Falling In Love With People Who Don’t Love Themselves
As it happens, it's nearly impossible to have a meaningful relationship with someone who has tragically low self-esteem. Rather than it feeling like a relationship between two equals, it will always be two people on different playing fields.
Let me love you. Let me take care of you. Let me put your needs before mine. All you have to do is want me in return.
It’s easy to fall in love with people who don’t love themselves. They’re vulnerable raw wounds who need saving, which is a job that happens to appeal to a lot of people. We like to feel needed. More importantly, we like to feel like we could be the missing piece of the puzzle for someone. We delight in the possibility that we could be the cure to whatever ails this person.
As it happens, it’s nearly impossible to have a meaningful relationship with someone who has tragically low self-esteem. Rather than it feeling like a relationship between two equals, it will always be two people on different playing fields. You exist to prop them up, to give them purpose. Meanwhile, they suck you dry. They break your heart. Or you resent them. You resent them for being so weak, even though that’s why you got into the relationship in the first place.
That being said, it’s okay to need someone or want to be needed. In an ideal relationship, your strengths are the other person’s weaknesses and vice versa. But when you’re loving someone who doesn’t have any self-worth, you’re cheating yourself out of some extraordinary love. Because, as RuPaul once said, “If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” That’s what it boils down to. How good of a partner can they be? How can they ever fulfill your needs when they have trouble fulfilling their own?
Ask yourself what kind of love you think you deserve. If you keep on finding yourself falling for damaged people, you have to wonder if you yourself are damaged. Otherwise, why would you subject yourself to this torture? It’s like investing in a money pit of a house or a lemon of a car. You can devote all your time to fixing this person up, to making them feel better about themselves, but in most cases, it’s just going to end up falling apart on you. And then all of this energy you’ve invested will add up to a person who simply can’t love you the way you need them to.
You deserve the best kind of love. If you don’t believe this, you’re robbing yourself blind. If you don’t believe this, maybe you really are the one who doesn’t love themselves. 