The Unlovables
There are people who, no matter what you do and what you say, will never be happy with you. With their words and eye rolls they make you feel as if you are wrong or bad or worthless, no matter what you do or how hard you try. It’s just not enough.
They spend most of their time criticizing and pointing out your failings. If you’d just do this, or you’d just say this, or just be like this, then I could love you.
But they never will. They can’t. Because they don’t love themselves.
You can’t love an unlovable the way they want to be loved. It is not emotionally possible for them to accept that love, no matter what form, word, or deed it comes in. You will never be right enough.
And that’s the game they play. Do this and I’ll love you, oh, that’s nice, but what about that? You shouldn’t have done that, or, if you would have just done this instead, I would love you. But you didn’t and they never will.
It’s not that they don’t want to love you, they are desperate for love, but they can’t love you, because they can’t accept love from someone else when they don’t love themselves.
Seeking your love on their terms is a form of control. If I can get you to do this, then it proves to me that you love me. But if you do anything else, it proves you don’t love me, and in their mind it’s because they are unlovable.
You can do or say 50 wonderful and amazing things, but do or say just one thing wrong and everything else gets wiped out and the only thing that matters to them is the one thing you didn’t do.
Because they’re unlovable.
Being unlovable happens to people who, during their life, have come to believe, usually through childhood trauma, that they aren’t worthy of love. A child’s mind can easily play that trick on them and they erroneously spend the rest of their life reinforcing that belief.
It’s a setup. A self-created, self-fulfilling prophecy. When dealing with an unlovable, you are doomed to let them down, because their expectations are unattainable by normal people. There’s always something more you should have done. And letting them down once again is further proof, in their mind, that they are unlovable.
So how do you get an unlovable to accept your love?
You don’t. You can’t love someone enough that they finally love themselves. You can’t do enough right things to get someone to love themselves. It’s not possible.
So for those with an unlovable in their life, I feel your pain. I live it.
You have to find a way to be good with never doing anything right. You have to be good with being enough for yourself and knowing you have done all you can.
If and until someone is willing to love themselves, you can’t love them into it, you can only love them in spite of it.
