Why Self-Love Is So Hard To Achieve

Afflicted by a lack of self-love, romantic relationships become almost impossible, for one of the central requirements of a capacity to accept the love of another turns out to be a confident degree of affection for ourselves, built up over the years, largely in childhood.

It’s a skill. It can be learned. Some women got taught the skill of loving themselves by their mothers, and so that love feels effortless. Most of us got skilled in the art of criticism and judgement - which are like the anti-skills to self-love. It’s like being good at drinking alcohol and trying to be an Olympic athlete: one skill seriously impai

And yet, no matter what bravery we show to the world, most of us have recurring doubts about our worth. We worry that we’re not desirable enough, good enough, successful enough. We fear we’re not enough, period. Intellectually, we may appreciate that loving ourselves would give us a firm foundation, one from which we could extend love out into the