ANSWERS: 74
  • Hah. Another of your moving and poignant questions. No I don't think you do have to. I'm in love and I certainly do not love, maybe even like, myself. Maybe that means I don't really love them? IDK. You ask good questions!
  • I think it's important to love yourself fisrt, but I don't think it is necessary to do so in order to love another.
  • I would say you have to 'like' yourself (not to the point of narcissism) otherwise you may feel inferior which is no basis for a relationship. :o)
  • I dont think so either. perhaps you can love BETTER when you love yourself.
  • For the relationship to have meaning and last long term, absolutely. Otherwise, if you simply pour your love into the other person you will exhaust you soul, the essence of your being. Try to imagine loving someone who didn't first love themselves. What would there be to love? Too much of a one way street of emotions and energy. It's a fatal error that will starve you emotionally and the relationship.
  • NO NO NO, people love themselves WAY tooooo MUCH anyway. Some smarty pants started the "you must love yourself first before you can love someone else" crap some time ago and as it seems everyone is falling for it. NO, there is enough egotism in this world...let's just "try" to love others 50% the way we love ourselves and the world would be a sooo much better place...
  • you need to love yourself in the sense that you need not to feel insecure. insecurity kills a relationship and makes you paranoid and like you don't deserve happiness
  • Yes, if you mean actually loving someone and not using them to compensate your internal void. Many people use the word love in error. When you're talking about true love, then yes, it's a neccessity to love yourself before you can truley love someone else because it's at that point when you are not so needy of others and you can let them be who they are instead of take from them to compensate for your lack of fullfillness,
  • we've kinda already talked about this. i don't believe you have to. i love you with all my heart. i know i have some flaws and that i tend to dwell on them too much at times. but, my life is so much better with you in it. i know where i was before you and i wasn't happy. you make me happy.
  • more like you have to know yourself first to know if you have anything common with your partner.
  • You have to be free yourself before you can free others - in the same way you have to love yourself before you can love others.
  • yes! true! if anything could be more true it would be that you are more ready to love if and when you love yourself. it makes you more able to send and receive love.
  • True. How can you live without loving yourself? It would be torture to do so.
  • True. If you don't love yourself then you are basing your life on your love for someone else, maybe even to the point where you fool yourself about your love for that person. Then what happens if your relationship fails?
  • False. This is confusing self esteem with narcissism. Unfortunately too many professional bullshit peddlars like Dr Phil, Tolle and the rest trot this platitude out because it's what most people want to hear and it sells books and keeps ratings up.
  • i think its true. b/c if you don't love yourself, you won't have much self respect. and if you get with a partner who doesn't respect you as well, you'll be in for a rough and short relationship.
  • People who don't love themselves often find themselves in relationships were they expect someone else to fill that need. Inevitably, their mate finds it difficult to sustain the level of "love" that person demands. For a person with low self esteem, every perceived slight is justification that their mate doesn't love them enough. It's impossible to love someone with a mindset that vacillates between being bitter, resentful, insecure, immature and needy.
  • True because if you are incapable of loving yourself how can you love someone else? That's why people get clingy in relationships
  • I think it is true because if you don't love yourself, you won't allow your (hated) self to receive love from others.
  • you at least have to accept that you are worthy of love
  • it is true because you have to have compassion for yourself first before you could love a person
  • You should love others as you love yourself...if you do not love yourself how can you love others?
  • I honestly agree with that statement.
  • Yes I very much believe one must love themselves before they can love someone or someone can love them. Loving yourself does not mean you are stuck up. It means you respect yourself and know how to love another person who will also respect you.
  • I personally believe that you MUST be able to love yourself BEFORE you can truly love another ...
  • That is what they say, but I don't believe it. I am not thrilled with myself, yet I love my wife and kids not to take the big dive.
  • You must know HOW to love before you can love others. Babies are born with self-love. They need to learn that others are worthy of love, too. Self-love enables you to care for your own needs. Self feeding, clothing, and personal hygine all stem from self-love.
  • Absolutely true. If you don't love yourself, why should anybody else?
  • do u think u can 'respect' others if u have no 'self respect'? i don't .... True....in order to love and repect others..u have to love who u are and respect who you are...to be able to genuinely love and respect ur mate..... the Bible says a man should love his wife as he loves himself.... i had a man friend who mistreated his wife, emotionally, and when he read this....he ADMITTED he hated hisself and understood why he disrespected his wife...whom he loved...he said he could only love hisself if he respected and treated her better...only then could he get back self respect and learn to love who he was ...
  • I hope not. I hate my self, but desperately want to love with another, eitherway im not changing, so i hope the anser is false.
  • i dont think so, because when i first fell in love i hated myself and everyone else..until i met him, and he made me love myself. i think some people like me just need a little push
  • Anyone who writes back: Absolutely true. If you don't love yourself, why should anybody else? Are you guys understanding of the word LOVE? I can love someone who doesn't see the value in themselves!!! I dont need them to love themselves!!!!
  • No because i believe that if somebody truely loves themself then there would be no room in their heart to love another or they'd be arrogant. I think obviously that you cannot expect others to help you feel good about yourself or seek comfort constantly, nobody should be anybody's crutch, you should be with somebody who compliments you well and has the strengths that you lack and vice-versa, a perfect relationship!
  • loving yourself does not mean you are selfish : ) it means you respect and put yourself in the right place, with the right ppl and create (when/if you can) the good atmosphere that a human being deserves.
  • VERY. . . . .true!
  • I do know that 'till I did accept and love and truly know myself (good and evil) that never did I love viscerally, in the gut. The kind people would die to have.
