New Year Resolution: Learn to Love Yourself

Many say “You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else”. Before I didn’t realize how true it was. I thought I could love other people without loving myself. I hated myself. I thought I didn’t deserve love from myself. It was too much effort to put in the work to love myself. Now looking back, I’m sorry to myself for not realizing sooner. If I couldn’t put in the time to love myself, how did I have the effort to love anyone else? 

Loving yourself is very hard. It takes months or even years to finally love yourself. Getting into a relationship without loving yourself is very detrimental. All the hate you have for yourself will eventually fall onto the relationship. The hate you feel will eat you alive until you are sick and have no love to give out. Meaning, it will tear your relationship apart. Before you love yourself, you get into relationships to feel validation. The validation you get from a relationship that you are enough and deserve love will only last so long, because you don’t truly believe it. You don’t believe that you are amazing. You don’t believe you are enough. You don’t believe they really love you because you don’t.

I realized the reason I wanted a relationship so bad was because I wanted to feel love. I had never felt it from myself so I needed it from other people to make me feel better about myself. The feeling I got from it never lasted. I realized I needed to love myself otherwise I would never be truly happy. I wanted to feel like I was enough. I was trying so hard to prove I could be in love without having to love myself first, but to who? Myself.

Validation feels good from other people but when it comes from yourself it feels so much better, because then you really believe it. Being open about your insecurities with other people is very important. Then you can relate to them and see how beautiful it makes them and see that it looks just as beautiful on you. Everyone goes through this. You are not alone. Whether they’re going through it now or have in the past, it goes to show that everyone deserves to love themselves. Everyone needs to love themselves in order to be candidly happy.

You deserve love. You deserve to be happy. You deserve respect from yourself. Know that you’re not alone and never will be. You do not need a relationship to validate you. When you love yourself, your validation will be all you need.