“If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” - RuPaul

You’re turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value yourself

The words above come from the the mind of Guitar, in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. Guitar is proving himself to be a feminist at this moment, proving to be wise beyond his years. Here he’s addressing a woman who is stuck in the predicament of almost every woman in the Dead lineage for at least four generations; a predicament that originally forced the creation of the song that children sing in Shalimar. Here, Guitar tells Hagar that she must love herself - that she must cultivate her own self before being able to love anyone else. This sentiment was true then and it's still true now...true for men and women. I look around at my friends and the relationships that they're in. These relationships are not healthy. The two players in these relationships fail to see that the problem is that they do not love themselves.

In the wise words of RuPaul, “If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”. I find it hard to believe that two people, who don't know how to love themselves can love each other. We cannot expect someone to commit to us if we are not committed to ourselves. We cannot hope for someone to support us if we don’t have faith in ourselves. We cannot be honest with our partner if we lie to ourselves. Our partner cannot listen to us if we muffle our own inner voices. Our partner cannot make us feel confident if we are deeply insecure. Our partner will not believe in us if we do not believe in ourselves.

We cannot expect someone else to love us if we do not love ourselves. Only when we have learned to love ourselves, will someone else be able to completely love us.