People Don’t Love Me

What should I do?

I failed to have close friends during my adolescence, which further drove me to anxiety, self-hatred, and body dysmorphia. As I got older, I found it easier to find friends and get along with even people that I couldn’t talk to when I was younger.

The process was not easy, but in the end, I came to learn a lot about myself as well as the value of relationships. One of the most difficult steps that I had to undertake while trying to be integrated is the continuous rejection from people that couldn’t understand me.

That’s how I learned that rejection is one of the most excruciating and unpleasant feelings. As selfish as we can assume to be, we know and become who we are due to the influence that we have received from our close and larger environments.

Our life is structured and has evolved according to the human activities that we have engaged in. We forge our own personality in consonance with the way we have been treated throughout our early years; and, as a sign of reinforcement, we are further up treated according to that personality. it goes without saying that humans are mainly social beings and that we are utterly dependent on our environment.

Thus, if being part of society makes us who we are, what happens when someone feels that they are in dissonance with their environment? What is the main purpose of having a sense of belonging?

I Have a Sense of Belonging…What Does That Mean?

For a normal human, a sense of belonging is perhaps the main motor of their altruism and heroism. We don’t give away our time and strength only because we feel like doing it, we make these kinds of decisions because of the people that we love and appreciate (whether our parents, our children, our friends, our nation, etc.).

As a matter of fact, before undertaking any risky adventure, we think about who we are in relation to our loved ones (a mother? A father? A brother? A sister? A child? A citizen? Etc.). A few examples can well illustrate how we find inspiration in people around us: We often say that we work hard to take care of our family, we want to protect our country, we are good children, we give advice to friends, and spend time with them, we love our partner and want them to be happy and healthy. And the list goes on.

We generally make the most difficult decisions of our life for people that we think would have made the same kind of decisions, or something as important to us. It’s not because we are selfish, but because that’s how society works: we give away and then receive.

What If I Feel no Sense of Belonging?

A person who can’t position themselves within their society will find it hard to cope with adversity and will ultimately be lost in boredom and negativity.

Although it’s rare to find someone who is in total dissonance with their environment, it’s pretty common to meet people that have no permanent friends or/and meaningful relationships.

It’s not because those people are hated by their environment but because they aren’t loved and appreciated enough.

This can happen due to several facts:

1. Changing lifestyles or /and places so quickly and so often during the early stages of life

All relationships require an amount of time and shared values, if a person can’t even settle for a moment, it’s even harder for their environment to comprehend them. This happens very often to children that were born in unstable and toxic families, and who had to change homes and cities very often.

2. Inability to resonate with one’s close environments

Atypical people, who have suffered not from mental issues, generally find it hard to connect with people of their environment. Their inability to have close friends or even to foster good relationships with family members can be better along their way if they receive the appropriate assistance. However, it will worsen if those people are bullied and rejected.

3. Not having any shared value or shared purpose

If you and your environment have a huge difference over crucial matters, you are considered an outsider even if you are always there.

In many cases, it is possible that you can eventually resonate with a group of people, but you decide, consciously or not, not to corporate with those people. Because you feel that you could lose a very meaningful part of yourself.

This generally happens to people that have different cultural or social backgrounds than their close environments, and people that have been more influenced by utterly different realities (through books, social media, own past experiences, etc.) than those of their environments.

4. Inability to communicate properly

If people don’t know your values, they can’t respect you. As respect is one of the main components of love, they aren’t even able to love you.

Communication is the most effective way to know a person. If you never listen actively to someone, it’s going to be difficult for you to recognize if there is any kind of dissonance between you both. And if you don’t talk enough, the person can’t know you.

How to Make People Love Me?

1. Spending quality time with others

There isn’t anything worse than the inability to communicate. When people within a group can’t connect, it’s a total cacophony. Under this circumstance, other than building relationships, we create hatred and apathy.

We often think that human beings are selfish and cruel because of so much violence that we have created throughout history. However, the fact is that there is a very reduced number of total villains but so many people can’t make themselves understood and are not able to have sincere dialogues with others.

As for anything in life, in order to have good friendships or/and relationships you have to make an effort. If you don’t spend time with people, nobody will know you. And by not knowing who you are, they either can’t love you or will share their love incorrectly.

The only way to know how to effectively make yourself understood by a person or group of people is to listen to them and share quality time with them.

2. Sharing love and appreciation for myself and to the others

As my father once said, nobody can’t love if they don’t love themselves, and so they can’t receive love because they don’t know what it is. If you want to be loved, love people, but love yourself even more.

As soon as you come to establish this balance, you’ll realize that you can attract good people into your life. Because if you don’t show that you have enough compassion and love for yourself, people are scared of you.

The few people that aren’t scared will not be able to make you feel better about yourself for they can’t replace your mind or your emotions.

3. Allowing myself to be who I am

In order to be truly appreciated, you have to resonate with your inner self. A distortion in relationships is generally a response to inner distortion. If you want to be part of a group that is different from who you are, it’s unlikely that people are going to love you there.

Even though you manage to create the persona that you think people will appreciate, the unreal character that you have created will be in conflict with your inner self. And that’s even worst than the external battle.

4. Not being afraid to compromise

Even though you have to maintain your core values, that doesn’t mean that you can’t compromise with loved ones.

It’s difficult to find someone that is equal to you in every aspect of your life, or who totally incorporates the kind of person that you wanted to have in your life. However, as long as you find it easy to make yourself understood, and to understand that person, you can adapt to them. And along the way, you’ll learn to be your best version.

Remember that we are never complete. We grow up when we allow people to be part of our life, and when we let them influence our viewpoints and beliefs.

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