You Can Want Love & Love Yourself Too

A Reflection on Self-Love, Relationships & Coming Home to You

I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately, not just the spiritual idea of love, but the human kind. The kind that makes you long for connection, for closeness, for someone to sit with over dinner, to hold your hand, to share your everyday life.

In the spiritual community, we sometimes hear that wanting love from another means we’re unhealed.
That if we were truly whole, self-love alone would be enough.
That desire means something is missing.
That longing means we aren’t whole.
That wanting love means we’re not enough on our own.

But I’ve found that not to be true.

I deeply believe in self-love. In knowing your worth. In holding yourself.
But I also believe that relationships are one of our greatest teachers.
That avoiding love in the name of independence can sometimes become spiritual bypassing, a way to protect ourselves from hurt or vulnerability rather than allowing us to expand through it.

Loving yourself does not mean closing yourself off to love from another.

"No man is an island." — John Donne
We didn’t come here to stand alone, we came for connection.

To touch and be touched.
To learn through intimacy, tenderness, boundaries, desire, even heartbreak.
Love is part of our soul’s growth, one of the rare lessons that can only be learned through being human.

And yes, love can hurt.
But time and time again, in myself and in my clients, I see that most of us want love.
Not because we are empty, but because we are wired for connection.

Most people want someone to grow old with.
Most people want to be witnessed, cherished, chosen.

And I am one of them.

I’ve spent over thirty years dating, a lifetime of lessons, heartbreaks, miracles, beginnings and endings.

I fall hard, I fall fast, and every relationship has shaped me. Some softened me. Some cracked me open. Others taught me boundaries, self-respect, red flags, inner truth.

Love has helped me grow.
Love has broken me.
Love has rebuilt me.
Love has helped me find myself.

And here’s something I want to say to the woman reading this who isn’t single,
to the one in a relationship, a marriage, a partnership:
It is okay if you’ve lost pieces of yourself along the way.
It is okay if you don’t feel fully you.
It is okay if you’re only now discovering what you want.

You don’t have to leave a relationship to find yourself again.
You don’t have to be alone to come home to your heart.

Sometimes self-love is learned inside a relationship:
In saying no gently instead of swallowing pain.
In asking for what you need instead of hoping someone will guess.
In remembering what lights you up, and choosing it.
In setting boundaries, not to create distance, but to create respect.

Relationships can be where we lose ourselves, and also where we rediscover ourselves.

Self-love can rise not only in solitude, but through union.
Through growth.
Through choosing yourself while loving someone else.

We are allowed to evolve inside love.
We are allowed to want more love.
We are allowed to desire deeper connection, without shame or feeling like we are less than.

As this year comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the kind of love I now know I deserve. Not in an entitled way, but in a self-aware, grounded way. I’ve been told my standards are high, but expectations are simply mirrors of what we believe is possible.

And if we can imagine a love that meets us, it exists.

I know relationships take work, but not war.
Work as in effort, communication, accountability, growth.
Not constant conflict.
Not shrinking to be loved.
Not settling to be chosen.

I’ve loved deeply. I’ve walked away with love still in my heart.
I’ve rebuilt myself more than once.

And through it all, I still believe in love.

I believe we can want partnership and be full within ourselves.
I believe we can love ourselves and long for connection.
I believe wanting love doesn’t weaken self-love, it expands it, because we know we are worthy of love.

Self-love is the foundation, the beginning of being able to connect with someone on a deep level and experience the souls union of love.

And if you too are longing, for touch, for companionship, for a love, please know this:
You can want love & love yourself too.
You are not unhealed.
You are human.

May we enter the next chapter with our hearts soft and open,
not waiting for love, but welcoming it.

Coming home to ourselves.
And letting love, when it arrives, meet us there.

With so much love & light,
Natalie