Love thy neighbour as thyself

The Biblical commandment that we should love other people as we love ourselves is an excellent guideline. Too often in relationships, one person's needs consistently take priority over the other's. Sometimes this is obvious from the start but sometimes it can take years for those involved to realise what is happening - and the latter case is particularly dangerous.

I have several times found myself in relationships where the other person so took it for granted that I should subordinate my needs to his or hers that I went along with it without having any idea how deeply I was being affected by living like this. One 'boyfriend', for example, was always telling me that I talk too much and that nobody is interested in what I've got to say. Since he never remembered anything I told him, even if it was important to me, I saw there was some truth in his advice and I virtually stopped talking about myself to anybody. Looking back on this now, I'm horrified that I put up with this man for so long (three years!!) but, at the time, my self-esteem was so low that I adapted myself to what he wanted, in the hope he might give me some affirmation.

The only reason for feeling bad about yourself is if you deliberately inflict pain and suffering on others. Otherwise, you should love yourself. If you feel like rubbish because you drink too much alcohol, you eat too much, you smoke too much, you gamble, etc, etc, you've got this the wrong way round. Your low self-esteem is the cause, not the result, of this harmful behaviour. If you start to forgive yourself, to cut yourself some slack and to treat yourself positively - in other words, to love yourself - your need to indulge in the harmful behaviour will diminish and diminish until it finally falls away.

You are not more important than everyone else but you are certainly not less important either. This is why the commandment from the Bible is so good: yes, love your neighbour. But love yourself equally.