Why It’s Impossible To Love Someone Who Hates Themself
A deeper spiritual understanding of how self-hate blocks all love.
getty It's hard not to reach out and want to love the people in our lives who hate themselves, especially when it’s someone we care about.
But what's difficult about loving someone who hates themself is seeing the hole inside them that can't be filled by your or another person's love.
Self-hate is like a bottomless pit.
It’s almost impossible to love someone struggling with self-hate, because the very nature of a loving connection requires a healthy two-way connection of giving and receiving. Love must be present on both sides for it to flourish.
Loving someone who hates themself is beyond difficult.
You may give love, but they won’t have the capacity to receive it when they’re holding the low frequency of hate in their energy field.
It’s like a grudge against themselves that needs to be released.
Love must come from within each person in any relationship for that connection to thrive. Unless you love yourself first, what exactly are you giving to someone else?
Someone who hates themselves will behave unknowingly as a victim of unworthiness.
Their internal view of how they see themselves is so dark that they can't see the light of who they really are.
It’s like there’s an invisible wall between themselves and the true light of their authentic self. Any love coming from outside has no way to penetrate.
There’s often a desire to want to give love to someone who feels self-hatred.
Maybe you feel bad for them. Or maybe they're a close relative you love from that familiar relational bond.
No matter how much you try to give love, if there's self-loathing on the other side, your love will often come from a mix of pity and compassion.
The "pity love" will be easily received, while the compassionate love will be rejected.
The same way that you give from the vibration of your own well-being, someone receives from the vibration of their well-being.
If someone hates themselves, they are missing compassion towards themselves. So, any compassionate love cannot be received that way.
Pity and love have opposing vibrations.
There’s a big disconnect in the vibration of what is being given and what is received.
Love from pitying someone will be easily received as a matching vibration, because with self-hatred comes self-pity and will create a false sense of love.
Beware co-dependency.
When you feel sorry for someone, what appears as love can become destructive to both sides as co-dependency. On one hand, there’s a feeling of "I need to show this person love so they feel better."
There’s guilt, obligation, and a sense of owing that isn’t love here.
On the other hand, self-hatred is eager to receive this kind of love that matches their version of themselves.
"You want to love me, even though I’m not good enough, and that makes me feel better."
There’s a silent entitlement that comes with self-hatred.
When someone doesn’t like themselves, they need love and attention to make them feel better that turns into expectations and demands.
The giver wants to please the self-hater to make them feel better, and the self-hater now expects to be given to or they will be disappointed or angry for not getting their needs met.
It’s a vicious cycle.
The tell-tale signs of loving someone who hates themself.
When someone falls into the trap of self-loathing, the victim mentality will show up in tell-tale signs.
You won’t meet their expectations and they will constantly feel disappointed.
You will feel like you’re walking on eggshells in fear that they will react emotionally in an attacking way, no matter what you say or do.
What you do will never be good enough in their eyes. They will take what you say personally and become defensive easily.
They will come across as demanding and controlling. You will be blamed and judged for things when you’ve done nothing wrong.
No one else "completes you."
Just as your hard life lessons cannot be fixed by anyone else because they are yours to learn, love is something that cannot be filled by anyone else.
There's a famous line in the movie Jerry Maguire. Renee Zellweger’s character lovingly looks at Tom Cruise’s character and says, "You complete me."
This is a huge love trap people fall into.
You are whole, to begin with, and don’t need anyone to complete you!
Loving yourself requires letting go of the fear of hate.
The experience of love is subjective, but its essence is universal. You can think of self-hatred as justified anger hurled against yourself.
The Course in Miracles describes the shift in perception from fear to love as a miracle. Hate towards oneself comes from the fear that you are unworthy of love and secretly loathsome to others.
The truth is that we all have a divine fragment of love within us. A loving inner voice that can sadly get lost with parents who used control and condemning judgment towards their child when things went wrong.
When a child is made to feel unworthy, they can develop a nasty inner-judgmental voice whose thoughts inflict self-hatred.
Low emotions of contempt, disdain, or scorn towards yourself can fill the energetic consciousness that keeps you in the dark.
The essence of love is spiritual.
Love provides a soul interaction based on high-vibrational energy. Many are familiar with this passage from the Bible:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
You simply can't love someone truly who hates themself deeply.
There's a big misconception around believing if you genuinely love someone who hates themselves, your love will magically turn them around to find love.
It’s easy to deceive yourself into thinking you can "kill someone with kindness."
Unfortunately, love cannot be imposed onto others who unknowingly block it with self-hatred.
The best you can do is meet someone where they are. Only you can find that healthy boundary of what you're willing to give, knowing what comes back will not be able to match what you are giving, and could even be the opposite of what you expect!
That’s when love turns to betrayal.
The world is a mirror when it comes to love.
If you find yourself intertwined with someone who hates themselves, part of you also secretly hates yourself, because all vibration seeks a matching one.
Unworthiness will find unworthiness.
Only to the extent that someone is willing to begin letting go of self-hatred can they discover their own light of love and reach up to meet you where you are.
You cannot give your love away in the hope that it will fill the empty hole of someone’s self-hatred.
Until love can be embraced from within, it is impossible to love someone through the wall of their own self-hatred.
When someone finds ways to release this fear by letting go of their own self-judgment, the pathway to love opens.
Carolyn Hidalgo is a spiritual life coach who focuses on the connection of the mind-body-spirit to create the greatest experiences of your life. Pick up her free guide on living judgment-free on her website to join her online community and discover how to create thriving relationships that fill your soul.