My Quest To Love and Be Loved Begins With Me

Over the past several months, I’ve been thinking about what it means to love. Initially my interest in the topic was piqued when I noticed a social media post comparing love to loyalty, which inspired me to record a podcast episode about it.

My exploration of the two words reinforced my preference to choose love, mainly because there is nothing greater, but in addition to that, one cannot love without loyalty. My journey with this topic was from the perspective of being in a relationship with a partner, but a message on Pinterest inspired me to view love in my relationship with myself so I may be available to give and receive what is desired and needed for both parties.

I liked the above post when I initially read it last summer—I just noticed it needed a grammatical correction. However, the more I thought about it, I realized it needed more tweaking if I wanted it to align with doing a better job of loving myself.

At first glance, I considered removing people who aren’t reciprocating what I’m giving to be acceptable, but that isn’t necessarily accurate. Do I need—or want— what I give to others reciprocated or do I require something different? Additionally, have I identified and communicated what those things are to my partner, loved one, or friend?

Furthermore, there may be people in our lives we cannot remove. We are charged to love everyone, not just the ones who treat us well. We may need to accept their inability to fulfill our requirements, but instead of shutting them out of our lives, we need to forgive them despite perceived shortcomings. With that said, I don’t believe we need to provide them full access to us, but we do need to extend them love.

Lastly—vulnerable moment alert—I’ve been waiting for someone to love me, but my approach was flawed. I failed to define what love is to me and identify and communicate what I needed/wanted. I didn’t evaluate myself to determine if I was able to reciprocate those attributes, nor did I ask what was required of me. In conjunction with that, I needed to determine my ability or willingness to fulfill and accept what was communicated.

Ultimately, this change in behavior will be beneficial to my self-love journey, but most importantly, loving myself correctly enables me to fulfill the greatest commandments:

“Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” – Matthew 22: 36-40 KJV