How to love yourself and others? Learn to love others starting from love for yourself
I often happen to stop and reflect on the theme of love and especially I ask myself: “Is it necessary to understand love in order to be able to love? ”.
I haven’t been able to give myself a definitive answer yet, but… we can think together.
For some time I have given up being part of the circle of authors, researchers and “experts” who try to rationalize a feeling like love, letting the romantic-humanistic vision win and the acceptance of some things which, in my humble opinion, they just have to be lived and “little” explained.
Love is, above all, an intimate experience .
Don’t get me wrong: we usually think of intimacy as the condition of closeness between two human beings. Intimacy is often associated with the sexual sphere. But think about it… can it be reduced to just this?
Intimacy is a space in which, surely, an “I” and a “You” coexist, who share the common interest of building a path together.
Intimacy is a co-constructed space.
Such a design condition requires the strong structuring of the individual people in the relationship. How? Self-work, self-care and… self-love .
The starting point for experiencing love is precisely that of building an intimate space with yourself and loving yourself.
It starts with you, suspending judgment and criticism against you. Lower your expectations of yourself and accept the possibility that you are not perfect and that you could be wrong. Love yourself by giving yourself time to dedicate to well-being and let go of all those people and situations that don’t bring happiness into your life.
In one sentence: take back the reins of your life. Be yourself.
From this point of view, loving becomes first of all an experience in which one is in strong contact with one’s way of being. Think about it: you often express yourself more easily in front of strangers than to your loved ones. The essence of love, on the other hand, is to feel closer to yourself while in relationship with the people you love.
How to be able to love others?
If loving yourself means letting yourself be free to be yourself, love for others is based on the same premise: enveloping the people you love with the feeling that allows them to be different from you.
Love towards another person does not ask for any response, and does not ask the other to be (or become) worthy of being loved. I’ll tell you more: love can even ignore others.
I don’t love you for who you are.
It is my love that allows you to be who you are.
The confirmation of your love is in the other person’s being;
the confirmation of being loved lies in your experience of being yourself. When my loving is at its fullest, you are most fully you.
– Malone
Forget then any ambition to want to change others. It’s impossible! Point.
One cannot long be someone who, in reality, is not oneself. One of the two between “I” and “You” will yield and love, the pillar, will fail, forcing the relationship to collapse on itself.
Rather, ask yourself what could be the reason why you feel the need for others to be like you or to meet your expectations.
Others are unique, as are you. You are the only part you can act on and decide to change. Commit to loving others, be yourself and allow them the right to be themselves in their relationship with you.
