Every February, we’re surrounded by messages about love, flowers, cards, dinners, and grand gestures that suggest romance and connection should look a certain way.
And while I appreciate a celebration of love, this time of year often brings up something deeper for a lot of us, whether we expect it to or not.
Because love doesn’t always feel simple or clean or easy to define.
Sometimes Valentine’s Day highlights what’s missing’ sometimes it reminds us of relationships that didn’t work. Sometimes it stirs up questions we don’t usually slow down enough to ask, especially when life is busy and we’re focused on everyone else.
Why do I keep settling?
Why do I feel unseen even when I’m not alone?
And why do compliments make me uncomfortable instead of secure?
This is where self love enters the conversation, not as a trend or a buzzword, but as something foundational.
Because love and self love are not separate ideas. They are deeply intertwined, and you cannot fully experience one without the other.
Love Without Self Love Feels Unsteady
Most of us learned about love long before we learned anything about self love, and that difference matters more than we realize.
We learned how to care for others, how to show up, how to compromise, and how to keep the peace in order to make relationships work. Many of us became very good at anticipating needs and smoothing things over.
What we weren’t taught is how to stay connected to ourselves while doing all of that.
So we overextend, ignore our needs, silence our intuition, and tell ourselves it’s fine when it’s not. We confuse attachment with connection and mistake being chosen for being valued, even when something inside us feels off.
Without self love, love often feels conditional and fragile, like something that could disappear if we say the wrong thing or ask for too much.
We love hoping to be enough, instead of loving because we already believe we are.
What Is Self Love Really About
People ask all the time, what is self love, and the answers they usually hear feel surface level or overly polished.
Self love is not about constant positivity. It’s not about pretending everything is fine. It’s not about putting yourself above everyone else or becoming indifferent to relationships.
Self love is about how you relate to yourself when no one else is watching and no one is offering validation.
It’s how you speak to yourself after a mistake;
It’s whether you trust your own decisions;
It’s whether you believe your needs matter;
It’s whether you stay loyal to yourself when something feels off, even if doing so feels uncomfortable.
Self love is self respect in action. It’s the decision to stop abandoning yourself in order to keep other people comfortable or avoid conflict.
When self love is missing, we ask relationships to do too much. We look to others for reassurance and validation we haven’t learned to give ourselves, and that puts pressure on love that it was never meant to carry.
How Self Love Changed My Marriage
One of the biggest shifts I noticed once I really started loving myself showed up in my marriage.
For a long time, even when my husband complimented me, there was a quiet question running in the background. Does he really mean that? Is that a real compliment? Is he just saying what he thinks he should say?
At the time, I didn’t realize it, but that doubt wasn’t actually about him.
It was about me.
When you don’t fully trust your own worth, even genuine love can feel uncertain. Compliments don’t land the way they should. Affection feels fragile. You find yourself wondering what’s underneath it instead of simply receiving it.
As I started to practice self love, something shifted in a very real way. I stopped interrogating his words, I stopped needing proof, I stopped questioning what was meant or what might come next.
Not because he changed, but because I did.
When I believed I was worthy of love, I could actually receive it without analyzing it or bracing for it to disappear. A compliment could just be a compliment, and love no longer felt like something I had to protect or earn.
And our relationship became stronger because of it.
Why Love and Self Love Depend on Each Other
The way you love others is shaped by the way you love yourself, whether you’re aware of it or not.
If you don’t feel worthy, you tolerate less than you deserve;
If you don’t trust yourself, you outsource your decisions;
If you don’t believe you’re enough, love starts to feel like something you have to earn.
Self love sets the tone for every relationship in your life.
It influences who you’re drawn to and why;
It determines what you accept and what you question;
It shapes how you communicate and how safe you feel being fully seen.
When self love is present, love becomes more grounded and mutual. It feels steadier, more honest, and less performative.
You stop chasing connection and start choosing it.
How to Practice Self Love in Real Life
One of the most common questions I hear is how to practice self love in a way that actually sticks, not just in theory but in real life.
Self love isn’t built through grand gestures or dramatic declarations. It’s built in small moments, usually the ones that don’t look impressive or Instagram worthy.
It looks like paying attention to what drains you and what restores you, and taking that information seriously;
It looks like keeping promises to yourself, even the small ones that no one else sees;
It looks like saying no without over explaining and letting that be enough;
It looks like allowing yourself to rest without guilt or justification.
Self love also requires awareness.
Noticing when you’re shrinking.
Catching patterns that no longer serve you.
Pausing before you default to self criticism or self doubt.
You don’t practice self love by becoming perfect. You practice it by becoming more honest with yourself and then choosing yourself anyway.
Positive Affirmations for Self Love That Actually Help
Positive affirmations for self love sometimes get dismissed because they can feel forced or unrealistic.
But affirmations are not about pretending. They’re about interrupting old narratives and slowly creating space for new ones, especially when your inner voice has been critical for a long time.
Here are a few that feel grounded and realistic.
I am allowed to take up space in my own life;
I do not need to earn rest or care;
I can trust myself to make decisions that honor me;
I am worthy of love, including my own;
I am learning to show up for myself with compassion.
Say them when you don’t quite believe them. That’s usually when they matter most.
Valentine’s Day as a Reminder, Not a Measure
Valentine’s Day can be beautiful, and it can also be complicated in ways we don’t always talk about.
For some people, it’s about romance, for others, it’s about friendship or family. For many, it’s a moment of reflection, whether they realize it or not.
What I appreciate about this season is that it invites us to think about love more intentionally, beyond what’s being marketed or expected.
Not just who we love, but how.
How we love ourselves;
How we show up in relationships;
How we define connection.
That’s what makes self love such an important part of the conversation. Because no matter your relationship status, the relationship you have with yourself is the one you bring into every other relationship.
Love Starts With You
Love and self love are intertwined because one reinforces the other over time.
When you love yourself, you raise the standard for how you’re treated.
When you experience healthy love, it becomes easier to love yourself.
They grow together.
You don’t have to become someone else to be worthy of love. You don’t have to fix everything first or wait until you feel ready or confident enough.
You’re allowed to begin where you are.
This Valentine’s Day, and every day after, let love include you, not as an afterthought or a reward, but as a foundation.
Ready to Go Deeper
If this resonated, my book REAL Confidence goes deeper into what it actually looks like to build self love, trust yourself, and stop second guessing your worth, in your relationships and in your life.
It’s not about becoming someone new. It’s about coming home to yourself.
You can learn more and order your copy here:
https://realconfidencebook.com
Because love gets stronger when it starts with you.
