Who would you take a bullet for?

(if you follow this blog a wish will come true, might be yours, might be someone elses, but hey it is worth a shot. Have a question, e-mail me and I will answer it.)

Question: Everyone tells me that you cannot really love another until you love yourself. Then I ask people if they would take a bullet for their wife or child and they all say yes. Doesn't that mean they love those people more than they love themselves? Isn't caring more about someone else than you care about yourself what love is all about?

Answer: It sounds to me like you are searching for a loop hole so you can find a way to have a healthy relationship without loving yourself. One of my steadiest rules of life is that if you are looking for a loop hole you are probably doing something wrong.

The entire premise that you are starting with is shaky. People don't take bullets for the other person they do it for themselves. If I am a secret service agent I take a bullet for the President because that is the only way to be true to myself and my code of honor and duty. The President, and possibly the nation, benefit from my sacrifice but ultimately I get to preserve my ego integrity and avoid the shame of not taking that bullet.

Most efforts we make for others, gifts we buy, gestures of kindness are done less for the other and more to make us feel good about ourselves, or to avoid the guilt of not doing what we are "supposed" to.

I deal with a number of co-dependent clients who feel that unless they are providing benefit to another person they don't deserve any love or happiness. They feel like they need to earn love through acts.

Martin Luther put forth the notion that love (particularly God's love in his case) was so wonderful that you could never possibly do enough good works to earn it. It would be like trying to save up enough money to buy a sunset.

You cannot earn the love of another by taking a bullet, baking cakes, becoming a sexual supplicant, or making a million bucks a year. The only way you get love is by believing that you are as deserving of it as any other person. Yes you are flawed, but so are the rest of us.

If you end up building a relationship where what you have in common with your partner is that you both love him and put his needs ahead of yours, you will have gotten exactly the relationship you believe you deserve, but it sure won't make you happy.

If your partner is a decent human being he/she will get sick of the lack of balance and leave you. If your partner is a selfish jerk then you might have a lasting relationship, but it will be with a selfish jerk, and it is also very likely that no matter how you re-form your self to please that person he/she will get tired of you anyway.

Stop trying to be a martyr, stop trying to cheat the system and find the loop holes. Do the work it takes to love yourself and then look for a relationship. On the path you are walking I could see why you romanticize the notion of taking a bullet, but frankly that is the easy way out.