This Is Why Your Relationships Keep Failing
By: Emma Austin
Tags: Self, Advice, Love, Relationships, Life

If you want to find love, you have to love yourself first. But it’s not for the reasons you think.

That saying could’ve applied to me. I thought I was unlucky in love, but it was only because I didn’t think I was good enough.

I was one of those girls who wanted to settle down from day one. All I wanted was to meet a guy I could start a comfortable, steady relationship with.

I was looking for someone I could spend time with, who would be sweet to me, and who made me feel good about hanging off his arm. It wouldn’t hurt if he was cute, too.

Mostly, I just wanted to meet a guy who really liked me.

That didn’t feel like too much to ask, but I kept striking out anyway.

I met my fair share of guys and some of them were good. But we either didn’t click or weren’t right for each other, so we moved on.

Some guys just wanted to get laid and thought I’d be a willing participant. I often was because I thought that might be my ticket to a relationship.

Not surprisingly, it didn’t exactly work out that way.

Then there were the relationships that lasted longer than they should have.

My first boyfriend dumped me because he hoped to have a shot with my best friend. Instead of nursing my wounds and moving on, I tried to win him back.

One guy I had a crush on and kept pursuing would repeatedly fall madly in love with me, get laid, and then change his mind about all those big feelings he had expressed the night before.

My last serious relationship before I met the man I would eventually marry felt like the real thing. It made me feel like I finally knew what being in love was really like.

I loved spending time with him. He was sweet and tender. When we had sex, it felt like it connected us.

Eventually, he turned cold. He was distant when we spent time together. And the sweet sex we had turned to manipulation and abuse.

After brief flings with a few more guys, I finally met an amazing one, someone I could have a good relationship with.

But I could’ve avoided a lot of the bumps on the way to meeting him if I could’ve just loved myself.

The Half-True Advice Everyone Gives

The most common piece of relationship advice I come across is that you have to love yourself before someone else can love you.

That’s true, but not in the way that most people mean it.

When people say it, they usually mean that you need to value yourself before someone else values you. To become the kind of person who’s worthy of a good relationship, you need to build up some of your personal qualities, like becoming self-assured and driven.

Maybe that’s true in some cases. But decent people don’t just ditch their dates because their self-esteem isn’t high enough. And it’s not like people aren’t lovable just because they have a low opinion of themselves.

You can still be interesting even if you don’t fully love yourself. It doesn’t take away your fascinating stories, your interesting hobbies and passions, or your quirky sense of humor.

You can create intense chemistry and connect deeply with someone else even if you feel completely disconnected from yourself.

And even without a ton of confidence, you can still have lots of attractive qualities. You can be kind, cute, sweet, smart, and sexy. When you meet the right person, they’ll see all those things in you — even if you can’t.

In fact, the tiny silver lining to not fully loving yourself is that it can give you some good qualities.

Having a low opinion of yourself doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that makes you a catch. And yeah, it has its downsides. But what you lack in some areas, you can make up for in others.

Being self-conscious and shy makes you highly aware of how others are perceiving you, which can give you heightened emotional intelligence.

Not thinking so highly of yourself can also make you extremely giving and selfless.

And people who struggle to love themselves respond really well to someone who makes them feel less insecure. If you’re dating a decent person, that’s exactly how they’ll make you feel.

What Really Happens When You Don’t Love Yourself

If not loving yourself doesn’t stop you from hitting it off with the right person and turning that into a satisfying relationship, what’s the problem?

Here’s where the half truth in that popular piece of advice comes in.

Not loving yourself doesn’t mean you’ll pass up the right person when you meet them. It doesn’t mean that a decent guy or gal won’t notice you or ask you for a second date. It doesn’t bury all your great qualities so no one can see them.

The reason it gets in the way of you finding love is because it makes you put up with a lot of shit you shouldn’t.

You Put Up When You Should Leave

When my boyfriend started abusing me, I should’ve left. But I never did, and I’m not sure if I ever would have. It only ended when he broke up with me.

