Why Your Biggest Love Should Be Yourself In 2022
Understanding Love Languages and The Importance of Self-Love
Understanding different Love Languages is important. People love how they want to be loved, maybe even how they need and should have been loved themselves. This is not necessarily how the people around them will want and/or need to be loved. Miscommunication and mismatch in understanding people’s love languages is how, romantic as well as platonic, relationships end. There are, after all, countless studies that suggest that as much as 90% of communication happens non-verbally. So, to maintain relationships it is vital that you understand your own love language as well as the language of those who you care about.
If you don’t know your own love language or don’t communicate this with the people around you, how do you expect others to love you in a way that you appreciate and recognise as love? A mismatch can lead to people feeling unloved and undervalued because the way the other person is showing their love is not being recognised as love by you. It might not be what you prioritise when you think of love. It’s like speaking two completely different languages to each other and the love is being lost in translation.
Golden rule: Love how the other person needs it, not how you want to give it.
Every rule has exceptions: Love how the other person needs it — as long as you have the capacity to and as long as the “Love” they demand is not unreasonable and detrimental to your own mental health
The Love Languages:
1. Quality Time
2. Gifts
3. Physical touch
4. Words of Affirmation
5. Acts of Service
Find out what your love language is here
You can read this article to understand the 5 Love Languages a bit more
You need to Love Yourself
If you cannot and do not love yourself, how do you expect someone else to love you? You have not communicated your love language with them because you don't know what it is yourself. They won’t know where to start or what to do.
To add to this, as RuPaul says, “If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” Your understanding of what love is, comes from what you do to love yourself. Loving yourself gives you the capacity and knowledge you need to go and love others.
How you love yourself is important. Whether you love yourself or not is even more important. Very, very important. How you talk about yourself determines how much respect people subconsciously believe they should give you. You surely cannot respect yourself if you come across as someone who does not love themselves. If you don't respect yourself, people subconsciously interpret this as meaning that they don't need to respect you highly either.
What you do to show yourself love and make yourself happy is what other people look to when they try to figure out how to love you and make you happy. The truth is how much you love yourself comes across to others very easily. In your body language, in your speech, in your confidence and even in your appearance. This determines how much others respect you. It’s frustrating and seems superficial and should not be the hallmark for how much respect you should be given but everyone does it. It’s dumb that in a way kindness and respect become a value that you have to earn. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world where people don’t judge each other.
There are so many caveats to this. The way you love and your understanding of what love is, for the most part, is shaped by your caregivers when you were a child. If you think that they did a good job, you often model their behaviour. If you feel that they were lacking, you may try to compensate for the lack in your own behaviour towards others or in what you seek from others.
There are extremes in this scenario. If you lacked love, you can become hyper independent. You learned early on that you can take care of yourself so why would you need anyone else now? Or if you didn’t get the love you needed, you can become a ‘pushover’ always people-pleasing to make others happy. You may crave love and acceptance more than anything else, so you do anything possible to keep those who you perceive to love you, around you. This can lead to self-betrayal. You become so used to conforming and bending to other people’s expectations, requirements and demands that you forget who you were to begin with.
The Power that comes from Self-Love
There is power in loving yourself. Because then, you don’t need others to give you happiness. That’s not to say you don’t need others at all. You definitely need others.
But maybe that is why it can be a scary thing for some people around you. If you start to love yourself, if you learn about what makes you happy, others can perceive this as them losing power and control over you. They feel like they are losing you because you are evolving into someone they might not be used to, someone they don’t recognise anymore.
When people are used to you doing as they say, you setting boundaries can look like you’re attacking them, acting out. Others may feel like you are taking away their need and thus taking away the influence, control or power they might have had over you and your behaviour by offering you potential happiness. sometimes by people who are feeling powerless. People who are often not in love with their own lives or situations try to control others’. That and arrogance (I know best). The need to control tells you more about that person’s own life and personality than anyone else’s.
People also like to feel needed. In extreme cases, this desire to feel needed can lead to controlling and manipulative behaviour. This behaviour often stems from trauma and creates trauma. Sometimes, such behaviour is even justified by some as their way of showing love or their way of protecting you from harm. Those older than you, can often use the narrative, ‘I am older, so I have more experience, so I am wiser and so I am always right.’ Thing is, people usually project their own emotions and needs onto others. You believe that what you feel, how you feel and what you need, must also be what everyone else around you is like. This is love being conveyed incorrectly and incorrect interpretations being made. Love Languages mismatching.
It is important to remember that most of the time(not always) only you know what’s best for you. No one else is living your life. Just be ready to make mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes but then hold yourself accountable and learn from your mistakes.
The Extremes
It’s easy to confuse self-love with selfishness and vice-versa. There has to be a balance
Selfish is a word that is often thrown around. It is used when someone does things with only their own happiness or needs in mind. Sometimes the use of the word is justified. Some people really are selfish if they are neglecting their responsibilities. They don’t recognise how much hurt their actions and behaviours cause others. But other times these labels are used incorrectly. Someone’s circumstances, mental health and capacity may mean they need to act selfishly. But mental health cannot be a long-term excuse for harmful selfish behaviour. More on that another time.
It is more palatable to be around people that behave how you want them to. People that don’t cause a fuss and don’t make demands. People who don’t set boundaries. People who don’t recognise their own value, talent and the importance of their time and energy. The people-pleasers.
Being too selfish hurts other people. Being too selfish can also lead to becoming self-involved and arrogant. You start to think that you are always right, and you have nothing left to learn. Being a ‘people-pleaser’ will make it easy for others to take advantage of you. Both groups are the worst. Neither will accept accountability for their behaviour and neither will enact change when change is needed.
If nothing else, the past two years in a pandemic have been rough to say the least. By now, most people are exhausted and their mental health is yo-yoing. We got thrown into survival mode in 2020. So in 2022, try to focus on thriving not just surviving. Focus on your own life and the most powerful and best thing you can do for yourself is to learn to love and prioritise yourself.
Whenever you do anything, ask yourself:
- Am I doing this to make myself happy or because I feel like I need to do this to make others happy?
- Am I preserving the peace in me or the peace around me?
Toolbox to Love Yourself
1. Set healthy boundaries
2. Love and respect yourself. Be able to say that you are happy with yourself and respect the decisions you make
3. Look after your body (e.g. eat healthily)
4. Look after your mind (by exercising, listening to music, doing something creative as an outlet, doing things you enjoy)
5. Preserve the peace inside of you, not just around you
- Doing things that make me happy and not just things for the sake of others
- Stay away from self-betrayal and be your authentic self
6. Surround yourself with the people that make you genuinely happy, respect you and support you in becoming your best self
7. Respect yourself- Wear the pretty jewellery, the good clothes. Look nice for yourself
8. Do things that make you happy. Dance, sing, write, draw, sew, paint, read
9. Make yourself laugh
10. Spend time in nature