  • Defenitely true. Imagine you are depressed. When you are depressed you have very negative feelings about the world and yourself. In this state you are not able to show affection, how could you if you think you do not deserve it. When you love yourself, or better said, are on good terms with yourself. (You do not have to love everything about yourself that would be the other opposite.) You are able to show the other what you like about him or her. You say you hope not, so for you that means you are not liking yourself. Some things you cannot change about yourself quickly and some things you can never change. The hardest thing in life is accepting yourself and others for who they are. No one can do that right away.
  • False. Only because there is an equivocation in the statement. Self love is not the same thing as romantic love for another individual. Self love is a sort of new age version of self respect. In that context, it is difficult to have a healthy relationship with somebody else if you are constantly in need of that someone else to fill voids in your own self concept.
  • the word love should be replaced with like and then it makes good sense.
  • So True! If you don't love yourself, you don't believe you deserve love back. That is not a fertile bed for love to grow in. Love is not a single act but what exists in the relationship between 2. If you "think" you love someone and they don't love you back that is not true love. That is still infatuation based on your own lack of self worth. If you truly love and accept your self, you are making a fertile ground for love to grow in. By not loving yourself, you are telling others that you are not worthy of love and that their love is wasted on you. It devalues their love as well.
  • True, but it wont be the same love like the one you will give when you are confidence with yourself.
  • Yes. If you dont value yourself to be loved by yourself, can you expect someone else to love you? Cant see how you can love someone else with all you have if you dont know how to love yourself aswell. Your love for yourself shouldnt smother your love for others though...
  • Self love just means that you have your own personality, your own self outside of the romatic love, that is usually the notion that everyone thinks the other person has, or, to put it in another word, the other person is expected to be emotionally stable
  • Yeah I agree, you should love yourself first before others. How can you give something that you don't have? Right?
  • no.... and my wife loved herself a little too much and only thought she loved me.
  • True, in order to FULLY love another you must love yourself first. you can not give away what you do not already have. yes, you can be in-love, you can love only to a certain degree without fully loving yourself. but the more you love yourself, the more love you have to give. and the more you love yourself the more you accept yourself just as you are. in turn you can give this to your partner. I know because I have experienced this. In short the better partner you make and the deeper you can love the other less selfishly.
  • False, you don't have to love yourself to love someone else.
  • I think that's true.
  • I think that's completely false... These self-help kinda quotes sound nonsense to me.
  • nah, thats just some crap that fills self help books. it helps if your not full of teenage angst about how shit you are and/or talk about how fat you are is the rough translation.
  • I would say there's a bit too much self-love going around at the moment.
  • i guess the answer would be true. i mean, you need to know who you are before you choose who you want to be with.
  • I always took that to mean that you had to be satisfied in your own company before you could be healthy in seeking the company of others. If you desperately seek out and cling to others in hope of a feeling you cannot get for yourself then that would be toxic.
  • I say yes that is true. But for me I hate everyone and you better stay away othereise when I cut loose, you'll regret being in close association!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR>>>
  • IF IT WOULD BE FALSE ,NO DIVORCES, HATE, SUICIDE BOMBERS WOULD EXIST. We would live in a blissful society. It's not THE selfish YOU HAVE TO MAKE ME HAPPY, YOU PROMISSED kind.Self love as in like yourself and accept yourself.
  • False, I hate myself, yet I keep falling in love. Loving another person helps you to grow love for yourself too, especially if the other party loves you back.
  • Yes. According to my definition of love. . But everyone has a different one. So what's Yours?
  • Unfortunately, too many people already love themselves so much they are incapable of loving another.
  • That is true for me! How can you fully love someone else, unless you know how to love yourself first?
  • I think yes. =)
  • I would say True to this and this is why. How can you love someone else when you don't even love yourself? When you don't love yourself you are somewhat empty inside, this will show outwardly in everything you do, including being around people, People usually see this and think something is wrong with that person. And when i see you say, love yourself in this i dont see this a consented type love. Consented people are a whole other ball game, some of them only know how to love themselves and thats all they know.
  • False. It's much easier to love and appreciate someone else than it is to appreciate oneself (especially if we're not happy with ourselves). People with low self-esteem can sometimes be more giving, because they believe that their loved ones deserve good things more than they do, so they sacrifice a lot in order to make others happy. They view others as more important than themselves.
  • True.... if you don't love yourself how could you understand love from or for another....
  • i thing to a degree, but limited
  • How can you love someone else if you do not love yourself. Love starts with you first. If you feel good about you and love yourself you are more apt to share those feelings with others. If you are someone who does not look at yourself with a positive outlook, to you then most of the world is probably negative too and love is not on your list.
  • I disagree. It should rather be "you must respect yourself before others can love you"
  • True, the same is true to take care of yourself before you can effectivly take care of others.
  • I think you should love others like they love you if they don't love you don't force if they do love you be friends with them.
  • you arent any good for anybody else unless you have taken good care of yourself - you must love yourself, your body, you must have self respect etc...
  • True to the extent that we can't found our entire self-esteem on anyone else.
  • That's a myth. I'm not arrogant enough to love myself.
  • The second commandment of Jesus Christ says to "Love all others as you love yourself". He also said to, "Love others as I have loved you". So true, you must love yourself to love others with a true love.
  • True. Because if you don't love yourself to some extent - and there is a difference between self-love and narcissism or egoism - you will never be secure enough to be loved. You will always feel that you are not worthy of being loved and therefore you will be always insecure and jealous. There is a reason to borrow from the Bible - that you love the Lord as you love yourself. You don't have to be religious - and I am not especially religious - to understand how that works. The love we know the best is the person we know the best - ourselves. If you don't love yourself, you can never know anyone else well enough to love them, or indeed to know what it means to love at all. To love is to give, and giving is hard if we do not love ourselves. Self-giving is most easily done by those who are secure and themselves and can therefore give without counting the cost.

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