Sorry that you’re hurting. I can relate to some of what you said. I have heard that a lot too, that you have to learn to love yourself first and to be happy without the influence of anyone else. I still can’t figure it out either. I may have gotten slightly better in the past few years that I’ve been totally single and haven’t had a choice whether or not to latch on to someone else, but I’m still far from mastering it. I’m sure if someone came up to me and offered to care for me and take all my troubles away, I would give in without a second thought and leave it up to someone else to make me happy again, because I don’t know how to do it for myself.

If you can’t love yourself then just love your kids, I suppose. It really would be horrible to leave them. They didn’t ask to be here.

I was never really taught how to love myself either. I think I myself had a mother who struggled with her own sense of self worth which is what allowed her to stay married to our abusive father for so long. So I never learned how to stand up for myself and when to tell bad people to get lost because I never saw anyone in my own family manage to do that. But maybe you can still teach your kids to love themselves, just think of all the things you wish someone would have told you growing up.

As far as being out of shape, do you feel angry enough about it to want to change it? Or would you feel happier to just hope that the right person comes along who can appreciate you however you are? Both are valid options. Changing just to try to be more attractive to other people is an annoying process. Kinda comes back to that “loving yourself” thing again, if you want to get in shape do it because you want yourself to be healthy, not just because it might attract a potential mate. I’m in the worst shape of my life after sitting around depressed for the past couple years and I can’t find the motivation to fix it yet, for the same reasons. The only time I ever think about doing it is when I know it would help me meet someone. But that’s not the right motivation that I need. I would have to care about myself and my own health and frankly I don’t.

Try to stay strong for your kids, that’s what matters now. I don’t even have kids so in terms of being lonely I understand. I sit here alone all day.

I hope things get better for you. I am all too familiar with how hard it is to get through life when you don’t feel good about yourself. It seems like a branching path very early on in life, you are either brought up in a way where you are taught to value yourself, or something gets left out and you grow up with low self esteem and it’s very hard to ever fix it. If I were in your position I would just do what I can to make my kids happy and try to be as healthy as I can manage so I’d be around a long time for them.