On Self Love and Being Selfish ... On Masks We Wear

There is a difference between Self Love and being Selfish ... they sound very much alike but they are at opposite ends of the spectrum... In between these two bookends lay all the various masks we wear so that we can pretend and be safe ...

Selfish says: “I love you but you have to put up with my emotional garbage ...all my anger dumping, all my childish behaviour, and all the things I never take responsibility for.” Thus to tell someone that you love them and then abuse them is simply not love. It is deeply rooted in desperation, and it hails from childhood dependency needs that have run amok. Also referred to as the Adult Child Syndrome.

Self Love gives you the power to break the spell that was cast by the scripts that you inherited in your childhood. The ones that said you are in fact “not good enough.” There are thousands of variations on a theme on the “not good enough” message but it seems to be always there, always haunting you. The problem is you were lied to by the people in your life that held extreme significance for you and because of the set up of the system you were raised in, you believed them. Doesn’t make it true, you just believed them. They passed on to you what was passed on to them.

To the contrary when I am in a place called Self Love I can move forward and face the responsibilities of my life. I can deal with life on life’s terms. It is a direction toward a destination and the desired destination in this case is a place called Happy.

When we are truly in a place called Self Love we no longer self sabotage; there is no necessity to do that any longer. We are no longer our own worst enemy. We don’t have to drag our world down to the level of our low self esteem. When I am in Self Love, my self esteem is alive and well and active in my life. When I am in Self Love I have abundant self esteem and I can move forward. Not always easily, but I am comfortable in my own skin. I am ok with me being me. When I am in a place with someone else trying to create we or us, I am comfortable there too.

In partnering we next naturally come to the need for Respect: It follows that if I am in a relationship with you, then I need to respect your choices ... I don’t need to agree with them but I do need to respect them. I don’t need to try and control your choices. One of the undercurrents of saying “I love you.” often is my need for or my attempt to ... control, so I can feel safe in the face of overwhelming knowledge that I am Alone And My World Is A Dangerous Place.

In showing respect for you, I allow you to be who you are and I don’t attempt to adjust you to my liking ... the way I need you to be so I can believe that I am safe.

So if I am in a place called respect, I respect every belief you have and every choice you make. Again, I may not agree, but I respect ... Why? Because I love you the way you are not for the way I need you to be.

Now to balance off Respect Spiritually within me, I ... being in Self Love and not narcissism, I have to respect my own life, (wants, wishes, needs and desires) and thus I will not allow you to control how and who I am.

That is a very simple statement of intent to make, just damned hard to implement.

Thus if either of the parties to the relationship do not have respect for each other, (the ghost of their unmet childhood needs is quietly at play under it all) ... Even though they may love each other and announce it to the world, but if they don’t appreciate the necessity of Complimentary Respect values, and their neediness runs rampant then their relationship, as a healthy functioning entity, is at an end before it can get off the ground.

One of the problems that naturally follows from the combination of the ghost of my unmet needs playing with my deep seated desperation is these people often marry and then hope against hope that they can fix the other ... adjust ... bend ... manipulate ... their other ... their now significant other into who they want them to be so they can feel safe.

NDT: We are developing A Workshop on being a couple ... and being free in the relationship see http://onunderstandingme.blogspot.com/