Ignacio de la Fuente Fernndez

First Love Yourself

Love is everywhere. It can be seen in the cinema, at the theater, in books, films or songs. Romantic
love is one of the bases of society. People live for love, pain for love, kill for love, and die for love.
They think that without the love of another person, the life would be non-sense. One should not be
blinded with the idea of falling in love with another, because the only being that deserves the love of
anyone above the rest is oneself.
According to a research made by the anthropologist Helen Fisher, three kinds of love can be
distinguished: the sex drive, the attachment to a partner, and the romantic love. These three impulses
are related to three substances in our brain: serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine. Each brain system is
associated with a different set of primary neurochemicals and brain networks. Lust the carving for
sexual gratification is associated primarily with testosterone in both men and women. Romantic
attraction the elation, heightened energy, obsessive thinking, focused attention and yearning of new,
fresh love is associated with elevated brain activities of dopamine and norepinephrine, natural
stimulants, and low activity of a related brain chemical, serotonin. And attachment the calm and
emotional union one often feels with a long term partner is associated with oxytocin and
vasopressin.1
Love is all a matter of impulses, and everything is in the brain. All these feelings can be
reduced to a complex chemical process. All this sounds everything but romantic. However, the
discovering of the secrets of love in the brain does not attenuate it, but it enhances it. For example, a
chocolate cake can be made with a very basic knowledge of their ingredients and process, but if after
learning about it and discovering what it is made of, the taste will be much better.
Unfortunately, nowadays a lot of people follow these rules blindly. Evidences indicate that
there are many more relationships broken in these last years (mostly due to the loss of the love, or
cheating). To a certain extent, this is because society has reduced love to its primary instincts. Now,
people try to find their soul sister, and let love to control themselves in order to find it. The person
who gathers the best qualities will be the best option to fall in love with. As Erich Fromm said: Two
persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market,
considering the limitations of their own exchange values .2Doing this, people become love
consumers, while men and women become prizes in the humanity market.
This can be easily seen in dating websites, where people get attached to other person who has
the characteristics requested by the other. But, according to according to a study led by Catalina L.
1 Helen Fisher
2 (Fromm, 3)

Ignacio de la Fuente Fernndez

Toma, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison about 81 percent of people misrepresent their height, weight or age in their
profilesthis may suggest another important problem: society does not like itself. People compare
themselves to the standard of an attractive person and they feel ashamed of themselves because
they do not satisfy these features. Due to this, they try to become what they are not to get their soul
sister. The problem comes when people cannot hide their real personality from the other, and
conflicts appear, because they are not made for each other. This is one of the main reasons of the
breakups nowadays.
()//These suicides may be produced because when a relationship ends, one part of the
loving partner rests in the other one. And without the other person, people feel totally weak and
vulnerable. This is because people do not like themselves. They see themselves as imperfect,
despicable, because they have been rejected by the loved person. The thing they do not see is that the
first person that has to value them is themselves.
Self-loving is a denounced topic in our culture. It is seen as selfishness or even narcissism.
However, it could be argued that the love of oneself is the only way to love another person. A person
that does not like himself will not be able to love anybody else. On the contrary, he will need to be
loved in order to fill that feeling of emptiness. This disruption of the same person can be due to many
things, like being odd in the environment (home, school, work), several abuses, or mostly because
of childhood traumas, like failing to meet parental standards. In a study led by different faculties of
psychology Several findings indicate that relationship behavior differs as a function of self-esteem
()people low in self-esteem engage in a variety of potentially destructive behaviors. They tend to
distrust their partners expressions of love and support, and so they act as though they are constantly
expecting their partners to reject and abandon them3. If people started to love themselves, these
relationship problems would decrease. Because when a person starts to value himself, he starts to
appreciate other beings.
Once a person has reached the point where he loves himself, he would become an active lover.
Because before loving ourselves there is only space for love and adulation of others. But real love is
an action of giving, not receiving. In words of Erich Fromm about the love of a man for a woman,
He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does not necessarily mean
that he sacrifices his life for the otherbut that he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives
him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness

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Ignacio de la Fuente Fernndez

of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him4. This true love can only be given
to a unique being, among all the options, that choose to givecompletely and unselfishly.
There is a need for change in this society, a paradigm shift that revolutionize these conventions and
give the force to leave that misconception of passive love and start the way of self-loving, what may
be the key for the supreme development of the human being.

4 (Fromm, 24)