Why 'love yourself first' is a fallacy

The sentence sounds right and turns the order upside down. People don’t develop self-worth alone and then enter relationships. They develop it in relationships, through experiences with other people. If you wait until you love yourself enough, you are waiting for a precondition that never arrives in that form.

Where the sentence comes from and why it sticks

It has a true core, and that is why it is so persistent.

The true core: if you hang your stability entirely on another person, you get into difficulties. That is true.

What was made of it: an admissions procedure. First you have to be whole, then you are allowed to love. First you have to love yourself enough, then you have earned a healthy relationship.

This version is not only wrong, it is also cruel. It tells people who feel lonely that it is their own fault and that they need to work on themselves first.

Why the order is wrong

Self-worth comes from experiences, and from a particular kind: showing yourself and still being allowed to stay.

You can’t have this experience alone. Alone you can think, write, reflect, read books. All of that is useful. But the experience that someone stays even though you were inconvenient is one you have with another person.

That is why the same pattern keeps happening: women who have worked on themselves alone for years and know themselves very well still disappear again in the next relationship. Not because they didn’t work hard enough. Because relationship patterns show up in relationships and nowhere else.

So the better phrasing would not be “love yourself first”, but: learn not to lose yourself in relationships. That is something completely different, and it is what actually needs doing.

What the sentence does in practice

Three things I see regularly.

It becomes an excuse for waiting. “I’m not ready yet.” You can say that for years. There is no point at which anyone feels finished.

It shifts all responsibility onto the woman. If you can’t get him to treat you well, apparently you don’t love yourself enough yet. That is the unspoken message, and it almost always hits the wrong person.

It turns neediness into a flaw. People need people. That is not a weakness you have to overcome before you become lovable. In professional language, the process of two people calming each other down is called co-regulation, and it is not a malfunction but basic human equipment.

Why the sentence is so persistent

It sounds empowering, it sounds like taking responsibility for yourself, and it is easy to say. That is why it gets passed on, even by people who mean well.

What it does to the women who take it seriously is something else. They work on themselves, they really do become clearer, and then they find themselves in the same situation as before and conclude that they haven’t worked hard enough yet.

But the problem is not their self-worth. The problem is that nobody told them that this isn’t something you get done beforehand, but in the middle of things.

What applies instead

Three sentences I consider more accurate.

You don’t have to be finished to be loved. Nobody is finished. The people you think of as stable aren’t either.

Self-worth shows in what you do, not in how you feel. You can feel unsure and still say what you want. That is exactly the way. Not the feeling first, then the action.

You are allowed to need someone. The question is not whether you need someone, but whether you still see yourself in the process.

Where the sentence is right after all

There is one situation in which the advice is justified.

When someone is looking for a relationship to repair something that broke before, and to do so all on its own. When the next person is supposed to fill the hole the last one left behind. Then distance makes sense, and not because you have to love yourself first, but because otherwise you place the same expectation on the next person.

And if you are being made small in a relationship right now, then working on your self-worth is not the first task. If you are in Germany, the Violence Against Women helpline (Hilfetelefon Gewalt gegen Frauen) is available around the clock and free of charge on 116 016.

What I’d like you to take with you

If you wait for yourself, you may be waiting a long time.

What you don’t need is a finished state before you begin. What you need is one single situation this week in which you say what you want, even though you feel unsure while doing it.

The feeling follows. In that order, not the other way round.