My former wife Melanie told me once that she wanted me to love myself in the same way as I loved her. At first I thought this the wrong course of action. Loving yourself came across to me as being masturbatory. In fact there appears to be a solid logic behind this.

When you like someone, you want other people to like them as well. That is especially the case with themselves. And in loving himself, he is honoring your love.

I had a girlfriend who kept denigrating herself. I hated it. The reason I hated it was that I liked her, and her attacks on herself were experienced by me as an attack on someone I liked. If you love someone, you don’t want anyone to be attacking them. And that also means themselves.

Now there are people who claim that loving yourself is a prerequisite for loving another. Instead it often works the other way around. You love the other person for traits that you find lovable. Seeing these traits expressed successfully by another person, you know what you need to work in within yourself in order to be lovable in your own eyes. I have learned massive things from women I’ve loved, and I like myself a lot better than I did when I started.

Loving yourself is thus honoring the love of the other person. When you love someone you want everyone to be good to them, including themselves. That being done, good relationships can blossom.

Love yourself as part of loving another and in so doing honor their love.