When you don't love yourself, can you love someone else?

Yes. You know what it is...you just haven't figured out how to apply it to yourself.

Yes, you can, but you are usually selling yourself short. That is one of the worst side effects of low self esteem.

I think when you don't love yourself, you can only need
someone else. I have had many people in my life that I
would have said I loved, but in looking back, I wanted them
to love me, and make me feel happy, since I wasn't able
to feel that on my own. I loved my husband, who passed
away two yrs. ago--but I don't think I have felt good about
myself since then, and probably can't love anymore.

yes, you can. loving our selves is the hardest because we know all of our own faults and tend to magnify them. loving someone else is much easier.

yes- depsite the popular view that says you can't- yes you can.

i've always had a strong opinion on that widely accepted premise about "love". i don't subscribe to it, though.

a deficiency of love and happYness within onesself doesn't mean one hasn't the capacity to love and be happy with another, though. there are daily examples of this...as you've pointed out.

i believe a more accurate truth is: one who doesn't love onesself, nor is happy with onesself, can not find love and happiness for themselves through another. of course, others can help such a person realize their self-worth and value, but that person must still embrace herself.

loving onesself, trusting onesself, embracing onesself, liking onesself, respecting onesself, and being happy with onesself is typically what allows others to fall in love with such people, because they're inherently HAPPY, well-adjusted folks already! now, it's just a matter of sharing their love an happYness with others...and especially that one.--|-------

Well to each opinion your own, but if you are extremely obese, can you tell someone else how to efficiently do work out routines to maximize work in the deltoids region? Sure you can, but do you think they'll take your advice to heart?

So in yea, you could in essence stumble into love with another, but if they obviously realize you don't love yourself, it may definitely hinder things. If I were to love woman who was completely self-destructive, volatile, and such things to make it obvious, then I would be forced after a fashion to question her love for me.

That isn't true..another "old wives tale"..I wish those old wives would just die already...lol! Anyway. It can't be true. Because I feel very good about myself, and yet at the same time find it almost impossible to really attach myself to a guy.

I think it is possible to love someone else when you don't love yourself. Though, not loving yourself to the point where you are unhealthy (physically, mentally, emotionally) would make it extremely difficult to love another - you wont be the best loving parent or partner you can be if you can't be there for the person you love in all capacities.

I think also that you have to understand and believe that you are worthy of being loved in return - and that is hard to do if you don't see any good in your own person.

I have never loved myself.

You would have to ask people that I have "loved" if I indeed did love them.

im not a big fan of myself but i love the hell outta my fiancé (sp?)

I've found that attempting to love someone else without loving yourself is futile.

For me, I think that I was looking for someone to love me, inspite of myself. Then, I started to notice that the people I was reaching for had the same kinds of problems that I did, and were just as unable to love me...as I was.

Emotions are great. The feeling of "being in love" is great. But, when the emotions wear off, and you have the two very real people with the same problems (self-esteem, lack of confidence...), they seem to criticize the heck out of each other, because they each see the other's inadequacies.

It's the mirror effect, basically. You see in the other what you see in yourself, and hate it. Or you expect in the other what you don't have yourself...and they don't have it either.

It's been a long hard road for me, but I've been finding it easier to accept others by learning how to accept myself. And, since I'm my own worst critic, accepting myself is really hard to do.

I try to keep in mind that judging others is projected judgement on myself. And it doesn't make me either loving or lovable.

Maybe u just need s0me0ne to love you and felt what you were asking for

no.

You can never love anyone else..if you cant even love yourself..however, you may try to get approval from others by trying to do stuff to please them and earn their love and approval.

ALthough so many people say no, I say of course. There are many times when one person doesnt love themselves, but adores, loves and is commited to another person. I dont see why loving yourself will determine your ability to love another person.

As they say, it's hard to give something which you don't have.

The concept that love is outside of ourselves is a funny one and to me it just doesn;t make any sense. I think love is within and not separate from self. So this would mean that we cannot love someone and not have love for ourself or in fact the whole human race. Also to be honest, the word love has been dragged through language to the point that it most probably misses its true meaning. Real love is not selective and like the sun, it shines on everyone without prejudice. It also has no opposite, so the love that turns into hate, indifference, abuse or anything else, is in fact not real love. Also the love we feel for a sibling or a friend or even a stranger on a train is actually not different than the one we feel for a partner, only the intensity is different. I am not sure that i have real love inside of me or that i am capable of it, but this theory makes more sense to me than any others i have heard. Since if we were to adopt this theory many of the bad things that people inflict on each other in the name of love would not happen. And if theydid then it would be clear that love had nothing to do with it.

Yep ,, when you love someone that didnt love you ,,
It means you dont love yourself ...