To Find Love, We Must Look in the Right Place

D.H. Lawrence once wrote: “Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it.”

“What?!?” I thought the first time I read that. “That’s like the chicken and the egg—completely impossible!”
But I’ve since realized he was right. It wasn’t until I began to truly enjoy my own company and started to actually like myself that I met someone who loves me unconditionally. And how do I know it’s unconditional? Because he doesn’t try to change me.

It took me many years and many relationships to understand this. I thought I loved, but looking back, I see that I was hard on the people I was with—just as hard as I was on myself. I rejected others out of fear of being rejected and set impossibly high expectations for myself and others. Because I didn’t know what self-love was, I had no love to give. And the love I truly needed was the one only I could give myself.

We can only treat others with the same degree of love we have for ourselves. In the same way, we can only receive love in proportion to the love we feel for ourselves and give to others. There’s a direct correlation. We also only tolerate others’ treatment of us to the same degree that we treat ourselves. Likewise, if we’re exposed to poor treatment long enough—or from an early age—we end up copying it, both toward ourselves and others.

This realization was brutal but also liberating, because it means change is possible if we truly want it. It all begins with the relationship we have with ourselves.

That’s why self-love is where it all has to start—by taking responsibility and practicing it daily. Without self-love, if we chase other people’s love just to fill the emptiness inside, our actions (like doing nice things for others or being “good”) only earn us conditional love. And that kind of love takes us further and further away from real, unconditional love—the kind we all deserve simply for being ourselves: unique, authentic, not for doing what others like or pleasing them.

So what do you find most attractive in a partner?
For me, it’s always been confidence, integrity, and self-respect. (And yes, I have a soft spot for brown eyes—but that’s beside the point.)
Self-respect usually goes hand in hand with respect for others. Seeing a man who’s proud of himself and takes responsibility for his own happiness is one of the most beautiful things I know. It means he doesn’t expect me to fix him. Because honestly, carrying responsibility for another adult’s well-being is exhausting.

Sadly, many in my generation grew up with parents who didn’t take responsibility for their own lives—they were “adult children.” The result? Their kids had to take responsibility for the adults—emotionally, practically, socially, even financially. That kind of childhood is deeply traumatic because it triggers the survival instinct and a fear of death in children when their caregivers can’t protect themselves, let alone their offspring. It’s not something a child can opt out of—it’s hardwired in us for survival and connection.

And what makes it even worse is that it comes at the expense of our authenticity—our other fundamental human need, equal to attachment. So we give up our authenticity to stay part of the “flock,” just as Dr. Gabor Maté writes in The Myth of Normal.

That’s why so many people struggle to find love as adults. They’ve become masters at adapting to others (their parents, their “flock”) and have gradually erased their authentic selves. They’ve become adept at an unhelpful pattern—taking responsibility for others—and have lost touch with their own self-love and inner voice. This leads to an inner deficit, a “love deficit,” that makes us desperate for affection from others.

So we look for it “out there”—in the world, on dating apps. We think the solution is to find the right partner, switch partners, or change the one we have. But the problem lies within us because the love tank inside is empty. And only we can fill it. Through self-love and self-care, we can find our own answers. It can be challenging to know what we truly need, especially if our upbringing was filled with noise from other people’s problems, drama, and emotional neglect.

But doesn’t focusing on our own needs make us selfish narcissists?
No—it makes us adult adults who take responsibility for ourselves and our own happiness instead of placing that burden on our children or partners. We break the cycle instead of passing it to the next generation. We become free human beings who have love and can recognize it in others who also love themselves.

So today, I finally understand what D.H. Lawrence meant when he wrote:
“Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it.”

It’s not the chicken and the egg—it’s the oxygen mask on the airplane. You have to put yours on first.

How much self-love does your heart hold?
Love is closer than you think—if you begin by listening to yourself. And if that feels difficult, you’re always welcome in therapy.