Madame Jeanne Guyon, writing in the 1600’s, confesses:
“Afterward we came to Paris where my vanity increased. No course was spared to make me appear to advantage. I was forward enough to show myself and expose my pride, in making a parade of this vain beauty. I wanted to be loved by everyone and love none.”
This is another example of something written more than 400 years ago, that’s common and observable in people today.
Do you work to make people love you, more than you work on loving them?
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I think I do. I think I do work harder to make people love me, as opposed to working on them and loving them. My personal foundation is one based on insecurity. I do not have as much self confidence or even self love as I should. I have struggled with this my whole life. How do you flip the switch? How do you change this when for most of your life those around you tell you worthless you are, how terrible, how stupid, etc etc…
This is a natural result of being told basically that you are worth nothing; you work hard to show people are you something. You take it for granted that people already know you love them, because the real task is making them love you.
If you are true to yourself, and express your particular truth, you’ll find suddenly everybody loves you. The key is to know yourself, which comes from the heart. Some may call it unconditional love.
I identify with everything Goldie expressed above. I have been on a stage of some kind since childhood. My mom was always entering me in beautiful baby contests and beauty pageants. I won a beauty contest when I was seven. I stood onstage crying in my tiara because my dad wasn’t in the audience. He was in another state with his new wife. Now my stage is my blog/social media/my YouTube channel/my books. I’m trying too hard to prove something, anything, everything. See me! Love me! I’m smart! I’m beautiful! I’m funny! I had two husbands who adored me. I tried to love them and failed. The man I loved the most failed at loving me.
Misti, I take note of your comments and have an interest in your struggles (I’m older than you, so that’s what I should be doing, caring about the youth) but on this about “making people love you vs making them love you”, my heart breaks. You can’t make people love you if they are not capable of broadcasting love. On the other hand, it might do you well as you go about your every day life to consider the people you come upon, and lift them up, just by saying hello, or whatever . . . the point is to give a damn to someone you encounter. I’m sorry that a little girl was crying on the stage . . . I can put myself there. I wish you love, dear girl. I think you’ve got it goin’ on . . . Ms Cody
Thank you, Ms Cody. 🙂 You are correct. I need to put more positive energy out there and not walk around so wounded and guarded.
That question is a hard one. The answer must be in my chart, as in, I must’ve been born that way, because I sure didn’t learn it at home. Neither one of my parents were demonstrative, or let’s say I could count on one hand how many times they were so. No wonder my mother said, “we had to watch you when you were little, you’d go to anyone. We were afraid someone would take off with you.” I guess that meant they loved me? She also told me, “we had to watch S_____ when you were born; she tried to kill you.” How’s that for love? S_____ was my sister, 3 years old when I was born, ran full speed ahead arms stretched, wrists cocked and pushed the bassinet over (and still hasn’t stopped). Whew! I had more love from the neighborhood moms and my teachers than I ever did at home. So either those people saved me from a life without love, or it’s in my chart. I don’t feel I have to work at loving people, in fact I like to make people feel great, not by baking them cakes or anything, but just being nice to them – and they shine it right back at me. To this day, I have life long friends. Some friends I haven’t seen for years, and we pick up right where we left off, as if it were yesterday. Thank you for asking this question, because it caused me to see the good luck in my life. I always thought my chart wasn’t good enough, but now I see that in one way I have lived a “charmed life”. I truly am amazed that people give a damn about me. (There’s one more thing: I first heard it called “the Scorpio amputation” here, and yes, I will do that if someone treats me horribly. I don’t feel I do it to “get back at them”, I do it to save myself. If someone is horrible to you, how is it going to hurt them if you cut them off? The only thing they’re going to miss is the opportunity to love being hateful. The Post today is supposed to be about love, not hate.) Love from Me to You!
I read a little story in book when I was about 7 or 8, and the idea was — love openly, even if it is scary, and live truly without expecting anything in return. I somehow found this made since and I’ve believed in it ever since.
That, plus watching two older somewhat vain cousins, each about ten or twelve years older than I was, waste their lives trying to make the world love them, trying to outdo each other, trying make some guy love them via artifice. It was sad. Their father left my aunt, my mom’s sister, when they were small and was pretty distant, this big handsome smooth laughing political jerk (as i think of him, I instinctively didn’t care for him as a child). From their late teens, they were always trying to get the men who didn’t love them to love them, like it was a challenge, while rebuffing the ones who did love them truly and were great (at least the few I remember meeting at holidays). Classic. A proposal was like the sign the poor guy would be dumped. We’d all wince.
I still think they were trying to make their father love them in absentia through these various rather soul-less or chilly men they did pursue avidly, the men who walk away or don’t feel. Such a waste. Now they waste their time trying to track down lost guys on FB and Instagram. The exes are happily married and are not interested – and so, this dismissal is catnip! Not that they would go after married guys, but that they still want even distant admiration — because suddenly think the rejected men were worthy after all, because they don’t want to admire the cousins now. It is like watching mules walk in a circle.
