I saw an incredible clip this weekend of J. Lo on The Howard Stern Show speaking about love. She says, surprisingly, that she has never been loved before, but she has truly loved someone. The explanation she gives is this:
“What I’ve learned is, it’s not that I didn’t deserve it, it’s that they weren’t capable.”
To a degree she is right. We don’t get what we deserve. We also don’t get what we give to others. We get what we give to ourselves.
Love as we know it is part of a paradox. I grew up believing that you always sow what you reap, and you get back whatever you put out. Thinking this, I came to believe that I had to love others first before they would love me back. I had to give love to others to receive love.
Herein lies the paradox. Giving love to other people without ever knowing how to receive love does not earn me love from others. Instead, I attract people who take my love, but can’t reciprocate it. Why? Because I don’t know how to receive love. If they were to give it to me, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. It would be too much. It would be unfamiliar. What’s comfortable is a relationship where I’m giving all the time and not expecting anything back. Selflessness is a virtue, so I was told. Today, I think selflessness is a great personal sin. To be selfless is to abandon and reject myself, and to agree that I don’t deserve love but others do.
The only way to experience true love is to let love flow through you. Loving another man or woman won’t make you feel loved. Giving what you want won’t get you what you want. The only way to be loved is to love yourself.
J. Lo admits that she never loved herself, and because of that, she didn’t know how to receive love, only to give it. Like many other women, she believes that if you give a man your everything, he will reciprocate it. If he doesn’t, the answer is to look for another man who will. But that’s wrong, and it’s why she’s never felt loved.
The real answer is to stop looking for love outside of yourself. The question Howard asked her was not “Has a man ever loved you?” but “Have you ever been truly loved?” She could have considered the love of her family, friends, or self, but regardless she says no.
This means she never felt she could meet the conditions required to receive her parents’ love. As a result, she never developed an inner sense of being loved and being love. When you receive free, unfettered love from infancy to age 7, you naturally develop a sense of being love. Without that free love in childhood, you believe love is not a thing you are, it’s a thing you must do. To “do” love is to manipulate. It is dishonest. J.Lo didn’t love her exes because she felt love flowing through her being; she loved them because she wanted their love, which isn’t loving at all.
Self-love is selfish. Self-love is covertly demonized, especially among women. The “perfect” woman is selfless, self-sacrificing, always doing for others, always giving but never getting. But the paradox of love is that to give love, you must be selfish. Otherwise, you will have nothing to give but manipulation and desperation.
what’d you think?