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Self-Love Is Not Enough

When did growing up start to mean needing no one?

Manas Arawalli

Oct 9

 

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We’re all trying very hard to become people who don’t need anyone.

We eat alone, travel alone, spend whole weekends alone. We stop waiting for messages. We learn to give ourselves everything we once hoped someone else would.

A lot of that is good.

But when did growing up start to mean that nobody else should matter?

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We’ve gotten too comfortable telling lonely people to love themselves. As if loneliness were a self-esteem problem. As if wanting to be held means you haven’t learned to hold yourself.

A whole Sunday alone stops feeling like a missed life. Your own thoughts turn out to be decent company.

So what happens when you learn all of that and still want someone there?

You like who you’ve become. You’re proud of the life you’re building. And at the end of a good day, you still want someone to tell.

Are you failing at loving yourself? Or did we mix up being fine alone with being meant to be alone?

At some point, independence stopped being a skill and became a personality. We admire the person who doesn’t chase, doesn’t double-text, never shows how much they care. We call it having standards. Some people you really do need to learn to live without. But needing fewer people and needing nobody are different things. One is freedom. Made into an ideal, the other is just a lonely way to live. How many of us are acting content because caring feels like a risk? Calling yourself independent is easier than explaining why being forgotten hurts.

The person you want isn’t always a partner. Sometimes it’s a friendship you’ve put years into. Sometimes you’re just the one who texts first, remembers birthdays, keeps the thing alive. Then you notice the gap. Would they have called if you hadn’t? Would they notice if you stopped? And you get embarrassed by how much you care. You check your phone. You feel lighter when they reply. You hate that you feel lighter. Someone who truly loved themselves, you think, wouldn’t care this much. So you try to become that person. You stop texting first. You act less interested. You call it choosing yourself. You still hope they’ll ask where you went. That isn’t weakness. You want to know the friendship can stand without you holding it up.

We’ve also decided a person should become everything they need. Their own best friend, their own comfort, their own witness to every small win and every bad day. I can like my own company and still want someone across the table at dinner. I can be proud of something and still want someone to be proud of me. Wanting someone to share your life with is ordinary. Why is it so hard to say out loud? Because wanting someone gives them power. Care, and they can let you down. Get attached, and they can leave. So we spend years bracing against hurt, and nobody gets to know us. Survival was never the only reason we wanted people.

Think about what you actually remember. A friend who saved you a seat. Someone who noticed you’d barely spoken all evening. A song someone sent because it made them think of you. You can tell yourself you matter. Being remembered by someone else is still different from remembering yourself. You don’t have to chase everyone who leaves. You can want people without needing them to fix your life.

Knowing you won’t abandon yourself when you’re alone is a kind of freedom.I just don’t want that freedom turned into one more rule to punish ourselves with. Pride in needing so little can turn into never admitting a need at all. And being numb can pass for being healed.

Loving yourself should make it easier to say you’re lonely. To text first without feeling pathetic. To ask a friend over instead of pretending you had plans. And some nights, it means coming home after a long day, being perfectly all right with who you are, and still wishing someone else were in the room.

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