One cousin, asked me what I thought, saying: wasn’t she gorgeous enough? Didn’t people say she must be a model? Forget the nice guy she’s going out with now, why doesn’t her ex so and so who lives 1000 miles away seem thrilled she wrote to him out of the blue? He’s done so well and looks so good, it’s not her fault she didn’t love him back then, It’s not her fault her Dad’s departure made her look for the ideal man! What did I think?
So I said, “If you can articulate that you know you may be shut down to real emotion and just chasing the rejecters and acting like some delicious wildcat to make the world think you are utterly irresistible, so your stupid idiot dad will “love” you in your mind, then you can work on getting past this sort of dumb pointless behavior before you’re ten years older, and still alone. Work on your heart and emotions.” She was stunned. Maybe I over-spoke, but when you watch people waste years…bleh.
Sometimes I do work to make people love me more than I love them, but I’ve been conscious of doing this for quite a while…since a couple of years before my Saturn return. I think that was one of the main lessons of my Saturn return. I had to stop feeling entitled to love from others. I became such a hermit…reflecting on this kind of thing. I have Saturn in Scorpio on my ic…conjunct Pluto in Libra opposite Venus. I now consiously try very hard to love others and understand them. I realised we receive love in equal measure to the love we give out.
I’m guilty!
What’s up with the guilt? Okay, so things go on and back and forth in a relationship, might be your true love, might be that you think your best friend flaked out on you. I promise you, true love? No guilt! All is forgiven.
I’m not like that personally, but I have a friend that is just like that. We’re really not close anymore because she’s become so focused on her own self-aggrandizement and she treats others as if they are second-class. She is a very successful woman and I admire her for her achievements, but at some point it went straight to her head.
She has Moon in Leo opposite Saturn, natally. Its a little different than if Venus was involved, but it is similar in a way. She’s never been the person that does the loving so she has never had a good relationship, ever. She won’t work at a relationship. One little problem and its over. She can’t be bothered or probably doesn’t care enough to be bothered working things out. Shes too good for that.
Great question and interesting topic. I identify as well with Goldie’s sentiment. When you are told over and over again that you are worthless it is immensely difficult to not take that point of view personally.
Insecurity breeds all sorts of love-seeking behaviors, of which, I believe, vanity is one (speaking to the quote from Madame Jeanne Guyon).
For me, insecurity (and confronting it) was the lesson of my Saturn return.
Growing up, I was told by the adults in my life that I was broken, terrible, and worthless. Being a child, I took their judgement personally and internalized it. These adults also impressed upon me that I must always do what I was told and that to resist was being selfish.
So, I lived my adolescence and young adulthood with the mindset that I must accept I was not worthy of grace…to do anything but accept was selfish.
As a Virgo, I tried to win love through service. I thought that if I served perfectly and selflessly enough that someone (friends, teachers, bosses, clients, etc) would recognize my efforts and love me for them. The truth is I only succeeded in making myself a doormat.
In some ways I (or my ego) knew I was behaving like a doormat, and I greatly resented the “fact” that I had to do as I was told. But that resentment made me feel ashamed of being “selfish”, which in turn deepened my feelings of insecurity.
When Saturn returned to my 2nd house Scorpio, I started having panic attacks at my place of work. I didn’t know they were panic attacks…I just thought I was going crazy.
It was then that I sought the help of a psychologist, and under her wonderful guidance I began the frightening work of unpacking all those feelings of worthlessness, shame, and resentment.
When a bully makes you feel insignificant, it is instinctual to look at yourself and wonder, “Could they be right? What do they see that makes them react to me in this way?”
It’s natural to take things personally. That’s why children do so all the time.
But the truth is the bullying is not about you. It’s about them. Those who tell you that you are worthless, broken, and terrible do so because they feel worthless, broken, and terrible.
Projection is the product of a damaged psyche.
So how do you stop the cycle?
The turning point for me came when my psychologist asked me if the bullies in my life ever tried to get to know me as a person. Did they make any effort to see me for who I am?
The answer was no, of course. Seeing me would mean they would have to recognize me as a human being, same as them.
My psychologist then concluded that if these bullies had NO INTEREST IN TRYING to get to know me, then their judgement ABOUT me can’t possibly be valid. How can they be right about my worthlessness if they don’t even want to know anything about me to begin with?
Unlike them, I do have a very good idea of the type of person I am. I know with certainty that I am a kind person who acts with compassion and generosity. So why should I take a bully’s word seriously?
And for feeling shame about “selfishness”, she helped me understand that selfless service was a gift. I had every right to choose who I gave that gift to.
If anything, Saturn’s return to my 2nd house made me realize that I am in control of my self-worth.
