Loving others and being loved by others, really is a journey of learning to love ourselves.
Easily written, easily said – I realise – but such a difficult journey, as is evident in seeing the amount of pain and distress that occurs in relationships.
It is about doing the deep inner work of clearing away the barriers we have built up over time—often unconsciously—to be open to love. As Rumi said:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
These words essentially capture the essence of what it takes to experience genuine love. They remind us that love isn’t something to be acquired, nor is it something outside of ourselves that we can only find through others, rather, love is already within us, a state of being that emerges naturally when we are open, vulnerable, and free from the emotional walls we’ve erected to protect ourselves.
It’s so easy to write about love, to talk about love, to say we want love. And yet, the journey to authentic love can be incredibly difficult.
We only need to look at the amount of pain, confusion, and distress in relationships—whether with partners, family members, or friends—to see how challenging it is to truly live this philosophy. Even when we care deeply for someone, conflicts arise, misunderstandings occur, and hurt feelings spoil our best intentions.
One reason for this challenge is that relationships act as mirrors, reflecting back to us our own unhealed wounds and insecurities. When we react to others, we’re often reacting to aspects of ourselves we haven’t yet embraced or fully understood or/and we are projecting people from our past onto the person in front of us.
In this way, relationships provide an incredible opportunity for growth if we allow ourselves to explore our reactions. They ask us to really recognise that our reactions are an arrow to something unresolved within us, which can lead us to understand why we feel triggered, and to question what deeper fears, disappointments, or unmet needs are arising from within.
The act of loving another person can bring up both extreme joy and extreme pain and discomfort, and this duality is part of what makes relationships so powerful.
When we find ourselves feeling defensive, disappointed, or misunderstood, these moments can become opportunites to look within, to discover and heal another ‘barrier within ourselves’, rather than acting out of the reaction.
It takes courage to face our own pain, to look into the shadows, and to accept that the love we’re searching for may require letting go of self-protection and opening up to the vulnerability we’ve been avoiding.
As we learn to treat ourselves with compassion and patience, we slowly find that we are less likely to depend on others for validation or emotional fulfilment.
Loving ourselves means acknowledging our own needs, and learning to provide for ourselves what we so often look for outside of ourselves. It doesn’t mean we become isolated or closed off from others; rather, it empowers us to approach relationships from a place of fullness and wholeness rather than need.
When we love ourselves, we can be authentic, knowing that love is something we give freely, because we enjoy loving – from a place of understanding that love isn’t about finding someone to complete us, but instead, is about sharing the wholeness within ourselves.
In the end, Rumi’s words remind us that love is already there.
It’s up to us to ‘do the work’, to face ourselves honestly, to clear the pain that arises when we feel reactive – and so to recognise and experience the love within us, and in every relationship.
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