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Originally Posted by levite
It's not that you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else at all, in even the littlest bit. It's that you have to love yourself-- that is, accept yourself unconditionally for who you are, value that person, and deem yourself a person both good and worthy of love and respect as you are-- before you can be able to successfully and happily love someone else completely and unconditionally. If you don't love yourself, and you attempt to love someone else unconditionally, there will be nothing to create balance: the person you love might turn out to be unhealthy for you, and you would be driven by your love to remain with them; whereas if you love yourself unconditionally also, you will be able to balance your love of the other person with your love for yourself, and your own need to retain health and self-integrity (in other words, one can love someone unconditionally and yet realize that it is not helpful to remain in a relationship with them, but this is very difficult to accomplish if one does not truly love oneself).
Also, if you don't love yourself truly and unconditionally, then in essence you will never be able to trust the love of the other person, because to your mind, their love is tainted by being directed to a person unworthy of it (i.e., you).
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Excellent post, levite.
Once upon a time I did not love myself as much as I thought I did. I ended up in a relationship with a man who picked at my flaws, and I was not strong enough to handle it, and began to change into someone-who-was-not-myself. I had always been known for my strength and my spine, yet somehow I lost those things. And when I realized this, and looked in the mirror at myself, I was disgusted. Never again will I let another person get me as low as I was then. Yet because of that relationship, and how hurtful and damaging it was, I learned a lot about myself, and I certainly learned how to love myself in a truly unconditional way.