Self esteem = confidence in one’s own worthiness of love and respect.
Love confidence = the belief that one is capable of attracting and keeping loving relationships.
These two concepts are cousins, not twins. This is how they work when it comes to finding relationships:
Self esteem = quality of relationship (dysfunctional, healthy, somewhere in between)
Love confidence = likelihood of entering into relationships (low love confidence = more likely to stay single, high love confidence = greater ease in finding and keeping relationships)
You don’t have to view yourself as perfect, beautiful or the smartest person ever to have high self esteem. You simply have to view yourself of deserving of love and respect.
“You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else.”
That’s not just an empty cliché. That sentiment is all about self esteem.
If you don’t feel worthy of love, you’ll never be able to receive love from anyone who truly values you. You’ll always seek to love people who devalue you.
At best, that means loving people who refuse to prioritize you. At worst, that means loving people who outright abuse you.
Self esteem isn’t arrogance or conceit. It is accepting that flaws and all, you are deserving of love and respect. And the people who can’t provide that to you – that’s their dysfunction. You don’t have to accept their dysfunction as your truth. Your truth is – you are worthy.
For some resources on raising your self esteem – HERE is a good place to start, as is Marianne Williamson’s A Return To Love.
“Love confidence” is probably not a phrase you’ve ever considered. The definition above is one I came to after years of working as a matchmaker and love coach.
I’ve had the privilege of talking to literally hundreds of single people looking for love. It’s my job to help my clients overcome whatever obstacles stand between them and the love they’re seeking. Starting with self-esteem and love confidence. These factors outweigh everything else.
If you look at anything long enough, patterns emerge. By studying these love patterns, I identified 4 Love Mindset Archetypes – Avoider, Looper, Surfer and Sailor.
What the Archetypes are essentially addressing is your degree of love confidence, and how it’s manifested in your life up until this point.
When it comes to love confidence, imagine a spectrum. On one end is low love confidence, or love certainty. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s high love confidence, or certainty. Avoiders sit on the lower certainty end of the spectrum, Sailors are on the higher end, and Loopers and Surfers are in between those extremes.
Love confidence matters because it impacts your thoughts, actions, feelings, and who you attract. It’s possible to have lower love confidence and still find love and keep love – but it’s a lot harder to do so.
Love confidence and self esteem are related, but they’re not equivalent. For some, their low self esteem is precisely the factor that propels them into unhealthy relationships. For others with high self esteem, they might nonetheless be Avoiders who avoid relationships entirely.
Humans are complicated. Your love confidence and self esteem might have fluctuated at different times in your life. Long-held love beliefs and recent experiences all have their part to play in making up your unique level of love confidence.
One thing is clear – if you are single and you don’t want to be, your level of both self esteem and of love confidence are critically important.
If you want to be in a relationship, a certain degree of love confidence is a must. The higher, the better! Loving another person requires risking pain, which can feel debilitating. With lower love confidence, your fear will find all sorts of sneaky ways to self-sabotage and keep you single (and therefore “safe” from love).
If you want to be in a healthy relationship, self esteem is a must.
The great thing about self esteem and love confidence is – they aren’t static. You can cultivate and grow them both. You can change your beliefs about love and what kind of love is possible for you. AND FIND LOVE AS RESULT.
If you haven’t already, click HERE to take my Dating Diagnosis Quiz to learn your Love Mindset Archetype.
xo
Francesca