If you can’t love yourself, you are still worthy of love – Can I get an amen?

We are constantly told that self-love is the most important kind of love that we, as human beings, can achieve. People ask us again and again that if we do not love ourselves, how can we expect others to love us? And how can we be in love with another person when we are not yet in love with ourselves? Thus, we are reminded that our first step to finding that special someone is to see that you, yourself, are special.

But where does that leave people like me, who have high anxiety, mediocre mental health, and who experience an extremely difficult time loving themselves because of such? How does this factor in people who are still learning to accept themselves, but are looking to find a partner to share their life with? Does this mean that I, and people like me, are not worthy of being loved? Does this mean that we are not capable of truly loving others? Of course not. Herein lies the fundamental issue. Telling people, especially young women, that loving themselves is imperative before anyone else can love them is inherently dangerous, as it can cause them to feel undeserving and incapable of love thereafter.

This is not to say that self-love is bad in itself. In fact, I strongly agree that it is prerequisite to a fulfilling and positive life. Nevertheless, it is the notion that it we cannot be loved without it that I take issue with.

If we look at Canadian demographics, we see that there are many people who are battling with insecurity both in themselves and their relationships. This pertains to those who have great mental health as well as those who are experiencing differing mental abilities. Statistics Canada reported in 2017 that more than two million Canadians ages fifteen and older experience some sort of mental-health related disability, of which the most frequently experienced were anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and stress disorders.[1] Why is this important? Well, it means that a significant proportion of the population are living with conditions associated with symptoms such as a loss of interest or pleasure in most or all normal activities, including sex, hobbies and sports; feelings of worthlessness or guilt, fixating on past failures or self-blame; feelings of nervousness, danger, numbness and panic; and avoidance of places, people, and things.[2] Learning to overcome these issues is hard enough on an individual, so imagine being told that you cannot be loved until you have overcome your conditions and mastered self-love? It is completely unreasonable and insensitive. Instead, this can cause people with minor to severe mental health issues to feel worthless and unlovable.

In the same study by Statistics Canada, researchers found that among youth, eleven per cent of women self-reported living with a mental health-related disability, while only five per cent of men report the same, making women more than twice as likely to experience such conditions.[3] As we live in a patriarchal society, wherein women are constantly subordinated to their male counterparts and discriminated against in subtle yet exponential ways, this statistic is even more concerning. Thus, to tell a young woman that she must love herself in order to find love is to ignore the systematic injustices that we face in association with heightened criticisms of our bodies, personalities and ambitions. It is also to ignore the fact that women suffer from mental health disabilities at a higher rate than their male counterparts and are thus more statistically likely to already be engaged in a battle for internal love. Women are capable and worthy of self-love, but we often find it difficult to be fully satisfied with who we. All this is at least partially due to media representations of how we ought to look and behave, or men’s constant treatment toward women in the workplace, schools, and relationships. Telling women that we cannot expect to be loved if we do not first love ourselves can cause us to feel all the more pressure to be perfect and nurturing, qualities which have been correlated with femininity in the patriarchal system. It causes women like myself, who are still working on themselves in the natural process of maturity, to feel that we might never be worthy of someone else’s love. And it shows (heterosexual) men that a woman who is not entirely secure in herself does not have to be loved. In a sense, it blames women for the dissolution of relationships, and can make her feel as though she is the problem, when in reality, it is a societal and structural issue. These are just the beginnings of the dangers that come with the unrealistic expectations of self-admiration and self-worth.

But in the end, are any of us truly happy with who we are? Are we even sure that self-love is quantifiable, since my measurement of such may be fundamentally different than my friends, my partner, or my family’s? Instead of telling people, and especially young women, that they first must learn to love themselves before they are loved or can love, what we should instead say is that we must all strive to love ourselves for ourselves alone, and not for the love of another. That everyone is on the same journey of self-realization and actualization, and that we should look for a partner or partners who respect this, is a similar journey, and understands that self-love is a process and not a thing. In this way, we may be able to avoid unrealistic expectations of our fellow human beings and foster a better environment for love of every kind.

• love
• mental health
• self-love