Rethinking Self-Love

I have been thinking a lot about self-love lately, mostly because there is no shortage of content about it online. Everywhere you look, there are reminders to take yourself on dates, book the spa day, buy the thing, romanticize your life. And I’m not knocking any of that. Those things can be enjoyable and regulating. They can even be part of taking care of yourself. They just are not the definition of self-love for me.

Because self-love is not only what you do on the surface. Sometimes the “treat yourself” version of self-care becomes a way to stay busy so you don’t have to sit with what’s unresolved, unspoken, or uncomfortable. It can look beautiful from the outside while you are still struggling internally.

For me, self-love has always been about what happens underneath. It’s about honesty. It’s about noticing where you were conditioned to prioritize other people’s comfort over your own emotional truth, and deciding that you are not doing that anymore. It’s about learning how to stop abandoning yourself just to be liked, chosen, or kept.

Women are taught very early how to love. We are taught that love looks like flexibility, patience, emotional availability, and sacrifice. We get praised for being easy, calm, peaceful, which often just means quiet. We get told that strong boundaries make us difficult and that expressing our needs makes us demanding. Over time, self-abandonment starts to get framed as maturity.

I have seen this play out in many women’s lives, including my own. In my early twenties, relationships felt more defining than they do now. Being chosen carried more weight. Partnership could start to feel like proof of worth. That did not make me naive or weak but human, living inside a culture that constantly measures women by who wants them.

At the same time, I always had a part of me that pushed back. I had boundaries before I had language for them. I spoke up. I did not tolerate disrespect quietly. I was known as someone who did not let men play with her. That doesn’t mean I was never hurt or disappointed, because I was. It means I didn’t lose myself trying to keep someone comfortable.

A lot of women are taught the opposite. They learn that being firm will cost them love, and that honesty will make them unlovable. So they silence themselves. They endure. They tolerate what doesn’t feel right in their bodies. They confuse silence with peace and endurance with love.

Healing changes how you love and what you are willing to accept. And it doesn’t turn you hard or closed off. If anything, real self-love makes room for more vulnerability. Vulnerability is the bridge to intimacy. Boundaries are not walls. They are the structure that makes intimacy safe.

You can be soft and still be solid. You can be gentle and still be grounded. You can be affectionate, emotionally open, and deeply loving, while also being clear about what you will and will not tolerate. Love without boundaries turns into self-abandonment. Boundaries without love turn into walls. The balance is learning how to hold both.

For some women, especially those who grew up with instability, neglect, or addiction in the home, self-abandonment can feel familiar. When inconsistency is what you knew, clarity can feel foreign but it does not get to dictate how you love forever.

A lot of women are doing well on paper. Educated. Capable. Financially independent. Managing households, careers, families, friendships. And yet beneath all that competence, there is still uncertainty about worth. A quiet habit of looking outward for validation. Measuring yourself by who stays, who chooses you, who prioritizes you. We can thank the patriarchy for that. 

Success can cover a lot, but it doesn’t automatically heal the places where self-esteem was fractured. You can be accomplished and still unsure of yourself. You can be admired and still disconnected from your own needs. I see women who have built full lives, but have never fully turned inward to ask themselves what they actually want, what feels good to them, what kind of love allows them to stay whole.

For many of us, loving has been tied to endurance. We learn to be understanding, to absorb discomfort quietly, to keep the peace. Over time, that behavior gets rewarded and labeled being a good woman. We are praised for our silence, our flexibility, our ability to hold everything together without complaint. Isn’t it wild that our suffering is what earns us that title? That the more we contort ourselves, the more approval we receive. You can thank patriarchy for that lesson. But being peaceful on the outside while abandoning yourself on the inside is not growth. It’s survival dressed up as strength.

As healing happens, the old adaptations start to loosen. You become less willing to tolerate what doesn’t feel right. Less interested in proving your value through sacrifice. More attuned to your body, your intuition, your limits. That shift can feel unsettling, especially if you were once praised for being easy, flexible, and agreeable. This isn’t selfishness but self-respect. 

And self-respect changes everything. When you truly trust yourself, love is no longer something you chase or perform for. You can want partnership without needing it to validate you. You can desire love without confusing it for worth. You stop negotiating your boundaries for closeness and stop shrinking to be chosen. You remain open, affectionate, and deeply capable of love, while knowing that your value is not up for debate. That is what it looks like to love yourself and still believe in romantic love, without losing yourself to it