You’ve probably heard the saying “if you can’t love yourself, you’ll never be able to love anybody else" or at least some variation of that saying a few times. There is genuine good intent behind the saying. It attempts to promote self-acceptance and self-love. Don’t get me wrong, self-love and acceptance are so important and so necessary. And no, true self-acceptance can never come from someone else. It's not something someone else can hand to you.
But here’s the thing,
Let’s stop pretending that we only need ourselves.
Humans are innately social creatures, which should be an obvious statement. As babies, and as we grow up, social interaction is crucial to our development as people. Loneliness is also a scary and very detrimental thing that hurts and scars a lot of people. It can keep a person up at night. It can torment them and can be a demon that many people feel they can’t fight.
By constantly chanting “self-love,” you’re negating the feelings of those that feel abandoned and enveloped in a world of loneliness they feel will never leave.
By chanting “self-love,” you’re negating the feelings of younger teens out there that feel completely rejected or abandoned by their peers at school. Growing up, school is supposed to be a place where we can learn and grow from other people other than our parents. Those that feel they will never have the people that they will be around for years accept them are hurting. It can also be the scariest and darkest time of that person’s life, and it needs to be known that that “self-love” won’t be enough for the people that experience this.
To our very first friend that leaves us, or breaking up with our first love, rejection can be the first and most heartbreaking and detrimental thing that a person faces growing up. Nonetheless, feeling accepted by your peers is important, and let's stop pretending that it isn't.
By chanting “self-love” you’re negating the feelings of the people that are left completely broken after their long-term relationship has ended. Whether a year-long relationship or a 20-year marriage, the person you chant “self-love" to put their heart and soul into the person they thought would be theirs forever.
While you should not use a relationship for your own emotional stability, that person's ex-was a significant part of their life. They loved their once significant other, and they wanted to love that person for the rest of their life. Their thoughts are valid, and in the midst of a breakup, self-love won’t be enough.
By chanting “self-love” you’re negating the feelings of people that have been abandoned or rejected by their parents growing up. Family should be a fundamental support system in our lives. Yet there are some that never got the comfort of having parents that love them or accept them. Maybe one parent left while the other stayed due to divorce. Maybe both left. Maybe both parents are there but don’t accept them. Maybe they lost their sibling and their whole family tore apart as a result. Nonetheless, family abandonment of any sort can be the most scarring experience one can have.
If self-love was enough, maybe this kind of rejection wouldn't matter as much. But it does.
Lastly, by chanting “self-love” you negate the feelings of the people that want to end it all once they feel they have no-one. Loneliness can hurt someone badly enough for them to want to take their lives, and chanting “self-love” to those people will not be enough to bring light back into their life, nor will it be enough for them to want to keep it.
People so enveloped in loneliness they feel their life isn’t worth living have been hurt. They have been rejected, abandoned or have lost someone they love. Nonetheless, their world feels completely empty. Yet, instead of helping these people, the main statement uttered to those that feel this way is an impassionate “you don’t need anybody else,” or “things will be better, you just have to wait for the right one”
Maybe proclaiming “self-love” to others is the only response our society can seem to think of. It’s okay to not exactly know how to respond to people if they tell you how bad they’re hurting. I really don’t think our society really knows how to handle mental issues of any sort that well in the first place.
Yet we do need other people, and we can’t keep denying that.
We need other people to learn from.
We need other people that are willing to experience life, and the world with us.
We need someone to turn to when we are at an all-time low in our lives.
Instead of chanting self-love, we need to help people come to terms with the rejection or abandonment they might have faced to regain the energy for life they once had.
Instead of chanting self-love, let’s give people the affirmation that they are needed and wanted when they can’t see that themselves.
Let’s give people a little more hope.
