When we have not learned to give ourselves what we need, we demand it of others
When we have given ourselves everything we need, we do not demand from others, for self-love is the most important and invaluable source of unconditional love.
If you have to demand someone to love you in a certain way, that’s a clear sign that you’re not giving yourself what you need. If you demand love for company because you feel lonely, it doesn’t matter if that love is very absent or not, the point is that it reveals that you have a void of loneliness inside you that you are trying to fill with the presence of that person.
If you ask a love to be more loving with its words, you may have a lack of those words of approval within you. Of course it’s completely healthy to tell our partners how we like to be loved, but many of the things we insist upon reveal our strongest deficiencies.
And if your complaints come from lack, it doesn’t matter if your partner changes and gives you just what you’re looking for, somehow you’ll still feel bad. Because what you need doesn’t come from the outside, but from the inside.
You are crying out for love, but not the love that can come from a father, a mother, a husband or your children, you are crying out for self-love.
While you seek to satisfy this need at the fountains of other loves, you will live thirsty. You will demand from others that they love you more and better, and they will try to please you, but little by little they will get tired, because they will come to feel that they are not enough for you. And indeed, they are not, for the love you need cannot be imitated.
Maybe you hadn’t thought of it, but many relationships end not because there was a lack of love, but because the love each part needed was its own. Both try to give so much of themselves, but in the process end up so empty that they keep demanding more of the other for a perfect way of loving. The other feels inadequate, really tries hard but doesn’t meet the standards.
After these relationships, both parties end up with the lowest, weakest self-esteem and the doubt of whether they will be enough for someone else. When the reality is that you are loving in a right direction, but in a wrong one. We try to love others, but we forget about ourselves.
We will reach old age frustrated and tired if we do not learn this lesson along the way. Self-respect is invaluable. A person can live well with the absence of any of the other loves, but paradoxically, a person without self-love can be surrounded by all the loves and feel sick, alone and abandoned. Love yourself and everything will enter into perfect synchronicity.