I never said anything about perfect or flawless; nobody is. Loving yourself is warm-up for loving others. You need to practice patience and forgiveness. You need to accept the person (or self) as they are, but also support them in their own journey for self improvement. If you don’t have the patience and hope for yourself, you should not expect to have that compassion for others.

The only love you get for free is from your parents, and not all parents even give it so freely.

Anyway I don’t consider this advice to be rhetoric. I’m not arguing for anything or selling anything. I’m just trying to share my experience with love. It’s not an easy thing to understand. You are free to ignore anything you don’t think is true.

Who do you admire in the world? What are the qualities in them you admire? What prevents you from possessing those qualities? If you admire that somebody would join a circus, practice juggling. If you admire those who are generous with their time or money, be more generous. You will eventually find you are the person you admire, if you work toward it.

Yes, you do have to fix yourself before you can create stable interpersonal relationships, because what happens is that you can end up bringing some of that negative energy into whatever relationship you find yourself in, creating a burden for those around you.

This could then lead to a negative feedback loop where you lose your friends/partner, and end up hating yourself more.

If no one's going to love you, you might as well love yourself.