In fact, having that sense of control over my self-worth has lead me give even more in service and compassion than I ever did before.
I am able to do the work of loving others because I wholeheartedly feel like I deserve to love myself.
I guess I just wanted to say, Goldie, is that the next time someone tells you that you’re worthless, ask yourself, “Does this person have any interest in getting to know me? The real me?”
If the answer is no, then you are not obligated to internalize their judgement about you. You know who you are as a person, and, I suspect, deep down you know you are worth being loved.
Thank you for sharing this…what you say makes perfect sense. I really appreciated reading this.
HannahRT, this is fantastic and I plan to share with a Virgo friend who’s gone thru very much the same thing. I am so glad you found answers for yourself!
Yes, thanks for sharing Hannah. I, too, am a Virgo with Saturn in my 2nd (I will not hit my Saturn return til it enters Capricorn.) However, T-Saturn is dancing back and forth over my AC (2 Degrees Sag). Insecurities are definitely back on the horizon and I’d forgotten they existed having been single up until these past few months. Vulnerability does weird things to me, especially since I have a history dealing with toxic relationships. Selflessly giving seems to be my inherent course of action when I am in love with someone–usually too much with little in return. I’m still mulling over my actions to ensure I am not entering the same scenario as my past.
I’ve thought about this recently with this man that I’m infatuated with. Am I showing him love because I love him or because I’m trying to earn his love. I think it’s a little bit of both.
I think a lot of women are prone to this. I think there’s a lot of messages out there telling us that we don’t inherently deserve love. That we have to be a certain something to be loved. It’s actuslky the opposite of entitlement.
Struggling with this now as Saturn begins the square to my natal Mercury/Venus conjunction at 8-9 Virgo. I am very isolated right now, curling inward and feeling as if I have nothing to give, other than what I do so well at work. But in personal relationships I am definitely questioning how many people in my life really want to know who I am as a person. I feel bereft. I recently reached out to someone I used to know before he took up a destructive relationship with another woman. When I heard they broke up, I messaged him. His response was “we should meet, you’re one of the few that truly knows me”. I thought to myself “how strange, he is interested in getting together because I know HIM. But has he ever tried to really know me??”. None of the communications asked about me, he didn’t even ask what I had been doing in the 3 years we hadn’t talked, or why I moved back– anything that showed the slightest bit of interest in who I was… so I let it drop. I did not give him my number or suggest a meeting. I am a Virgo Sun and I am so tired of being of service with nothing in return; the feeling of “resentment” is my warning sign that I have gone too far with nothing in return. That last sentence invokes such feelings of guilt that I should expect “something in return” but I am not a saint; I do not get fulfilled by giving endlessly without emotional nourishment from others. I am saddened to look around and realize how few people really know me, or even want to know me. I’m 58 and coming up on my 2nd Saturn return… Natal Saturn is 19 Sag, so it widely squares my natal Venus natally – as well as squares my Sun. I guess this is “life lesson” time. I just wish I knew how to do it differently, more successfully than I have in the past – i.e., isolating and feeling lonely. Saturn square Venus is definitely a challenge.
it seems pretty french to me to work on appearing seductive regardless what fish you bring in. I think my pathology of wanting people to like me more than wanting someone I would want to like brought me to my various romantic situations. I worked on trying to stop myself from wanting to impress someone I maybe couldn’t see myself in a relationship with. As a result, I’ve been pretty single for 2 years. Feels like I’m falling down a hole. Where those strong desires to be loveable and attractive to lots of people that have been there since my childhood keep kicking up.
Learning to love someone who might not be worth it isn’t very me. More like asking myself why I want to be impressive to this person do I even like them. Why since childhood had I wanted to be well liked by people. It isn’t something respected by intellectuals. I’ve just been blanked a lot too. I’m trying to think through how to stop wanting it, but it might be part of me. I have some 5th house Chiron and some Leo
I noticed myself withholding praise, emotional expression, and help from guys. It was a method of control partly but not a very good one. Typically, if a guy who isn’t treating me too well asks me a favor (I.e. job recommendation or teaching him something), I’m very unlikely to grant it. I worry its mostly because I don’t feel like sticking my neck out and its a convenient way to punish them rather than just say stop treating me like a rag or to end it.
I’m also very loath to introduce guys to my friends. My ex wanted this far before we were serious but I knew this was to satisfy his social desires rather than from caring about me. He wanted also to ‘see how I behave around them.’ He leached affection from everything
This is spot on with us Virgos. When we love we want to serve. Its when we do, we are at our the most beautiful but its not a sexual beautiful.
So We tend to get relagated to the friend zone more often than most.
I get the negative feedback about “expecting something in return” too. For some reason youre selfish and manipulative if you do expect a response.
The “expectation” can be more of a HOPE and not a sense of entitlement which is where narcissism can lurk.