Love Will Save You
We have grown to believe that love is like in fairy tales; like in the movies. That love is magical and that the man of your dreams will come into your life to save you. But guess what? Love can be magical, because I believe it is, however, no man or human being is meant to save YOU! If you are waiting for the “man of your dreams” or your “soul mate” to come and save you, you’ll end up like me! Still waiting.
I always envisioned my life to be with that “man of my dreams” …and guess what? That “Prince Charming”, that “Hero” that will come to my rescue, that “Soulmate” that is meant to be connected with me has NEVER arrived. I have come to realize that this man WILL NEVER COME! The idea that a man or that another human being is responsible for our happiness is the real fairy tale. It is a lie! NOBODY should be given that type of responsibility. It is not fair. It is not real. It is not sustainable. You will be disappointed EVERY TIME!
And some of you might be thinking… “Jessica, you are wrong! I have found my “Soulmate” and I have his full support and he truly loves me.” Well, I’m still going to insist on telling you that he is not your savior. He didn’t come to rescue you. Love is just Love, but it is not the other person’s responsibility to heal you. It is not the other person’s responsibility to cure all of your traumas. It is not the other person’s responsibility to make you happy! I once heard Will Smith say, that he is “not responsible for my wife’s happiness”. He also said that he “had failed at making her happy”. My first reaction was to open my eyes and think to myself… “Wow! How could he say that?” I thought to myself “why wouldn’t he feel responsible if he sees her feeling miserable and unhappy?” Well, Will Smith is right! We cannot make anyone happy. The only ones responsible of our own happiness is ourselves.
How can we make ourselves happy then? The first thing we need is to learn to love ourselves. How is it that we can pour out love like a flowing river to others and be so unloving to ourselves? And how are we NOT loving ourselves? By accepting abuse. Abuse inside a relationship, not only physical, but verbal and psychological. We allow the person we “love” to play with our hearts and our emotions because “one day he’ll realize how much I love him” or “he’ll miss me” or “nobody is going to love him like I do”. First of, you’re having an ego battle there…that is not love, that is a winning competition in which you put yourself in a vulnerable state and you wish for your ego to win…But you won’t win! The only one that will take advantage of the situation is the man you are giving too many chances to. And I’m not here to tell you I know how to do it better, because I have also been there.
We allow others to disrespect ourselves at work, when we remain silent after it is evident that there is discrimination, sexism, favoritism, unfairness, unbalanced decisions, or even hierarchical status involved in our wrong treatment. We fear that if we speak up; we’ll lose our jobs and then we accept the abuse. But know that this is a lack of self-respect and therefore lack of love to ourselves. We have rights and staying quiet won’t resolve the problems, they will only grow bigger.
We allow our family to also disrespect us by allowing them to talk down to us, when we are grown and independent adults. And why don’t we speak up? Oh! Because we owe them respect… but why can’t they show respect for us as well? Loving ourselves requires us to speak up and to stop or reject other people’s abuse and disrespect, even when it is painful for us or when it is uncomfortable. Even when we love our parents, friends, or family members, we are also allowed to stay away from them out of self-love and self-respect; for our peace and mental health. Toxicity should never be tolerated from anyone.
We also show no self-love with that destructive self-talk that is always there to insult us, to diminish our capacities and our worth: “You are so stupid!”, “Nobody cares for you”, “Nobody will love you, you’re such a problematic person”, “Maybe your kids will be better off without you”, “You are fat”, You are ugly”, “You are just a mom without a Degree”, “Nobody will hire you”, “You’re not worth a raise”, and so we go onto endless diminishing self-talk. We say things to ourselves that are sometimes so destructive that we won’t even dare say similar things to our worse enemy. Why is that? Why do we do that? How can we expect to put the responsibility onto someone else to SAVE US and rescue us from those moments in which we disrespect our own selves? That is such a high responsibility! Nobody would want that kind of love requirement.
We need to learn to love ourselves above anyone else. This has been my journey. Because I have been my worst enemy (like Lady Gaga says in her song 911). I have allowed others to disrespect me one too many times, to mistreat me, to insult me, to abuse me and all because I love them and I need to show them love and respect…. WHAAAAT?!!! The time has come for me (and also for many of you) to realize that in order to love others we truly need to love ourselves and loving ourselves is a process. We tend to focus on all of our flaws and guess what…EVERYONE has flaws (even Beyonce! She must have at least 1 flaw! Come on!), so why not focus on the good things? Why not focus on our strengths? We are all blessed with wonderful characteristics that make us unique. We should LOVE those characteristics and focus less on the flaws.
One of the Commandments that Jesus left was to “Love others as we love ourselves”. The way I see it is that we tend to love others more than we love ourselves and that is not right! No wonder why there are so many broken hearts out there! Because by loving others over ourselves we ignore the red flags and therefore we allow the disrespect, and we accept it; we let it slide. It becomes a norm. But it should not be like that. You can love someone and if that person is hurting you in any way, you should be capable of identifying it and walk away; not because you stopped loving the person, but because you love yourself more and know that you deserve better. You take your feelings with you, love won’t die, but loving yourself is being able to do that, to understand your worth, and accept nothing less than the love and respect that you deserve.
Love will indeed save you, but it is not the love from someone else. It is solely your responsibility to love yourself so deeply that you won’t allow others to hurt you. You will see that loving yourself won’t be as easy as we all think. It is a process. You need to heal yourself, forgive yourself, accept yourself, and be happy with the great and awesome person that you are… You need to BELIEVE in yourself! Trust me, it is the best thing you can do in order to be completely happy, to feel completely loved, and to be able to love others the correct way. You won’t need anybody’s love to save you because your self-love will. You will EMPOWER yourself with SELF-LOVE.
