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Relationships
What’s Self-Love Got to Do With It?
Why self-love is foundational to lasting romantic partnerships.
Posted February 13, 2023 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Key points
- People are surrounded by mixed messages about finding, keeping, and losing love.
- One of the most important goals for many people is to find someone to love.
- The kindness we show to ourselves makes us more available, compassionate, and ready to love.
Valentine’s Day brings out the hopeless romantic in many of us, and our thoughts turn to romantic love, how to find it, and—if we’ve already found it—how to keep it. We are surrounded by mixed messages about finding, keeping, and losing love. In iconic big-screen love stories—which, more often than not, inaccurately inform our thoughts, feelings, and notions on the very nature of love—protagonists often proclaim that their love interest “completes them,” that they “can’t live without” their departing partner, and that they will have “nothing to live for” without their love interest by their side.
Despite widespread reported challenges of young people looking for love and the risk of deception in online dating, we persevere. Whether or not love makes the world go ‘round, one of the most important goals of many people is to find someone to love.
Why love is so important to us
While we love our parents, our siblings, our friends, our extended family members, our work, our pursuits, and our pets, romantic love—finding and establishing a lasting, loving partnership—is, for most people, the most important, significant, and sought-after kind of love.
What romantic love is … and is not
As for exactly what romantic love is, there seems to be no one-size-fits-all definition. In a September 2022 Psychology Today post, author and researcher Tyler Jamison, Ph.D., identified five distinct types of romantic partnerships in her research, including: “Happy and Independent, Happy and Consolidated, Exploratory, Stuck, and High Intensity.”
As for what romantic love is not, we can also find plenty of cautionary tales played out on the silver screen. For example, in the 1944 psychological thriller Gaslight, a wife finds herself the unwitting target of coercive control by her abusive, manipulative husband, who attempts to drive her mad and take control of her family inheritance by covertly and deliberately manipulating the gas lights in their home. In the classic film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, a young couple witnesses the full-blown dysfunction of an older married couple, rivetingly and painfully portrayed by Richard Burton and Elizbeth Taylor.
In real life, romantic partnerships can descend into distress during times of conflict, which can lead to tragic outcomes, like physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, and relationship breakdown. All too often, what began as love stories play out in needless suffering, and in some cases, a loss of life. In troubled romantic relationships, a lack of self-esteem, and healthy boundaries lead to unnecessary suffering, and unhappy and sometimes tragic endings.
How self-love sets the stage for a loving relationship
In the 2014 classic How to Love, author, Zen master, and spiritual leader Thích Nhất Hạnh writes: “When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love.”
When we take care of our needs, when we are healthy and whole, and when we are engaged in our life with full presence, we are practicing self-love.
Self-love involves tuning into ourselves and acting with compassion and caring—in short, treating ourselves the same way we would treat someone we love. Self-love involves setting boundaries around our time and energy, prioritizing our goals and needs, making time to sit and process negative emotions when they arise, and challenging our negative self-talk and self-defeating patterns of behavior.
Self-love includes yourself with all your faults without judgment and criticism, and with kindness, compassion, and love, just as you would a partner. When we’re kind to ourselves, there’s a ripple effect. The kindness we show to ourselves expands and impacts the lives of others. We become more available, empathetic, compassionate, kind, present, balanced, authentic … and ready to love.
Seven steps toward self-love
Tune in to you. Take time to be still, alone. Check in with your needs. Sit with and process your negative emotions.
Embrace your imperfections. The more you can accept and learn to love your individuality, the more you will express it, and the happier you will be.
Refrain from comparing yourself to others. Harsh comparisons are a form of negative self-talk that can lead to low self-esteem and low courage. See others who have more, have achieved more, and know more than you as role models and aspirational examples.
Treat yourself with compassion. Engage in positive self-talk. Allow yourself time to rest and restore your energies at the end of a long day.
Set healthy boundaries. Healthy boundaries are essential to ensuring you have the time and energy to tune into yourself.
Reach out for support. Look for support when you need it. Go outside of yourself and find the resources you need when you are struggling and overwhelmed. Knowing your limits and knowing you can get support if you need it makes your commitment to be there for yourself stronger and deeper.
Make a pact with yourself to do at least one nurturing thing that brings you joy every day.
