For many of us, embracing the fact that we deserve love can be a challenge. Things in our life may not be progressing in the way we had hoped or we have patterns from our childhood that are disrupting our ability to feel like we can accept love into our lives. During my childhood, I had dealt with abuse from a couple of adults. This created an issue of distrust and fear of abandonment earlier on in my childhood. I had also not witnessed many loving relationships as a child and didn’t know what respect and love actually looked like. You may have experienced similar things in your earlier relationships that may be preventing you from expecting reciprocity of love in your life.
Love can even seem scary to you. Perhaps you had spent way too much time focusing on the wrong man or woman. Too much need for someone’s external love can deplete your self-esteem and feed into your feelings of worthlessness. Or maybe you’ve sabotaged a relationship with someone who does love you. Not believing you deserve love can push away someone who loves you with all their heart. While this person continues to show how much he or she loves you, you’ll find yourself sabotaging the relationship and doing whatever you can to affirm your beliefs that this person actually can’t love you. As a result, the person who does love you has to give up and walk away from a relationship that has turned toxic unnecessarily.
Maybe you are surrounded by friends who tell you that you deserve love all the time. However these words still leave you empty because you refuse to believe them.
For this article I want to focus on the reasons you deserve love.
- You are beautiful. There is something amazing and awesome about you. The right people will see that within you and appreciate it. Not everybody in this world will be able to recognize and appreciate your beauty but these are the people that do not need to be in your life. This is not your support network. These are not your people. The right people for you will see your beauty and want more and more of it within their lives.
- You can give love. All of us are capable of giving love, and receiving love. There is so much love in your heart to give. Focus on putting your love into the right people. Don’t give your love to underserving people such as a toxic ex-partner. Instead give your love to people less fortunate to you, your friends who support you and your family who wants the best for you. The more you give love, the more you’ll see how much people want that love and cherish the love you have to offer them. As you give love, the more you will begin to see that you indeed deserve love.
- You want to share and give happiness. As you’ve become a stronger and happier you, you have more experiences, knowledge, stories, brilliance and kindness to share with someone. Being with a partner should be a supplement our own happiness. At this point you have a great life and want to bring someone into your life to share experiences and laughter with. When you are willing to share your happiness with another, you are ready to find the right partner.
- You are working to improve yourself. Nobody is perfect, including you. Your friends, family and the right partner will never be perfect, will have their own imperfections and will be capable of making mistakes. You also come with your own set of strengths, weaknesses and mishaps. That’s perfectly okay. Actually that’s great, because you are constantly working on yourself. You know you have weaknesses but you are building yourself to be a happier person. Who wouldn’t want a person consistently improving themselves? As you continue to work on yourself, you’ll become more confident with who you are and realize that you are a great person who deserves tons of love.
- You are learning about yourself. Finding the right types of people to surround yourself with involves learning a good deal about who you are. What do you want in your life? Who is the ideal type of person you’d like to spend time with? Why did your past relationships not work out? Sure, you’ve had some relationships that didn’t work out so well, but the process has allowed you to realize what you don’t want in a partner and to identify the red flags. As you better learn what love and respect looks like to you, you’ll be able to identify and appreciate the love right in front of you. As you become more self-aware about who you are and confident about what respect and love is, you’ll be able to create a larger space for love in your live.
- You have positive love. Negative love is the type of love that evolves out of fear and anxiety. I’m afraid to be alone. I’m scared I’ll never find anyone else. If she doesn’t love me, then nobody can. He thinks of me as unworthy and I’m desperate for his love. Negative love is not true and lasting love and comes from a place of need. Positive love comes from a place where you know you are worthy of love and accept that there are many people who can give you the love that you deserve. You don’t need external love to give you happiness because you know you already have that happiness within you.
- You have perspective. Everyone has their own insecurities and weaknesses. We all have our own personal battles to fight. However, you are keeping perspective whenever you can. Failing at a past relationship does not mean you will fail at every relationship in the future. Messing up at your job does not mean you will mess up at love. Losing a loved one in your life does not mean you’ll always lose the ones you love. Love has nothing to do with what’s happened to you. No matter the mistakes you’ve made or the experiences you’ve been through, you deserve love just as much as the next person.
- You can forgive yourself. Just like you can recognize what happened in your past relationships and can grow from them, you can also forgive yourself for your responsibility in what happened. During my past relationship, my ex partner cheated on me twice. The first time I forgave him and acted in ways that were completely unlike myself. Part of tolerating what happened was because I felt unworthy of love and deserved the cheating, the lies and the manipulation. Accepting that part of what happened and forgiving myself for it is just another reason on why I deserve love. You deserve love no matter what happened and your part in it. By forgiving yourself for past mistakes, you can open your heart to love.
- You can define your value. Nobody can define your value except you. You know what you deserve and you will accept no less. If you believe you deserve respect and love, you will surely only accept love and respect from others. There are billions of people in this world. You’ll find many, many people who can value you in the way you deserve.
- You are unique. There is only one you. Sure, you might dislike some parts of your appearance or find imperfections in your personality. However, the things you don’t exactly like about yourself are things that someone will adore and love about you. There are talents and skills that you might not realize can inspire someone. There are people who will appreciate your talents, laughter, smile and the beauty you have to offer.
Don’t waste your time focusing how you can earn acceptance and love by everyone. Not everyone in this world will love you. But that’s okay. There are many people who will love you but by investing your energy into the wrong people and feeling like you don’t deserve love, you are cheating yourself of the opportunities to meet people who appreciate and do love you. Nobody deserves toxic friendships or relationships. You do deserve better. You deserve love.