Unconditional love can come from yourself and not just because of the cheesy romantic flick you watched this weekend told you are your own true love. Love should start with you as you are stuck with yourself for your entire life. You control your thoughts and how you view yourself. The truth is that not everyone will love or even like you as you make your way through life. It takes maturity, time, and reflection to realize this is unimportant as long as you know who you are. When you don't know yourself, it's hard to let others get to know you, understand your boundaries, and or have a clear idea of what you want. You teach others how to treat you by showcasing how you treat yourself.

Communication is key.

If you don't know who you are or what you want, how are others supposed to figure you out? Communication is vital in not running the risk of "forgetting yourself" in relationships. It's easy to fall into mirroring the likes and dislikes of those around you rather than embracing shared interests as well as the aspects that make you different. When you take the time for self-growth and put in the hours, days, and years necessary to work on yourself and become who you want to be you're less likely to jeopardize the time and effort it took to grow into your most authentic self.

Self-love is self-awareness.

You love and support others more genuinely when you have learned how to love and accept yourself first. It's hard to learn how to acknowledge, accept, and love your faults, and therefore in comparison having compassion towards others comes naturally. You gain confidence, not arrogance because self-love is self-awareness. Social media, in particular, is an excellent example of outlets promoting perfection to upcoming generations (such as that Instagram couple you follow) focused on conveying an alternate reality. As humans, we have this inherent need to compete with perfection. Perfection has never existed and when you allow yourself this freedom those supposed couple goals are merely preset and predisposed ideals.

Your tribe is your vibe.

When you love yourself, it radiates through everything you do and your mannerisms in general. In the journey to learning how to love yourself, you will find people who also worked on themselves and genuinely want others to succeed.