Can You Learn to Love if you Don't Love Yourself?
Do you really need to have achieved or practice self-love before you enter a romantic partnership? Three thinkers weigh in. I've recently been re/reading some books that suggest or remind us that, despite popular opinion, you do not need self love first before you acquire or pursue romantic love with a partner. The reason generally being that most of us do not learn how to love in the first place! That being said, one pop-psychology trope l'd like to erase from the ethos is the very commonly shared idea that no one will love you until you learn to love yourself. I call bullshit on this one, because I know from the work 1 do that we learn to love ourselves through the love we receive from others, ideally starting with our caregivers when we're young. The truth is, you can't love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love can't be built in isolation. Society pushes the idea that you should pull yourself up by your bootstraps and manifest...
