Love in Practice | Learning to Love Myself First
Love.
How many different songs, poems, books, stories are created about love?
And yet, it still feels like the one area in which humans still struggle to understand the why. Or even the what, or the how. The alchemy of love, between any set of people, is almost like the unsolvable equation. The true magic in this world.
But I wanted to approach love from a scientific point of view.
I recently was able to experience a few different kinds of love at the same time; Long-term stable love, deep friendship love with both men and women I could trust and be grateful for, familial love as a daughter, sister, and mother. And I added in a new relationship possibility thinking I could do that without destabilizing everything else because I was secure in the people around me.
I also felt I was armed with intellectual knowledge and theories. I do believe that not all personal needs buckets can be filled by one person, instead, I really feel it takes the proverbial village that we are so lacking in our society right now. I studied attachment theories and boundaries. I was committed to being vulnerable.
What I hadn’t calculated on was my underlying condition of lack of true self-acceptance, true self-love. While I recognized my abundance in outside love, I had never internalized that into inside love. And until I do the hard work — the hardest work — of loving myself first, I would never, will never be able to find anything other than distraction and fear in my relationships. No matter how much I care for them or how much they care for me.
This passage in Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving brought this into sharper focus after that recent heartbreak:
“The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about love lies in the confusion between the initial experience of “falling” in love, and the permanent state of being in love, or as we might better say, of “standing” in love. If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined by, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement.
Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.”
Oof. I felt that. The level of the intensity of the infatuation as proof of the degree of preceding loneliness. It prompted me to ask the question: “How do I ensure I am never lonely again?”
For the truth was, I had been lonely in spite of all of the abundance of people in my life. And I had been subconsciously looking for those (or other) people to fill that void. I had to learn that that void, that loneliness inside, can only be filled by me.
I did run this question by some of those trusted beings, and one such person, a brilliant friend that I am grateful to word spar and process with, said: “If you love being with yourself, then it’s impossible [to be lonely].” She went on: “And [add] the inner conversation and exploration to look at how you didn’t have any models in your life to know what a healthy, happy relationship looks like.”
Fortunately, (and with a lot, a lot!, of therapy) I had already gotten there as well. I could hear her words and agree. I replied: “I am definitely working on my inner monologue and realizing how negative it is. Trying to be more (quietly) positive and kind to myself. Like I would to a child. I am the child, the child is me. I can re-parent myself. And anyone who wants to stay is welcome with open arms and my fullest expression of love, AFTER my love for myself”
This conversation happened not even 24 hours after I wrote about my changing definition of faith, and understanding that I need to have faith in myself before anyone or anything else.
Erich Fromm talks on this in the last chapter of his book in the same way:
“The history of science is replete with instances of faith in reason and visions of truth… Thought and judgment are not the only realm of experience in which rational faith is manifested. In the sphere of human relations, faith is an indispensable quality of any significant friendship or love…
In the same sense we have faith in ourselves. We are aware of the existence of a self, of a core in our personality which is unchangeable and which persists throughout our life in spite of varying circumstances, and regardless of certain changes in opinions and feelings…
Unless we have faith in the persistence of our self, our feeling of identity is threatened and we become dependent on other people whose approval then becomes the basis for our feelings of identity. Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others, because only he can be sure that he will be the same at a future time as he is today and, therefore, that he will feel and act as he now expects to. Faith in oneself is a condition of our ability to promise, and since, as Nietzsche said, man can be defined by his capacity to promise, faith is one of the conditions of human existence. What matters in relation to love is the faith to one’s own love; in its ability to produce love in others, and in its reliability.”
So today, I am focused on cultivating a love for myself. To know that I can’t love anyone fairly, even my sweet child or the ones I feel I love so much in other ways, without developing the practice of having faith that I will love myself first.
Fromm continues:
“To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security; makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern- and to take the jump and stake everything on these values. …
To take the difficulties, setbacks, and sorrows of life as a challenge which to overcome makes us stronger, rather than as unjust punishment which should not happen to us, requires faith and courage.”
And finding the daily — sometimes hourly — challenges of being brave in love. Actively standing up and choosing love, for me first, and then others.
That whether it’s magic or science, I can only meet myself where I am with kindness and accept that I can only meet others where they are. And that sometimes, choosing me and letting others go, is the bravest thing I can do, even (especially) when it hurts beyond all words.
Cover image by Sarah Wolfe on Unsplash
This post was originally published on Medium.
