Love Me, Love Me Not
While down in Los Angeles one weekend, my best friend, Sara, took me to the Sunset Strip Music Festival. It was the first ever of its kind and maybe the last given the quality of bands that performed that day. Sara and I were determined to get our $50 worth and stayed until the bitter end, despite the cacophony of sounds that some of these bands called music. We ended the evening at The Roxy where we were packed in like sardines with no way out, stuck watching one dismal band after another, and just when we thought it couldn’t be worse, we met the most dismal band of all.
No name will be mentioned since I don’t want to give them more publicity than they deserve, but they were a band of three, dressed in tight punk-gear, doing their best to look like they belonged on stage. The singer was apparently the leader and centerpiece of the band, self-absorbed with no interest in anyone but himself. He scowled at his band mates throughout the show as if they were responsible for the crowd’s lack of enthusiasm and unashamedly begged for the audience’s love and approval, asking us to dance to his un-danceable music. He was ignored by the crowd and eventually became such a pathetic sight that some of the audience took pity and danced as best they could to the tuneless songs. But the more he begged, the more the crowd withdrew and lost interest completely. When the band was finally done, the lead singer stomped off the stage – angry, disappointed and dejected – reminding me of a scorned lover.
We have all been there at one point in our lives, desperate for love from a partner, seeking to gratify some emotional need. We see ourselves through our partner’s eyes and therefore become emotionally dependent on them to love us and see us in the best light. So when they are not looking back at us lovingly or admiringly, we begin to wonder what is wrong with ourselves, and out of fear, we cling on as hard as possible, trying to change our partner’s vision of us. Like the lead singer, we start making demands, ultimately begging them to love and approve of us, to elevate our egos and self-esteem with that love. But the more we beg, the more we alienate them, causing them to retreat, and eventually, it becomes so intolerable that someone breaks and leaves. Hopefully, it never gets to that boiling point but the only way it won’t is to realize that our desperation is perhaps not the result of a lack of love from our partner but a lack of love from ourselves.
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Dear Dianne,
Love means different things to different people. That is what makes this world a wonderful place, i.e. the fact that we all have different opinions and perceptions of love and of life. That is why I find your question rather odd.
Let us therefore attempt to be less prescriptive with regards to definitions of quite subjective issues, here I refer to Meg’s response to my first comment above. I also wish to point out the fact that this blog, as I understand it, is a forum in which Meg proposes her ideas of certain aspects of love and relationships, which, you might agree, can differ quite drastically from one person to the next, depending on their own upbringing, education, culture, gender etc. That is why, Meg has set up this comment section which provides an opportunity for those who differ to agree, to express this.
On that note, I also wish therefore to perhaps suggest that while Meg’s ideas of relationships and love, stem from her own experiences and character and therefore don’t necessarily have to be taken as prescribed ways of understanding these issues, which can be adapted to all of us. I am sure Meg agrees with me on this.
As a regular reader of this blog, may I suggest to Meg to perhaps include articles which, while remaining in the realm of love in the 21st century, however delve into perceptions of it from other people, which I would find rather stimulating and very interesting. Just a suggestion.
Regards,
Adeline aka Victoria aka Charlotte-Louise
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Adeline,
Do you not know what it means to love?
Dianne
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Adeline,
Perhaps you misunderstand what I mean when I say “to love oneself”. Self-love and self-centeredness are not the same, and in fact, are the antithesis of each other.
Self-love is about the relationship you have with yourself, how you measure your own self-worth and how you contribute to the world based on those notions of yourself. Essentially, this is the process of self-actualization. To “love myself” is to be at peace with who I am, to be emotionally self-sufficient without depending or imposing myself on others to help me feel good. It is only then that I am able to love others freely and unconditionally.
Self-centeredness, on the other hand, is the inability to love oneself and therefore seek it from others. Referencing the lead singer again, he has no love for him/herself, or rather, no love for his music; hence the need to seek that love from others. His self-worth is measured through the eyes of others, so it comes across as me, me, me. Until he possesses a love for himself and for his music, he won’t be able to make his music for the pure enjoyment of making music. He won’t be able to share his music without strings attached as he will always seek approval. This is not a matter of someone believing he deserves to be loved, it’s a matter of needing that love for emotional gratification.
To your point about “loving myself less”, that is precisely the problem with society today. We discuss love in terms of “more” or “less” as if it’s a measurable commodity, like the way we would measure success. So we end up measuring our self-worth based on that success – the job we have, the amount of money we make, the person we’re married to or dating, the car we drive, the house we own. It’s not a matter of loving myself more or loving myself less, it’s a matter of loving myself in a way in which I can be the best human being I can be.
Meg
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Can we just stop it with all this “love myself” crap. Our society has become so self-loving that we have all become self-centered lost souls. Do we really need to love ourselves more than we already do?
The reason why most of us want to be loved and act like the character you describe in your article, is exactly because we love ourselves so much that we think we deserve that others love us to. So, in my opinion, the solution is not “love myself more” but “love myself less”!
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“In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.” Elizabeth Gilbert
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