We already love ourselves, but not always in the right way

I will begin with a statement that may sound strange:

We already love ourselves.

I am speaking here of the love we try to give ourselves. Even some bad decisions attempt to protect us, relieve us, restore our place, preserve an advantage, or bring us closer to a happiness we believe is under threat.

That does not mean we always treat ourselves well.

We can love ourselves through a logic that harms us. We can pursue our happiness with a method that drives away the people, projects, and values that contributed to it. We can defend ourselves in a way that damages our own pride. We can try to free ourselves from pain while building it a larger home.

The problem is therefore not always an absence of self-love.

Sometimes what we lack is a better way to give it to ourselves.

One behavior does not sum up our entire nature

When our partner calls us selfish, hot-tempered, irresponsible, or unfaithful, we may hear a condemnation greater than the remark itself.

We hear:

“That is what you are.”

So we defend our entire person. We recall our strengths and the days when we were generous, calm, faithful, present, or responsible. We want to prove that the word is absolutely false.

Yet our partner is not always claiming to know our deepest nature. This person is often describing what they regularly receive from us.

One angry outburst does not make us a hot-tempered person. But if anger becomes our habitual response, the people who live with us will eventually use that word to describe their experience.

Thinking about ourselves is not selfishness. But when our decisions continually seek our benefit while leaving the cost to the other person, the word becomes harder to dispute.

One mistake does not make us irresponsible. But if we make decisions without considering the consequences and then always ask others to pay the bill, the label begins to describe something visible.

The label may still be unfair. Our partner may judge too quickly or overlook our efforts. But that possibility must not make us avoid the useful question:

What behaviors gave rise to this word?

Our habits may describe us today. They do not define everything we can become.

We have changed habits before. Some disappeared because we grew. Others were replaced when their consequences became too heavy.

We are not condemned to remain the version of ourselves displayed by our latest bad behavior.

We can do better.

That is not flattery. It is the responsibility that accompanies our potential.

Behind a bad method, there is often something good being sought

Let us examine an outburst of anger.

Something frustrates us or makes us feel that we are losing our place. We raise our voice, interrupt, and release everything we had been holding back. For a few seconds, it may feel good. The pressure drops. We feel that we have defended ourselves or forced the other person to grasp the extent of our suffering.

Anger gave us a benefit.

That does not mean it was useful.

Let us examine revenge. Our partner hurt us. We look for an action that will make them feel something comparable. When this person finally suffers, part of us grows calmer. We feel that balance has been restored.

Revenge gave us relief.

That does not mean it repaired the relationship.

Selfishness sometimes follows the same logic. We accumulate demands, attention, or advantages because each satisfaction brings a small pleasure. We do not necessarily tell ourselves: “I want to destroy the other person's happiness.” Instead, we tell ourselves: “I need this. I deserve it. It will make me feel good.”

Our inner need may be understandable. Our method may still be destructive.

Understanding the good being sought does not excuse the behavior. It shows us where to build another solution.

If I shout so that I no longer feel powerless, how can I regain a sense of power without losing self-control?

If I take revenge to obtain a form of justice, what consequence can make responsibility visible without creating a new wrongdoing?

If I control because I am afraid of losing, what questions, reference points, or boundaries will inform me better than surveillance?

If I think only of myself because I neglected myself for a long time, how can I reclaim my place without taking all of the other person's place away?

We must not merely eliminate a bad behavior. We must understand the function it served, then learn to fulfill that function differently.

Relief is not yet a gift

Not everything that feels good is necessarily good for us.

A humiliating reply can flatter our pride for thirty seconds and leave us with several days of conflict. Silence used as punishment can give us the impression of controlling the situation, then create the distance that will make us suffer. A thoughtless expense can produce immediate pleasure and take away tomorrow the security we wanted to build.

The pleasure is real.

So is the bill.

We sometimes confuse self-love with satisfying every desire. I want something and grant it to myself, so I am taking care of myself. I do not want to make an effort and spare myself, so I am respecting myself. I am suffering and say exactly what comes to mind, so I am being true to my emotion.

But self-love is not measured only by the comfort of the person we are for five minutes.

It also protects the person we will be tomorrow.

It leaves that person peace, pride, relationships, a respected body, credible words, and decisions they can stand behind.

Loving ourselves consciously means accepting a sometimes uncomfortable question:

Is what I am giving myself now truly a gift, or merely a reward whose bill will arrive later?

A good way of loving ourselves may require giving up a pleasure that costs us too much. It does not reject our need. It rejects the idea that the first available means is automatically the best one.

Taking our pain seriously without giving it the whole house

After a breakup, betrayal, humiliation, or deep disappointment, some people stop caring for their life. They reject activities they loved, withdraw from those close to them, and treat every smile as a betrayal of their pain.

Our inner logic may say:

“After what happened, I cannot act as though everything were fine.”

The statement seems coherent. But who truly benefits from this abandonment?

Our partner may have done something wrong. We add to it a life that stops receiving the other forms of love still available. We want to show that the loss was serious, and we make it larger.

Acknowledging this does not oblige us to smile on command. We can feel sadness and continue to draw nourishment from what remains alive. We can be disappointed and protect a project that bears no responsibility for that disappointment. We can lose an important source of love without deliberately closing every other one.

Our suffering deserves a place.

It does not necessarily deserve the whole house.

We are no longer alone in the equation

A single person can organize much of their life around their own interests, as long as they accept the consequences.

