How Do You Love You?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning famously wrote “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Ah, Valentine’s Day. The day when so many of us go off the deep end showing love for others or pining for showings of love from others.

For just this year, I’m asking you to forego the flowers and cards and instead have a conversation with yourself: How Do You Love You?

Can you count the ways you love yourself?

It’s probably a given that you love others but can you take out Elizabeth BB’s “thee” and make it about “me”?

“I love me to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach”

To a lot of ears that might sound selfish.

We have an unfortunate tendency to think that loving others is the end all be all. But my theory is that we can’t love others unless we’re loving ourselves. I’m not talking massages, pedicures, zonking out in front of the telly and watching Sports Channel all day, or drinking and eating to your heart’s desire.

I’m talking about serious self-love. The kind where we’re treating ourselves profoundly well: nurturing our honesty, adhering to our core values and principles, fueling our bodies with physical, social, emotional and intellectual stimulation, prioritizing replenishing sleep and nourishing foods. If we’re not practicing serious self-love, how can we truly have much love to give to others?

If we’re not loving ourselves well, we put ourselves in a weakened state to fully and truly love others. Oh, sure, we might take care of others. We might fulfill obligations to others. We might prioritize others’ needs. But …

Consistently sacrificing self-care for other-care can lead to something less than love. It can shadow our loving acts with resentment or boredom and can sometimes cast a pall over time we spend with those we say we love. We also run the risk of creating a sense of entitlement and expectation: I did this for them, so why aren’t they doing that for me?

If you don’t give love to yourself — and I’m talking real, profound, kick-ass love — the kind that allows you to be your truest, most authentic self — if you don’t give that kind of love to yourself, tell me, what is the quality of the love that you are giving to others? How can you possibly give to others what you do not possess within yourself, for yourself?

I’ve learned, and re-learned, and am still learning this lesson:

That the quality of love I’m capable of giving to other human beings, to creatures and nature, to my work, to the world — it’s all first and foremost predicated on how well and truly I’m able to love myself.

One of my most significant relationships — with a family member — someone I thought I had loved as much as possible all my life, was monumentally transformed only after I at long last learned the incalculably invaluable lesson of loving myself.

When I finally realized – by loving myself enough — that my needs were as important as this family member’s, I was able to establish a simple, healthy boundary and almost overnight, our relationship became profoundly more truthful and more mutually loving.

But what was most amazing was this: I thought I had loved this person as deeply as possible before, but the love that came after my boundary-setting was truly and wonderfully deeper. So much more real and relaxed.

By loving myself enough to establish parameters that were healthy for me, I freed myself to love in a more “true” way — a way that was free of any undercurrent of resentment or frustration. And, the unexpected second gift was that I was able to more fully feel the love this other person was giving me in return.

My suggestion for the absolute best — and most efficient — way to love yourself — and to ultimately receive and fully feel love in return — is to heed advice from another poet, Shakespeare:

“This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man ..

Being true to yourself is the most profound way of loving yourself. In other words, if you love yourself truly, as night follows day, you can then love others truly as well.

Love, love, love,