I stuck around even though he constantly made me feel inadequate, pressured me, and ignore me when he didn’t get his way. Spending time with him became more upsetting than it was fun.

I stayed because he still gave me a little attention and he was affectionate when I let him have his way. Those were crumbs. But I thought so little of myself that I figured crumbs were more than I deserved.

Instead of moving on and looking for someone I could start a healthy relationship with, I just tried harder and harder to earn more crumbs from him.

You Settle When You Should Keep Looking

Not loving yourself also means you’re more likely to settle because you worry you’ll never get another shot.

When I was dating, I was basically just looking for a guy who liked me. It almost didn’t matter what he was like — if he seemed to like me, that was a good enough reason to give it a shot.

It meant that at least one of us would like me, and that was an improvement.

Instead of going after guys who were serious prospects, I settled for guys who weren’t. And who knows how many shots at real love I missed because of it.

My crush — the one who would profess his love for me, sleep with me, and then discard me — that was me settling.

Not the first time. The first time, I was excited. I thought I had finally won over the guy I was hot for.

But after he went cold on me, I should’ve gone cold on him too. I should have seen that it was never going to go anywhere.

Instead, I kept giving him a chance because part of me thought it might be my only chance.

When you don’t love yourself, it’s hard to see how anyone else can. That makes you quick to settle because every person who is willing to date you feels like your last shot at love.

You Doubt Your Instincts

Not having a lot of confidence in yourself means you’re quick to doubt your own intelligence, your emotions, and your gut feelings.

That makes it easier for people to manipulate you because you tend to give them the benefit of the doubt long after they’ve proven that they don’t deserve it.

In dating, it means you don’t walk away when you sense trouble.

I know a lot of the dating red flags, but it hasn’t always helped. Instead of walking away when I saw them, I’d start questioning myself.

Was he really playing hot and cold or was I expecting too much? Was he making those hurtful comments because he’s a dick or did he actually have a point? Is he refusing to commit because he’s using me or am I just not worth committing to?

The more I squinted at those red flags, the less I was sure they were even there. Because I didn’t trust myself, I made excuses instead of moving on.

You Will Find Love

People who love themselves are luckier in love. But it’s not because they’re the only ones worthy of love — it’s because they don’t waste their time with dead end relationships and people who are all wrong for them.

And because of that, they free themselves up to meet someone who’s right for them.

When I met the guy who would become my husband, it didn’t matter that I didn’t love myself. All that mattered is that he did.

He saw things about me that he found really appealing, even though I was convinced he must be crazy and possibly hallucinating some of them.

Instead of using how bad I felt about myself to get his way, he made me feel better about who I was, which made me more secure and comfortable in our relationship.

I had met an incredible guy, and I didn’t have to love myself for him to fall in love with me.

But not loving myself could have taken me out of the game. If I had stayed in that abusive relationship a few months longer, I might not have been single and available when I met Mr. Austin. If I had been too busy trying to keep things going with a guy I had settled for, I might have been too distracted to even meet him.

You can be loved even if you don’t love yourself first. But it’s still something you should work on.

Work on cultivating your interests and passions so you never feel boring.

Do the things that help you build more confidence. For me, it’s strength training exercises.

Take the time to groom and dress well, even if you’re not going anywhere. Making yourself look good can be a really big confidence boost.

Focus on your strengths and give yourself credit for the ways you compensate for your weaknesses.

Read up on your emotional damage, too. Understanding where your negative self-talk came from can take the sting out of it.

And realize that not loving yourself doesn’t mean you can’t find love. The idea that no one decent would love you because you don’t love yourself is not only false but it’s counterproductive. All it does is damage your self-esteem and makes you feel hopeless.

Instead, remember that when you meet the right person, they’ll see everything you have to offer. They’ll pick up on how funny you are, they’ll be wowed by your charm, they’ll feel the chemistry you’re creating with them.

When that happens, you’ll start to see the beautiful qualities you have, too. And the only thing you’ll regret is not learning to love yourself sooner.