When you love someone deeply, it can hurt like hell to realize they don’t feel the same way. You may feel like your life is ruined, but getting over them and moving on is the only way to live happily ever after.
Changing your love life starts with altering your mindset. This new mindset will help you trust and commit with ease.
1. Learn to love yourself
While some people may view learning to love yourself as selfish or self-indulgent, many mental health professionals will tell you that loving yourself is essential for healthy relationships and a positive outlook on life. This advice can be hard to follow, as it is often met with skepticism and resistance.
It’s easy to become overwhelmed by stress and negative thoughts – and these will only get in the way of your efforts to learn to love yourself. To counteract this, try to find ways to be more spontaneous. Dance around your kitchen, go for a hike or immerse yourself in a good book. Make sure to schedule time for yourself and don’t be afraid to say no if you need to!
Loving yourself is a practice that takes time and commitment. It’s also a process that will help you make wiser choices about the people and relationships in your life.
If you’ve been around people who mistreat others, learning to love yourself will also help you set safe boundaries in your relationships. This may involve ending a toxic friendship or cutting off a romantic partner who treats you like a doormat.
You might also need to challenge your ego’s false beliefs about yourself and how you show up in the world. Loving yourself will require you to question those patterns and beliefs that are keeping you stuck in a miserable love life. This is where a therapist can be especially helpful. They can bring unconscious motives and patterns to light so that you can take a new approach to your love life.
Loving yourself is the foundation of a happy love life. When you truly love yourself, you can begin to spread that love to others.
In the self-love era, you may be bombarded with “love yourself” advice from a wide range of influencers. Step into a wellness gift shop and you’re likely to find a plethora of rose quartz-adorned candles and positive affirmation cards. Scroll through Instagram or TikTok and you’ll be exposed to a plethora of toxic positivity, such as the type portrayed in Euphoria Season 2.
This self-love advice is often hard to swallow because the truth is that loving yourself can be pretty f*cking hard. It takes a lot of gritty inner work and soul-searching. And it can be very confusing to navigate.
2. Learn to love others
If you want to love others, you must learn to treat them like you would want to be treated. Start by choosing a trait that you value in other people, such as kindness, compassion, respectfulness or open-mindedness. Practice acting in that way each day. As you do, notice how the people around you react.
Unconditional love means that you put the needs of another person before your own. It includes doing things for them that you wouldn’t enjoy, such as cooking a meal or letting them cut you off in traffic. It also includes forgiving them when they make a mistake and being present with them through the process. It even includes accepting their beliefs and opinions. It is never judging or criticizing them.
Oftentimes, we don’t love others the way that they deserve to be loved. Whether it’s because we’re jealous, insecure, or simply selfish, we can create unhealthy and toxic relationships with the people around us.
Learning to love others means respecting their differences. It also means refusing to speak evil of others, even if they’ve wronged you.
If you’re struggling to love others, try to spend more time with them. Taking the time to bond with your friends will help you to become more comfortable around them. It will also allow you to see the good in them and appreciate the qualities that they possess. The next time you see the person you love, take the initiative to compliment them on their unique attributes. It will make their day!