The Wild Edge of Love

Source: Aleshyn Andrei/Shutterstock

The wildness at the edge of love consists of various psychological contortions to secure being lovable. These strategies include excessive caretaking, compulsive pleasing, a desperate need to achieve, workaholism, and striving to impress. The most common obstacle to loving ourselves is caring for ourselves the way we experienced being cared for by our parents. The problem is that those guiding our childhoods often struggle to love themselves.

Let’s focus on what can be done now to engender self-love. Asking a significant other to love us instead of ourselves is a setup. They can’t do it for us. One action that can be taken is to stop thinking of love as mostly a feeling state. Hollywood and romance novels enhance their dramatic appeal by representing love as a passionate and exuberant emotion.

The love between two or more people is felt, understood, and demonstrated mainly as an action. So it is with self-love. If I neglect to address my needs or act self-abusively, I will likely not feel valued. I have often heard folks speak of their low self-acceptance as if waiting to fall in love with themselves. Love for ourselves must be expressed by loving action.

The proving model of self-acceptance sounds like “I do a lot, I make a lot, I acquire a lot, I am a lot.” Hence, the important question is, “Is there any way for us to love who we are without the yoke of a mandate to prove it?” or “Can we hope to love ourselves unconditionally?”

Source: De-Andre-Bush / Unsplash

I was initially very uncertain about where to begin to address these questions. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to collaborate with a colleague, asking if we might at least lean toward unconditional self-love. We agreed that an important first step might be humility. An old definition of the word humble is “on the ground.” I decided that “on the ground” was synonymous with my prior treatment of being rightsized. Standing on the ground means not collapsing into false modesty where we undersize ourselves, ignoring gifts and strengths. Nor does it mean being inflated by a gust of arrogance.

My understanding of humility does not imply anything virtuous. It implies getting more intimate with ourselves by accepting our limits. We can say we’re making peace with our limits when we don’t brood and ruminate over our mistakes. We acknowledge our gifts and take responsibility for their development. We acknowledge and accept the strengths of others. We easily celebrate the victories and accomplishments of others.

We don’t set ourselves up with grandiose expectations or expectations that fall quite short of our capabilities. We suspend comparing and contrasting ourselves to others, honoring the uniqueness of our paths. We become disinterested in being impressive and are no longer interested in unnecessary competition. We engender more acceptance of our flawed humanity.

I began to consider that this may be what "arriving" in spiritual terms might mean. Could it be a devotional acceptance and compassion for our inevitable imperfection?

Let’s look more closely at the four actions that allow us to be devotionally responsible for our self-love.

1. Humility. We are dedicated to honoring our limits, as described above. We simply devote ourselves to rightsizing ourselves again and again.
2. Self-kindness. Most of us know what it means to be kind to others, but a psychological blur can occur as we shift to being kind to ourselves. This can be both interior and exterior action. I suggest considering interrupting unkind thoughts about yourself whenever possible. It’s just about letting go of being cruel. Another form of letting go of cruelty is letting go of thoughts related to what is way out of your control. I am prone to getting fixated on what is out of my control. Some exterior acts of kindness might include resting when needed, eating nourishing food, allowing for movement or exercise, and asking for help and support. Kindness is confirmed in acts deemed as nurturing, such as napping, receiving massage, hot baths, receiving affection, interacting with pets, reading a good book, seeing a play or film, listening to your favorite music, dancing, going out to dinner, and many forms of play.
3. Self-Forgiveness. This can be both an interior and exterior action. The interior action is to stop cursing yourself. The exterior action is to either make amends to the injured party or offer some measure of restitution. The key is to remain responsible for reclaiming our essential worth.
4. Allowing ourselves to receive love from a trusted other. We cannot support self-love without a willingness to receive genuine expressions of love from others. It means being discerning enough to identify when offerings of love are coming your way and being open-hearted enough to receive them. It is somewhat common to feel fear when you are being loved; it is either not expected, or you can’t trace it to something you did to deserve it. It is a wonderful boost to self-love when you can take love in and feel it is not about what you did but rather about who you are.

Now, you’re living with a new dimension of wildness. There will be intrigue and curiosity about who in you awaits your welcome. Abiding self-loyalty replaces the compulsion to prove your worth or wait for someone to confirm it. Your devotional self-love will create a life you can trust, knowing where you belong, how you work and play, how you raise children, and how you create emotional intimacy.