In a relationship, our happiness becomes part of a structure that contains at least two others: our partner's happiness and the happiness made possible by the relationship itself.

Our partner also chose this relationship for a reason. This person is seeking affection, peace, a listening ear, security, intimacy, support, consideration, or a particular way of building their future. They did not enter our life merely to watch our personal pursuit of happiness.

We can therefore love ourselves greatly and still be unable to build as a couple.

Loving ourselves is not enough.

Feeling love for our partner is not enough either.

We must create a relationship in which each person finds real value.

Self-love becomes dangerous when it turns the other person into a tool. Our partner must reassure us, desire us, serve us, forgive us, listen to us, and respect our boundaries, while their own expectations become complications.

We then call self-protection what may have become an arrangement of the relationship centered around us.

Giving ourselves the right kind of love requires protecting our interests without making the shared interest impossible. We must not sacrifice ourselves until we disappear. Nor must we grow by using up the other person's living space.

The way we pursue happiness must leave this person a reason to continue building it with us.

Giving a great deal does not always mean loving well

We can love sincerely and go about it badly.

Someone gives gifts because that is their natural way of expressing affection. The gesture may be appreciated, but what remains most lacking is a listening ear. The more the distance grows, the more the first person buys gifts.

They give more.

The relationship does not necessarily receive better.

Another person makes themselves available at all hours, solves every difficulty, and anticipates every need. They call it support. Their partner may eventually experience it as surveillance, a debt, or an obstacle to becoming independent.

The intention is beautiful.

The form must still be examined.

We must not ask only how much love we give. We must consider whom we give it to, in what form, in what quantity, at what time, and with what results.

The wrong amount can be exhausting.

The wrong form may go unrecognized.

The wrong moment can turn care into pressure.

And someone who receives a great deal without ever appreciating it, protecting it, or giving any value in return can turn our love into a resource they take for granted.

The quality of love is therefore measured neither by quantity alone, nor by gentleness, nor by the beauty of our intention. It is also measured by what it produces for us, for our partner, and for the relationship.

Sometimes we did the right thing, but not in a way suited to this person. Sometimes we did well and our partner does not know how, or does not want, to appreciate it. In that case, increasing the amount of love indefinitely will not necessarily earn us a favorable verdict.

Loving better can mean adapting.

It can also mean ceasing to give automatically what the other person never protects.

The reciprocity test reveals the special permissions we grant ourselves

One simple question can expose certain harmful forms of self-love:

Would I still find this behavior acceptable if my partner used it with me?

When we remain silent, we say that we need time. When the other person is silent, we call it contempt.

When we raise our voice, we explain that we were suffering. When the other person becomes angry, we conclude that they are a bad person.

When we think about our expectations, we call it self-love. When our partner defends theirs, we call them selfish.

Situations are not always identical. A few minutes of silence are not the same as several weeks of abandonment. An isolated mistake does not carry the same weight as a habit. Reciprocity does not mean pretending that everything is equivalent.

But “it is different because it is me” is not a nuance. It is a special permission.

Putting ourselves in the other person's place does not oblige us to declare them right. It adds their experience to the calculation. If our method seems fair only when we benefit from it, we may be dealing not with a principle but with a privilege.

Healthy self-love does not ask the other person to endure what we would declare unacceptable if we had to suffer it ourselves.

It seeks a rule consistent enough to protect two people's dignity.

Regret must correct the method

We sometimes look at a past decision with the information we have today and insult the person we were then.

“How could I have done that?”

“I was so foolish.”

“I ruined my life.”

We must acknowledge mistakes without falsifying their context. At the time of the choice, we were often trying to obtain something good: preserve the relationship, avoid loneliness, protect an image, regain peace, receive love, or escape pain.

We may have miscalculated. We may have ignored consequences, trusted too quickly, or chosen a method incapable of producing the expected result.

But regret must not deny everything our former self was trying, however awkwardly, to protect.

We can say to that former self:

“You wanted to do me good. You did not yet know how to go about it well. Now that I know the cost, I will change my method.”

This statement removes no responsibility. It transforms experience into learning.

Useful regret updates our logic.

Useless regret condemns the past and leaves the method unchanged.

Giving our worth a way to live

While writing this book, I myself came to understand certain things I thought I already knew. Some ways of protecting myself did not protect me. Some ways of loving were exhausting. Some reactions that proved me right did not give me a better relationship.

I do not share this because I have progressed further than others.

I share it because our ability to understand more proves that yesterday's behaviors are not the limit of what we can offer tomorrow.

We are better than some of the habits we have allowed to speak for us.

But knowing our worth is not enough.

We must give it a way to live.

An exceptional person who continually uses a destructive method does not create an exceptional relationship. Their potential remains a promise their partner cannot yet inhabit.

We must therefore look behind each behavior:

What good am I seeking?

What immediate reward keeps this method in place?

What does it cost me afterward?

What does the person with whom I claim to be building a relationship receive?

What other form of love could protect the same need with better consequences?

We do not need to learn to love ourselves from the beginning.

We need to make our love more conscious, more consistent, and more useful.

Because self-love is not merely the amount of attention we give ourselves.

It is the quality of the person that this attention helps us become.

Questions that examine the way I love myself

1. What good am I seeking behind this behavior?
2. What immediate pleasure may present me with its bill later?
3. What other method could meet the same need?
4. Would I accept this behavior if my partner subjected me to it?
5. What does the way I love myself produce for me, for the other person, and for our relationship?