> Greentext

Deserving love is different from deserving a girlfriend.

Love is something you can spread around to multiple people. It can be anything from fraternal love for a co-worker you've gone through some rough experiences with, to romantic love that bonds you to one specific person.

Everyone deserves love by default, although some people hurt other people and stop deserving love. But, deserving love and deserving the 1:1 commitment of a girlfriend are very different things.

If you're a kind-hearted, hard-working, trustworthy person who was raised with some fucked up beliefs, I'd say you deserve to be loved. Hopefully one of the people who loves you can take you aside and explain to you why your fucked up beliefs mean you can't get a girlfriend. Hopefully that loved one can help you change so that a girl might want to make a commitment to you. But, nobody really "deserves" a girlfriend. They aren't awards that can be handed out once someone completes the required steps.

Brick of text alert! But don't sweat it since I more want to throw it out there and your comment got me thinking.

I'd say it's a wholesome sounding, easy way out, same way we tell people to "just be yourself!" for dating. Probably we can shelve that alongside the tooth fairy, etc.

"Just be yourself!" is easy, makes sense, is watered down for kid's consumption and also does have some good in that we don't want kids trying to change themselves to fit others like I once did but the problem with that snippet is that it isn't really actionable and leaves out the important part of being "the best you!" (even then that's vague)

I was "being myself" many moons ago and it didn't work in dating so I sunk into incel-land where it made sense to blame things I couldn't change like race, area demographics, people who weren't myself, etc. What I didn't realize was that the "myself" that I was just plain sucked. While I was "nice", I was an immature, anxious, awkward, very skinny, emotional wreck who had no idea who I really was. Metrics like height, penis length flaccid/erect, total max squat/bench/deadlift etc. were so much easier to quantify as something to "min/max" rather than "can I have a mature conversation about my feelings with someone?"

A long, rough, self-help-book-fueled journey ensued. Had to learn to love myself enough to not only accept myself but also try to become the "best myself" - and even then that was long road after the self-help books ended.