https://eraoflight.com/2021/01/16/love-starts-with-you/
“Note that true love first starts within you – yourself and not outside of oneself. Neediness is not love. So many feel that there is something missing in their lives, or they look at friends and then feel that they are losing out on something, and then want a man to fill them. Fulfill them. That is false belief.
The same with the idea that if a man loves you, he will fill the longing, fill the void. He cannot do that, for he can only love you to the extend that he loves himself (and the same applies to you – you can only love a man to the extend, that you love yourself), and more than this, he has a hard time to fill himself, never mind you! See these are romanticized human fairy tales which bypass the truth and cause so much unnecessary pain and suffering.
All true love starts within you and thus it means that you first need to love yourself into the deepest shadow and highest light. You are not always kind – you can be cruel too. You are not always nice – you can mean too. Yet, BOTH serve. The shadow and light make up who you in truth are. They cancel each other out. To deny half of yourself, is to not love half of yourself. When you start loving yourself unconditionally, warts and all, you indeed find true love for yourself.