Be Yourself, or Be Loved

2022-12-28 · essays

'If you want to be loved, you need to be yourself.'

This piece of advice offered in slightly altered forms depending on whether one is seeking romantic love, success, or friendship feels like a big fat lie. We learn from a young age that to be oneself to be messy, ugly, needy, and stupid, isn't lovable. Crying because we feel hurt or launching into a temper tantrum is met with the disapproval of our caretakers.

Here, we may hear The echoes of Jordan Peterson's parental advice: "An angry child should sit by himself until he calms down, then he should be allowed to return to normal life."
That means the child wins instead of his anger. The rule is come be with us as soon as you can behave properly.

The child learns to be accepted for not who they are but how they are. Their worth is dictated by their behavior. Later on, we learn that being too vulnerable or weird drives away romantic prospects. What we are left with is an ultimatum:

You can either be yourself, or you can be loved. And so our relationships become cyclical. We compromise, in the beginning, prioritizing attachment over authenticity, and we tuck away ourselves repressing the emotions that feel closest to us but this only lasts for a short while.

Sooner or later, ugly truths violently crash through our frozen surface of conformity. We risk a divorce or a breakup. The severing of ties with our family members and then after a while, we miss the basic need of belonging and once again repress who we are to be with others. A cycle of inevitability.