Healthy love is glad to be told what a loved one needs, healthy love is eager to take part in the work of loving. Healthy love is excited to see a loved one confident and happy, and has no desire to be the source or arbiter of a loved one’s self-esteem or confidence - healthy love is happy to reassure and eager to compliment, but not to be the only source of positive regard in a loved one’s life. Healthy love is glad when others show a loved one care and respect, and wants loved ones to have lots of sources of positive regard.
Healthy love wants to see a loved one accept love with gladness and confidence, not shame and feelings of unworthiness. Healthy love wants the loved one to truly know deep down that they are worthy of love and care and respect, and to respond with reciprocation, not gratitude.
The people who love you in a healthy way do not need or want for you to make yourself as small as possible. They don’t want or need you to minimize your own needs and desires, they don’t need or want you to act like they’re doing you a giant favour by treating you with love and respect. The people who love you in a healthy way will be so glad if you accept their love as something you deserve. They won’t think you’re being selfish or self-centred or full of yourself if you accept love with reciprocation and not self-effacing gratitude - in fact, they will be glad!
Because healthy love wants to see YOU healthy and happy, and you aren’t either while you’re letting poisonous self-hatred fester in you. Whoever planted those seeds, you aren’t obligated to tend the plant yourself. You do not have to be a shrine to those who have treated you badly. You can tear out self-hatred wherever you find it, and the people who love you will not only agree you are entitled to do so, they will rejoice with you with each victory!
You deserve care and respect. The people who love you in a healthy way believe you deserve care and respect, and their belief doesn’t hinge on you cowering and acting self-effacing and denying your needs. Instead, their belief that you deserve care and respect means they don’t want you to act like you’re less than them, they don’t want you to constantly defer to their needs and desires, they want to be total equals! They want to just be asked for reassurance when you need it - people who love you in a healthy way don’t need to be manipulated into giving you bits of reassurance!
The people who love you in a healthy way do not need power over you in order to love you fully - they can love you even better the more you participate in the process of sharing your true self, what you actually need and want, who you actually are. Love is work that has to be tended together - that includes letting the people who love you do kindnesses for you instead of you always being the giver.
Healthy love is respect and care and reciprocity.