If You Want Someone to Love You, Do This

I was asked the other day on how to make someone fall in love with you. The answer is that you can’t. Maybe you can buy a butt or get rich to get people to fall in love with you for a while but when they see the truth, they’ll bail.

I also said to them that you wouldn’t want to make this other person fall in love with you because if some friend of yours came to me and said, hey how do I make so-and-so fall in love with me and had some magic potion or spell to force you to fall for them, you wouldn’t like that very much. It’s a brutal violation of your freedom.

If you want someone to love you, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. Firstly, to make such a request means that you don’t believe you are loved, so you need someone to do it. It’s not ridiculous to think this, but unfortunately, it won’t work.

To seek a relationship in order to be loved is like seeking a job in order to get money. You could get a job and get money, sure. But do you even like the job? No? Then what the hell are you doing there? You’re there for the money, and there are tons of people who can do this for a time. But eventually, you either convince yourself that this is what you want while resenting every Monday morning, or you quit because it’s too painful to be somewhere you don’t belong.

Similarly, in a relationship, you can be with someone just because you’ll get attention and sex (they may even have some stuff you admire) but you’ll stick with the person and cheat (physically or emotionally) or you’ll quit due to frustration and futility. But there’s even more to this than meets the eye.

If you are seeking a relationship in order to be loved, you are probably going to rendezvous with someone who is doing the exact same thing. This is a problem. It’s a problem because this person is not here to love you. They are here to be loved. That is the function of their presence in your life. To love you, is secondary.

And when the conflict kicks in, you will blame them for their selfishness, because they are being selfish. And when they blame you for your selfishness, don’t be surprised! Because you too are being selfish. You weren’t in it for them, you were in it for yourself. But you tell yourself that you love them. And yet the love lasts for as long as they do what you want them to do.

Realistically, the only shot you have is to love first.

“We love those whom we serve.” — Richard Paul Evans

Going back to the job metaphor, you have to be willing to give of yourself to some cause, role or solution for others that you are interested in and can fulfill. That way, you know that you can do what is required and do it well. People will love you and celebrate your “hard work” but in reality, you simply wanted to do it.

You might want to be a musician and bless people with music, but what if you’re no good at it or you’re just doing it for the prestige of being an artist? Then don’t do it. You aren’t doing it for people. You aren’t even doing it for fun! You have to be honest with yourself, else you’ll be wasting time and money doing something that won’t benefit anyone, much less yourself.

This is why in order to have a successful relationship, one must not only be able to serve the other person, but that has to be the primary intention behind why you’re there in the first place. You know that you are the type of person to edify this other person’s desires. I say desires (or wants) and not needs because I’ve tried to give people what I think they need and it reallllly doesn’t work out if they don’t think they need what I’m offering.

Sometimes we’ll see someone and think that we have to be with them, but that’s almost always a red flag. Why? Besides them having some trait(s) that you desperately want for yourself, a compulsion to have someone that you know nothing about means that you’re projecting a bunch of things onto this person. You set yourself up for disappointment before you even say hi because you’re just seeing the good and ignoring the potential pitfalls.

Also, you aren’t thinking about serving them. You’re thinking about how they can love you. You’re thinking about what you want to do with them and thinking that that’s you being loving to them. It’s not. It’s still about you.

Being with someone who you are interested in and can serve does not mean that problems will not come up. They certainly will, because the fact of the matter is, when two worlds collide, there will be similarities and differences. Differences may lead to conflict and a couple would be better off resolving the conflict because no situation is perfect. All relationships take work and maintenance.

So, the bottom line is, in trying to get someone to love you, it won’t work. It implies you’re trying to get something that someone else hasn’t freely given you and you wouldn’t want that being done to you.

Instead, look to give of yourself to someone who wants what you offer. But to do that, you have to know what you value and find someone who values those things too. Then you give of yourself because you will naturally admire and respect that person.

If you have similar interests, you are both emotionally healthy and you share similar values, that’s a good place to start. To be honest, it would be extremely hard to not want to give of yourself to such a person!

And this goes without saying but this works for platonic and romantic relationships. It’s probably why your best friend is your best friend. You just want to give to this person and they feel the exact same way.