Today’s post considers a contradiction in the philosophy of self-love. Prompted by a comment I once made to a client that we can’t really give love to others unless we have it for ourselves, she argued that this was not true and her conviction profoundly affected me. An exceptionally intelligent and capable young woman who was in therapy to deal with the angst of being in relationship with someone with a drink problem, she laid out all the ways in which she loved her partner, despite not feeling like she loved herself. She said that it was easy to love him and that it was because she didn’t get love as a child that she has an abundance of love for others and can give love in abundance, even when she doesn’t get it back. I gently reminded her that one of the reasons that she was in the relationship in the first place was because she didn’t love herself and was used to subjugating her needs for the needs of others. My client’s love for her man appeared to be limitless and unconditional, yet she could not love herself.  So, what was going on here?

It was the Dalai Lama who famously said, “If you don’t love yourself, you cannot love others. You will not be able to love others. If you have no compassion for yourself then you are not able of developing compassion for others.” I had held this belief for some time, being a great advocate for self-help, self-care and self-love; I even ran retreats on this theme for burnt-out professionals with the tagline, you can’t pour from an empty cup. But I must admit that that day something changed in me: my client’s conviction was a catalyst for change in my belief system. Even after my many years working in addiction treatment and understanding co-dependence and knowing all about the writings on this topic such as Melody Beatty’s Co-dependent No More and Robin Norwood’s, Women Who Love Too Much, my clients love and care for her man touched something in me that was so powerful and pure that I knew it to be true.

That was four years ago now when I was at the start of my training as a sex, love and relationship coach on which self-love was foundational. So I was astonished to find an argument against self-love in one of the books on the course reading list. The book in question eventually came to be one of my most loved and recommended to couples in therapy: Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix PhD and Helen LaKelly Hunt PhD, although I didn’t finish reading it at the time due to this argument against self-love, which goes as follows:

WHY SELF-LOVE DOESN’T WORK

“I once briefly saw a spiritual director who had a more optimistic view about the possibility of resolving childhood needs than I do. She believed that it was possible for people to make up for what they didn’t get in childhood through self-love. One of her techniques to help me overcome my craving for being seen and valued was to guide me through a deep relaxation exercise, then say to me, “Helen, imagine yourself as a little girl wanting your fathers attention. He is at home with you, asking you about your day. Imagine how you want his attention. Call out to him. See him come over to you and pick you up with a big smile on his face. He is praising you for being so astute and intelligent at such a young age.” 

It was her belief that, if I succeeded in creating a vivid picture of myself being loved by my father, I would gradually fill up my need for paternal love. Her approach seem to work for a while; after each session, I would feel less alone, more loved. But the feeling gradually disappeared, and I was once again filled with loneliness.

This approach doesn’t work because it is sabotaged by the old brain. When we were infants, unable to meet our physical and emotional needs, pain and pleasure came magically from the outside world. When the bottle or the breast appeared, our hunger was satisfied. When we were cuddled, we felt soonest. When we were left in our cribs to cry, we felt angry and afraid. As we grew older, our old brain remained frozen in this passive worldview: good feelings and bad feelings were created by the actions of other people. We couldn’t take care of ourselves; others had to do it for us. The part of us that hurt couldn’t accept love from within ourselves because we had no way to receive self-love. Nor does anyone else. Salvation is not an “inside” job; it is the outcome of being nourished by others. But at that time, we did not know this fundamental truth.” (p.151-152)

I don’t think LaKelly Hunt has argued well here for the title, why self-love doesn’t work – and I still disagree with many of the points being made here, but not enough to throw the baby out with the bathwater as I did when I first read it. The work of LaKelly Hunt’s previous therapist seems to be more about re-instating paternal love retrospectively than instilling self-love. The inner child work that I’m familiar with is more about parenting oneself and learning to love and care for the child self that is within all of us. This is a very effective and powerful way to learn to love oneself that has worked for a great number of people – helping them with many aspects of personal growth and self-development such as self-care, self-regulation, self-acceptance, self-empathy, self-confidence and healthy self-esteem. So, it is my experience that the instillation and cultivation of self-love is very worthwhile endeavour that is at the heart of therapy. So I fundamentally disagree with LaKelly Hunt’s statement that self-love doesn’t work, because it does work for lots of things. However, I’m aware that the context of LaKelly Hunt’s statement was relational love, which is what my client was arguing all those years ago – even though she was giving rather than getting the love she wanted. The idea in couple’s therapy that we need to and can only learn to love in relationship is diametrically opposed to the Dalai Lama’s warning that if you don’t love yourself, then you will not and cannot love others. Yet, most couple’s therapists agree on this principle.  

Stan Tatkin PsyD, expert in secure-functioning relationships and one of my heroes in the world of couple’s therapy is also vehement in his challenge to the self-love philosophy outlined above. Tatkin says categorically, “You don’t have to love yourself before you can love someone else or before someone else can love you” (Facebook 2017). And in his very popular book, Wired for Dating, Tatkin answers his own question, “Is it really possible to love yourself before someone ever loves you?”, thusly; “Think about it. How could this be true? If it were true, babies would come into this world already self-loving or self-hating. And we know they don’t. In fact, human beings don’t start by thinking anything about themselves, good or bad. We learn to love ourselves precisely because we have experienced being loved by someone. We learn to take care of ourselves because somebody has taken care of us.” I must admit, Tatkin’s logic here doesn’t make any better sense to me than LaKelly Hunt’s. Is he saying that it isn’t even possible to love yourself before someone loves you first? That doesn’t feel right to me as I’ve known people with appalling loveless childhoods learn to love themselves and I’ve also known people learn to hate themselves in a toxic relationship, despite having a loving start. Maybe it’s because I’ve worked in a lot of different services including prisons, addiction treatment services and trauma services for childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence with a great number of individuals who have learned to love themselves despite a total lack of love in their lives. And, maybe also because I think we can learn about love from our experiences in life with things other than human beings such as animals, deities, nature and so forth.

As much I admire the work of LaKelly Hunt and Tatkin and am guided by them in my couple’s work, I’m not wholly in agreement with either of them on the matter of self-love. After much contemplation, I’m not in agreement with the Dalai Lama either and see that the idea of needing to love oneself before you can love another comes from being a Buddhist monk. In this role, one cannot benefit from the experience of being in a partnership or of having sexual intimacy. Rather, the Dalia Lama is speaking from the experience of being a teacher and helper who offers love and compassion to others – in much the same way as I would say that we can’t pour from an empty cup. This is what is known as empathy or compassion fatigue in the helping professions and is often one of the first signs of burnout. This seems to be different from needing to love oneself in an intimate relationship before you can be loved, which is clearly untrue as evidence by my dear client long ago as well as all the published relationship experts.

In conclusion, I would say that learning to love yourself is without a doubt going to help you in life, love, dating and being in relationship. Self-love will help you to look after yourself, value yourself, stay healthy, be true to yourself and follow your dreams.  Self-love will also help you to find a great partner because you will come from a place of good self-esteem, worthiness and deservingness. We all learn through our relationships with others and some relationships teach us a lot about love and others less. Toxic relationships can even make us feel very bad about ourselves and cause us to hate ourselves. Self-love will help us to be more discerning, especially to recognise red flags and warning signs of a bad relationship.  You definitely don’t have to wait until you love yourself before starting a relationship and there’s really nothing like a relationship as a vehicle for healing and self-growth.

I won’t ever suggest to a client again that you have to love yourself before you can love another as I no longer believe that to be true. My clients are such great teachers and I am always learning from them. Thank you dear one, wherever you are – I hope you are now happily receiving love as well as giving it ❤︎