TV journalist Tracy McMillan’s column «Why are you not married yet?» once amassed over a million views on the Huffington Post website. This success inspired Tracy to write a book where she talks about self-loathing and self-love and where those feelings can lead.
Self-hatred is an unnatural state. We are not born hating ourselves. So we should all try to love ourselves a little more. If you are the same as I was, you may not even have an exact idea of what this means. On the one hand, the words «love yourself» are often used as a synonym for the expression «self-esteem», but they are not the same thing. Self-esteem is thinking that your ass looks especially pretty in those jeans. Self-love is being kind to yourself, even when she doesn’t look very pretty.
This does not mean indulging your every desire — for example, buying a new bag if you had a bad day at work. If I had to give the simplest definition of self-love, I would say that it is when you treat yourself the way a loving person would treat you: a very good parent or your beautiful grandmother. By setting unbreakable boundaries for yourself and setting high (but not overpriced) standards for yourself, you simply want a wonderful life for yourself.
When something bad happens, you do not blame yourself or other people for your troubles. Especially when things don’t work out the way they should (and since this is life, things go wrong every now and then). Treat yourself the way you would treat your child: don’t say bad things to yourself, don’t call yourself «stupid», don’t think you deserve it or that something is wrong with you.
- Alain Braconnier: «To love yourself again»
For the first four decades or so of my life, I felt like a house—to put it mildly—in need of repair. In serious renovation. Under all the layers of bad wallpaper and stained carpeting, there was sure to be something good to be found. But to get to this good was not easy.
In addition, restructuring my life seemed to me an absolutely insurmountable task. At that stage, I thought that if I didn’t see with my own eyes how something would start to happen, then I wouldn’t believe that it could happen.
In fact, everything is exactly the opposite. To believe means to see. For example, imagine that you are trying to invent something. Cellular telephone. Before you can move on to assembling the parts, you must imagine yourself talking on this phone, walking around, and then imagine that it is possible in the Universe to create this thing, even if the twisted elastic cord of the phone you were talking on all your life walking around the kitchen, getting in your way. And even then, it might have taken years to get through the in-between options with huge cordless phones. My personal evolution has been the same way to the place where I am now, regardless of whether I have a relationship with someone or not, the place of self-love.
My third husband helped me understand — and I hope you are starting to understand this too — you are one hundred percent responsible for the men who exist (or do not exist) in your life. one hundred%. You are the one who attracted these men into your life – even the bad men. I’m not saying that you deliberately chose them. What I’m saying is that nothing will change until you realize that somehow you have chosen these men.
After several marriages, many years of waiting, and a whole bunch of failures (or “pre-successes,” as I prefer to call it), I know this: men reflect our deepest, mostly unconscious ideas about ourselves.
You can only love a man to the extent that you love yourself. Your ability to show compassion and kindness to someone — even when that person has just done something really stupid and even if that person is yourself — comes from your ability to show kindness and compassion to yourself.
Key Thought: Marriage is just a long-term opportunity to practice loving someone, even if they (in your opinion) don’t really deserve it. Love is always spiritual in nature, because people always have flaws, and it is difficult to love flaws. You can expect in advance that most often a man will not do what you want him to do. But since you love him anyway, because you have decided to turn yourself into a person who learns the habit of being kind, truthful, accommodating and, most importantly, accepting your own precious «I» in yourself, you will find yourself experiencing the very thing that you always aspired — love. And I would not be surprised at all if your relationship ends in marriage.