Friends, sweet friends. Most beloved ones.
When you are having a hard time, and you say to a friend things like “You’re gonna leave me anyway” or “You don’t really like me, you’re just being nice”—
They do not hear what you mean, which is “I feel like I am not good enough to keep people around, and anybody with sense would leave.” Because, to them, of course you are. They’re friends with you; they have stayed around. They do not exist inside your head; they exist inside their own head, wherein they love and care about you.
What your friends hear when you say “You’re gonna leave me anyway” is “I do not trust you not to betray me.”
What they hear when you say “You’re just being nice” is “You are a faker and a liar, and I think all of the gestures you made and work you did to demonstrate your love for me are insincere.”
That is very hard to hear from someone you care about.
When you push people away again and again in anticipation of being hurt, eventually they will get the (often false) message that they are not wanted or trusted, and leave.
This, of course, hurts you both.
This is what people mean when they say “Nobody can love you until you learn to love yourself.” It’s not that people who struggle with self-loathing don’t deserve love. Of course you deserve love! It’s that if you believe deep down that you are not worth loving, it is very very hard for the people who love you to throw themselves at a brick wall again and again trying to convince you otherwise.
And if the brick wall stays up, none of that feeling of love gets through to you, and you keep suffering.
This is not, of course, to say that people who struggle with trust in relationships, or with feeling loved, are bad people, or inherently hurtful.
It’s to say that the old coping mechanisms that end up hurting you also end up hurting your loved ones, because they care about you.
The next time somebody says that they love you, do them the courtesy of assuming they are being honest.
That’s how the light gets in.
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