It’s gross as fuck to tell people that no one will love them until they love themselves. Loving yourself is hard. Listen: you are loved, you are worthy of love and respect, and you can be loved even on the days when you see nothing in yourself to love.
And rly, it’s not like nobody would love you until you did. It’s not like that was the price you had to pay to be lovable, the effort you had to make to be attractive. It’s not an ultimatum and it’s not about your desirability.
The “Love yourself and others will love you” thing is about self care, however clumsily and dangerously formulated it may be.
You care for yourself, you listen to your feelings and do what is good for you. That’s the basis for your existence, your stability and wellbeing. Everything else can wait until you’ve assessed the situation, realized that it IS serious and taken care of yourself to the degree that you’re safe, healthy and stable in that situation (or outside of it if you need to get away from a possibly harmful context).
When you do that, when you start giving yourself the love and taking up the space that you deserve, the good things will slowly start coming to you.
It’s not about whether or not you’re desirable company. This approach, as hard as it may initially be to overcome, will get you nowhere, because it’s still based on you trying to fulfill other people’s expectations or demands.
It’s about you putting yourself first, before anyone else and any outside obligations, and taking your actual needs and primary feelings about people or situations seriously, about finding yourself worthy enough to treat yourself with the respect you want to see in others.
Self love is to become more and more true to yourself and your feelings, and it starts with accepting what is there, letting it be and maybe allowing it to lead you new places, to new insights, perspectives and challenges that you can learn from and grow through.
there might be arguments like any love affair…. 🙂