i really like being with other human beings and it weirds me out how complacent westerners are with being alone. theres this talk about ”self love” and sure you should be nice to yourself and have self worth but that will never feed the primal need to have friends. they talk about enjoying your own company but company is being with others so to me it sounds like an oxymoron. i even see westerners talk about how you dont even need a friend group and having one friend is fine. i made a list of 25 things i want to achieve before 25 and one of them is a stable reliable friend group (and being a reliable friend in return) and i dedicate myself to humans a lot. i read more books now because its not just words on a paper but somebodys labour and thoughts. i started doing things for people and even when i dont get something in return i feel fulfillment.
Self love isn’t supposed to be a substitute for having friends, the idea is to have a healthy relationship with yourself so you have an idea what healthy relationships look like with others.
100% this. Loving myself meant learning how to reparent myself. This not only meant not being overly harsh, but also not overly permissive, as dictated by my mood, how my day went, etc. Loving myself enough to say “yes,” was the easiest part. Loving myself enough to say “no” was a struggle. No, have the orange instead of the M&Ms or cake. No, have the salad instead of fried chicken. Yes, brush and floss before you sleep, despite exhaustion and injury. No, shut off the laptop before falling asleep. Yes, walk that mile before work. Yes, get to bed asap, so you feel more rested on waking. No, not toast with jam and coffee, yes, sweet potato or reheated white potato with olive oil and feta, or whole grain toast with smashed or sliced avocado. That was the hard part.
Yes, talk about it. 👏🏿
My dad was a narcissistic, abusive piece of shit, so I had to learn how to love myself, myself. I had to learn that my needs do matter, and that I don’t have to do anything in order to have them be fulfilled. Having to claw my way up just to reach the baseline of “I’m a decent person who deserves respect” took a humongous amount of effort, and even then I’m still struggling with it. But I wouldn’t have been able to get that far without discovering that love for myself and having a healthy relationship with myself. That also takes work, just like any other.
Yes, both parents were selfish with outright narcissistic tendencies. Part of reparenting myself was recognizing that that probably stemmed from their own childhood/young adult trauma, and forgiving them their own weaknesses. That doesn’t mean boundaries haven’t been set.
Again, my love is unconditional, access to me is not.
I hope you are in a better space now, Comrade.
In my experience, you can make a difference in how you “talk to yourself” and this in turn can make a difference in how emotionally regulated you are.
BUT… to put it in perspective, imagine you are dying of thirst, lost in a desert, and you’re panicking because you can’t find water, so you do box breathing to calm yourself down. Maybe it helps if there is an oasis nearby and you just needed a clear enough head to spot it, but the box breathing alone did not quench your thirst and you will still die if you don’t get water. So this is sort of how I see “self love.” It is healthy and helpful to have a kind “inner voice” (whether that voice is an inner monologue or some other form of thinking), but this is not going to fulfill your emotional needs on its own. And it is far easier to have a kind inner voice when the voices around you are being kind to you and being a good role model for how to talk to yourself. If the voices around you (the other people) aren’t being kind to you or to themselves, it’s going to be much harder to nurture and maintain kindness toward yourself and others.
I do think the individualist romanticizing of being alone is somewhat of a cope and a psyop, and not at all what most of us are comfortable with. But there may be some truth to it in that some people are so weary from being around egocentric capitalist culture that it’s actually less draining to be alone than it is to endure all the transactional bullshit. And it’s hard not to be a participant in that same bullshit too, if it’s what you grew up with and are surrounded by.
I do think the individualist romanticizing of being alone is somewhat of a cope and a psyop,
When the only people around are the ones who will bleed you emotionally dry because of drug-fueled or disregulated emotional ego entitlement, alone is ok. Like I’m here for you, but not when you consistently refuse to do the work that I can’t do for you.
Wouldn’t say alone is okay but rather it’s the least worst option which goes to show how fucked that environment is.
I think (hope?) I’m mostly past “least worst option.” I’ve been in a few relationships, platonic, romantic, familial that made me realize there’s way worse things than dying alone. I can’t say it’s my first or last choice, because it’s dependent on the variables and implications, and in the end, no matter whether we’re alone or not, it doesn’t mean we will or won’t be alone or having a great or miserable time, when life ends.
