niomi

If you push too hard you might shit yourself.

This is first sentiment I recall when personally dismissing of the entire concept of self-love:

Self love was never meant to replace romantic love. Stop telling people to “love themselves” when they talk about wanting a significant other. Both are supposed to coexist. Wanting a partner doesn't necessarily mean you don't love yourself.

I like to see it because I've mostly failed to bring nuance to the recommendation of self-love. Advocates of self-love, especially if the suggestion is in response to my breakup, persist with their take on my self-esteem problem.

Self-love proponents often fail to recognize negative self-talk comes from internalized other-talk. When we ask these people to love themselves, we imply that the source of the hate is within and the implication goes unquestioned.

I have already seen a few great responses to self-love:

People with insecurities who do not love themselves are worthy of love from others

You don't owe anyone love, not even yourself. Also, self-love is not a prerequisite to being loveable. We could often even infer: a person who does not love themselves is unlovable by others because they do not love themselves.

I believe this folk wisdom on self-love comes from observation. There's some validity to correlating low self-love to relationship failure. Implying self-unlove to be the cause is possibly (probably?) not correct.

Self-love as self-care, which is not a replacement for community care

In western individualizing moral hegemony, self-love becomes a patronizing escape from our responsibility to create healthy communities.

In general, an individual's lack of confidence seems like an all too common explanation for actual or perceived unfair treatment. And I think something similar is happening to self-love. Like self-love, confidence isn't verifiable and measuring it is difficult. Because it's abstract, anyone can claim it's secret sauce.

There are those who need to improve their control of their own insecurities. But the issue was misapplied by bullies who also blame the person they insulted for feeling hurt. We want to believe that we single-handedly hold ourselves to unrealistic standards. Because we cannot resist insults from people with power over us.

So, I am feeling as though self-love as a description is generally an error. I'm also not saying assume the worst of everyone who says it. I just want to share my doubts in the entire type of thought. Self-love means many things to many people, so I tried to list some specific interventions that are implied:

• hedonism (but mostly in a safe, consumerist type of way)
• absolving guilt of the protestant work ethic for non-productive time or hobbies
• coping with a tendency to self-criticize
• revising, positivizing, and/or distracting from negative self-talk
• focus on building confidence by improving attitude towards own (perception of) flaws
• unpacking and revising co-dependence, revising this with “independence”
• building confidence, particularly confidence in one's independence, in an individualistic sense.
• confidence to go alone to popular semi/public dating activities. or overcome shame of being seen alone. (especially when this inhibits a single from doing a thing otherwise enjoyable by themself)
• learn to cope with spending time alone, or adjust to the sensation of loneliness. especially if this helps them avoid someone they miss
• coping with boredom in a general sense, especially if a cope of attention seeking got them into trouble
• defining and revising life choices from what the other wants, and instead, discover & do what the self wants. especially if it's something others used (social) pressure to inhibit

A couple more bullets could have been. I tried but ended up omitting because they described a certain hypocrisy. For example, someone attempting weight loss may at different times describe exercise and the act of “cheating” on diet as acts of self-love. But the entire time they are still being cruel to themselves. Struggling with self-cruelty, positive self talk becomes backhanded compliments. Treat yourself is actually help yourself to more guilt. Cruelty corrupts the would-be loving act.

So if self-love isn't working out: self-neutrality. No more extra work to appreciate self qualities. Everyone is different, but I don't think that's necessary. The self work is for self-understanding, self-accepting, self-revising, in the most nuanced and reasonable ways I know how. Love should be free to feel authentically, not forced.

Personally, being mediocre and benevolent is good enough for me. This might sound like a putdown. It's actually so hard for people to just take how I feel seriously. I would pose it as a self-depreciating joke.