"Self Love Is Selfish"

I don't know about anyone else but I was not raised on the idea that loving yourself had some kind of profound importance.  In fact, the message was just the contrary, loving yourself was seen as conceited, arrogant and selfish.  Like many a child of my era I was told that loving others was much more important than selfishly keeping love for myself or having loving feelings for myself.  As one might guess this would at times be the false belief that led me to seek people to love that were needy and at times so dysfunctional that I literally peeled them off the bathroom floor drunk and in the kind of state that only a major alcoholic could be in.  Many of us who get the memo about not loving ourselves end up becoming good little enablers and great co-dependent partners.

Loving you means that you care about yourself in such a manner as for it to be very normal.  Everyone must have a capacity for loving themselves if they are to live a life that is not just happy but that helps us to avoid becoming that dependent being on one person who can manipulate us easily because we know so little about self-preservation, self-nurturing and self-love.  It is not anyone's responsibility to make sure that we love our own spirit and our own being.  Our being is our temple and by taking care of that temple: emotionally, physically, spiritually and creatively we will be much more likely to have loving relationships with others and much less likely to tolerate any kind of treatment that is not kind and compassionate or in tune with what we merit.  

Karen was married for several years before she decided to have children.  Once she had her first baby, a beautiful little girl, her husband became more and more distant.  Their intimacy was down to nothing and he spent a lot of evenings "working late and out with friends."  Karen suspected Kyle of doing something dark and soon uncovered a long list of things he was doing behind her back that included buying sex from call girls, snorting cocaine, watching porn and consuming large amounts of booze.  As time passed Kyle's behaviors got more and more serious but for the sake of her baby girl Karen kept forgiving him with the caveat that he would get help.  But every few months her husband relapsed into all of the dark behaviors.  It was not until she realized that the problem was not Kyle's any longer but hers and that her child was no longer safe that she was able to love herself enough to walk away.    Karen has since gotten involved with a number of married men and been able to move on and end each relationship.  She continues to work on herself and caring enough not to continue the pattern.  

Like Karen there are many of us.  We believe that we can love someone else better than we can love ourselves and we think we will love them to their healing.  The fact remains that people who love themselves dearly don't allow others to abuse or disrespect them, not even once and that people must decide to heal themselves.  It is always through self-work that we learn self-loving acts and to do things that are self-nurturing.  Karen is one of many of us who were led to believe that loving ourselves or placing more importance in us than them was in some way bad and self-serving when in fact it is normal and healthy.  The moment that we decide to be kind and compassionate to our own self is the moment that we can have a healthy loving relationship with someone else.  Not one moment sooner.  

Coach Elliott Collazo