Loving Others and Yourself

We love others much the way we love ourselves. Those who are critical of others are just as critical of themselves, if not more so; those who are accepting of others, are just as accepting of themselves.

How we treat others indicates how we treat ourselves, even if in our secret self. We learn how to love ourselves through modeling the way we were loved by our family of origin. Just as we get our name from our family, so also do we derive our basic attitude toward ourselves. Yet we do not adopt our parent’s attitude toward us wholesale; rather, we are selective, we interpret. What our parents attempted to instill in us and what we perceived them to mean can be far apart. We may feel they did not love us unconditionally due to stern discipline and rigid rules. Yet from their perspective, correcting and coercing may have signified “tough love.” So that what they intended as caregivers and what we interpreted as care-receivers are painfully at odds. The only way to determine this is through direct family dialogue.

On the basis of our early family history, we tend to move in either a positive or negative love cycle. If we felt loved, we feel lovable, and are usually able to receive and give love freely. If we did not feel loved, we do not feel lovable, and we likely find it difficult to give to others what we did not receive.

To go from a negative to a positive love cycle, work from the outside in: treat yourself in a loving manner, as if you are lovable. Be good to you and watch what you say and think about yourself. In time you will come to feel that you are in fact lovable. The belief in your lovability permits you to more readily risk loving others. When others respond affirmatively to your reaching out, you will likely feel more loved – thus more lovable. The fuller your well, the more you have to offer, and the more readily you will offer it.

A famous experiment conducted in the 1960's at the University of Florida, shows the effect of believing in one’s lovability. Researchers enlisted four of the most popular men on campus, and asked them to begin dating an average, shy young woman. They were not to inform her of the experiment, or of her random selection to be the recipient of their ardent attention. They were instructed to treat her as if she possessed everything they were seeking in a woman, as if she were highly lovable.

After a few weeks, all four men told the researchers independently that they wanted to continue dating this young woman on their own, not because of the experiment. She later became one of the most popular women on campus. I don’t know if anyone ever told the woman about the experiment, and I am offended by the absence of integrity in what they did to – albeit it for – this woman. Yet in this case at least, a life was changed for the better.

What was the truth about this woman? The truth was and is: as a person sees herself in her heart, so she is. One who feels unloved emanates emptiness; one who feels loved radiates love.