“You have to love yourself before you can love others.”

“The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation.”

There is truth in both of these statements. And there is a lot misleading in both of them as well.

I believe love is naturally occurring in humans and animals (and what I’ve read backs me up in this). Love for others. And it grows out of need and desire. From the moment we are born.

Our first self-love is modeled after how others love us. And if that’s shitty, then our love for ourselves is also probably shitty.

As we grow older, we get to see other models, and compare them to what we’ve experienced, and realize that we may have gotten the short end of the stick.

And then, we have options.

Therapy.
Self-work.
Friendships.

We can learn to love ourselves better.

AND, learning to love ourselves makes us better at loving others, because we can them love them less out of need and out of desire.

I wrote about that here:

You Have To Love Yourself Before You Can Love Others (By the way, I call bullshit in that writing.)

What are your thoughts?

Do you believe you can love others without loving yourself? Or do you have to have self-love to love? Is it a learned trait or innate?

Are loving and loving well (ie: relationship skills) two different things to you?