Nice article Bethany. Insightful.

You trigger me to think about one complex of thoughts that I keep coming back to while thinking about and reading about Polyamory, Self-Love, and Loving-Self with the help of others in relation to aecure vs insecure attachment in childhood and beyond.

The thing that keeps itching in my mind is that all over the internet where I read stuff about polyamory and self-love, it’s always about fixing that for yourself and by yourself, first.

And then I read fairly recent research on attachment styles in relationships and ‘relationship success’ or hapiness in relationships and notice that psychologists also sort of assume or nudge people to ‘fix whatever went wrong’ during their childhood or in other places in life, vis-a-vis secure attachment.

And by now it is pretty clear to me that secure attachment in childhood and self-love are strongly correlated, not to say even causally.

My itch?

Your 4th (was it the 4th?) lesson: seeing yourself and knowing yourself through others: I whole-heartedly agree with this point. But…

I would go so far as to say we can easily learn to love ourselves more and more through others as well. In fact you equate ‘Love’ as the feeling of being fully seen and then some.

So my question is (not necessarily to you but to the whole world, my own lover and myself): is it wise and feasible to try to achieve growth in self-love and maintenance of self-love all by ourselves?

The brunt of the work has to be done by ourselves, of course. But isn’t it only logical and beautiful to need, or want, or simply allow and seek a little help?

Are we born with flawless self-love or do we need to be taught that we are wanted and accepted and seen from day one?

And is that a sad, dependent, externally oriented need… or is it typically, beautifully and essentially human?