushing the other person away or dragging yourself through hell to be with someone that isn't returning what you need or want. When you don't love you, you never feel loved~truly~and that is maddening to the person who is "chasing his or her own tail" trying to love you.

I think u have to know urself first... so that u can totally love the person..

I agree with your friend. A person must love himself/herself before the love is extended to others. If not, the so-called "love" becomes possessive. For example, the mother "loves" her son too much. It is not love when the mother becomes overly protective and the son feels miserable. The son yearns for his own space, he wants to grow, he wants to be an individual. This kind of mother lack self-love, she feels insecure. The kind of "love" is actually a bondage to the other party.

In my option, you can not love other if you do not love yourself. If you even dont love who you are, how can you fall in love with other people. thats impossible. maybe you think you are not perfect enough or real nothing, do you really believe some one will love you? I dont think so. then you will not love other. maybe you do admire someone but it is not love. its just my opinion :)

I think the whole "you can't really love someone unless you love yourself" stuff is BS. There have been plenty of times in my life when I have not loved myself, but that did not effect my ability to truly experience love for another. Though, I do feel, that you don't know what real, true, pure love is, until you have a child. That love is the greatest feeling you'll ever experience.