Before You
Were Ready

On loving and being loved through becoming

Dean Rasmussen·Rasmussen Coaching & Consulting

PART 1: THE RECEIVER

PART 2: THE GIVER

PART 3: BOTH OF YOU

“You have to love yourself before someone else can love you.” I’ve heard it a thousand times. I believed it for a while. But here’s what actually happened and why I think we’ve been telling this story wrong.

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Part 1

FOR THE PERSON WHO WASN’T READY

She Fixed Parts of Me She Didn’t Break

When I met my partner, I was not in a place of self-love. Not even close. I was working on it. Genuinely, consistently working on it but I hadn’t arrived anywhere near the destination that saying seems to require. I was still carrying a lot of weight I hadn’t figured out how to put down yet.

And she loved me anyway.

Not in a “fix him” way. Not out of pity. She just showed up, consistently, warmly, without conditions and something in me started to shift. She fixed parts of me that she didn’t break, simply by loving me well.

The Problem With “Love Yourself First”

I don’t think the intention behind that saying is wrong. Self-worth matters. The work we do on ourselves matters. But the way we deliver it, as a prerequisite, as a gate someone has to pass through before they’re allowed to receive love, that part I think we need to push back on.

For a lot of people, that message quietly becomes another reason to stay small. I’m not healed enough yet. I’m not ready. I’m not enough yet. And the goalposts never stop moving, because the voice telling you that you’re not enough is not interested in ever being satisfied.

In Positive Intelligence work, we call that voice a Saboteur. And one of its favourite tricks is disguising itself as wisdom.

My two biggest Saboteurs are the Pleaser and the Avoider. If you know those two, you know they make a pretty effective team at keeping you from believing you deserve good things. The Pleaser earns love by being useful. The Avoider delays the hard stuff indefinitely. Together, they can make “work on loving yourself” feel like one more performance, one more thing to get right before you’re allowed in the room.

What broke through that wasn’t discipline. It was experience, being on the receiving end of something that didn’t ask me to earn it first. Her love became evidence that the self I was working on was worth the work.

Self-love is a practice, not a prerequisite. And if part of you is wondering whether you’ve done enough inner work to deserve what you want, that’s your Saboteur talking.

PART TWO

FOR THE PERSON DOING THE LOVING

What It Looks Like to Love Someone Still Working on Themselves

There’s a version of that story the world doesn’t talk about enough, the person on the other side of it.

The one who shows up anyway. Who doesn’t wait for the other person to be “fixed” before deciding they’re worth loving. Who loves consistently, without conditions, even when it isn’t always returned the same way yet.

That’s not naivety. That’s not codependency. That is one of the most powerful things one human being can do for another.

My partner did that for me. She didn’t try to fix me. She just loved me, steadily, genuinely, and that love became evidence I could build on.

But Here’s What I Want You to Hear

That kind of loving takes something from you if you’re not resourced for it.

If your own inner critic is loud. If your own Saboteurs are running the show. Loving someone through their growth can quietly deplete you, not because you’re doing it wrong, but because you’re pouring from a place that also needs tending.

The Pleaser Saboteur shows up here too, just differently. It looks like over-functioning. Absorbing the other person’s emotional weight and calling it love. Losing track of your own needs in service of theirs. The Avoider shows up as not saying the thing you actually need to say because keeping the peace feels safer than the conversation.

You can’t pour from a place your Saboteurs have already drained. The work of building mental fitness isn’t just for the person still figuring themselves out. It’s for the one doing the loving too.

If this part of the story is yours, if you are the steady one, the one who shows up, the one who loves someone through their becoming, you deserve support in that. Not just acknowledgment. Actual support.

PART THREE

FOR BOTH OF YOU

What the Work Actually Looks Like Together

Here’s what nobody tells you about growing inside a relationship: you can both be doing the work and still struggle to meet each other where you are.

Because one person’s Saboteurs don’t disappear just because the other person loves them well. And the person doing the loving? Their Saboteurs are running too. Quietly. In the background. Shaping every conversation, every conflict, every moment of disconnection that neither of you can quite explain.

Maybe one of you avoids the hard conversations. Maybe one of you keeps the peace at the cost of honesty. Maybe both of you are so focused on not rocking the boat that neither of you says the thing that actually needs to be said.

That’s not a relationship problem. That’s a mental fitness problem. And it’s workable.

What Shifts When Both People Do the Work

When both people start to recognize their own Saboteurs such as the Critic, the Avoider, the Pleaser, the Controller, something changes. You stop taking each other’s patterns personally. You start getting curious instead of defensive. You build something that isn’t just held together by love. It’s held together by awareness.

That’s what PQ coaching makes possible. Not just for individuals navigating their inner world, but for the dynamic between people. The patterns that play out in relationships aren’t random, they’re Saboteurs doing what Saboteurs do. And once you can see them, you have a choice about what happens next.

Love got me started. The work is what made it sustainable.

If any part of this landed for you, whether you’re the one who wasn’t ready, the one who loved them through it, or somewhere in between, the next step is the same. Find out what’s running under the surface.

Find Out Which Saboteurs Are Running the Show

The free PQ Saboteur Assessment takes five minutes. It might change how you see yourself and the people you love.