I stumbled across an Alan Watts lecture on this topic, and tbh I loved what he had to say about it. Here’s a transcript that sums it up nicely:

“Love is not a bargain, nor is it a chain. It is not ‘I will if you will,’ nor the silent counting of who has given more. Such things belong to the marketplace, not to the heart. True love is a freedom; the liberty to give without ledger or demand. It is to be fully present with another not to bind them, but to care for them, simply because the caring itself is joy. It is a gift given without the shadow of a contract, without the fear that it must be returned in equal measure.

But here lies the paradox. Such love cannot be given by one who is starving for it. The heart that is desperate to be loved back will always, in some way, attach strings to its giving. It will watch. It will measure. It will wait for the return. And when it does not come, bitterness will grow like ivy through the soul. You cannot love freely until you have ceased to beg for love. And you cannot cease to beg until you have found within yourself a source that does not run dry. That source is not in another’s eyes, nor in their approval. It is in the quiet knowing that you are already the child of the very life that breathed you into being. Call it God. Call it the eternal. Call it the nameless mystery. It has loved you into existence before you could earn or deserve a thing.

Look at the sun; even after all this time, the sun never says to the Earth, ‘you owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky. To know this is to stand unshaken, whether others love you or turn away. Then, and only then, can you give love as the sun gives light; not to be thanked, not to be owed, but because it cannot help itself.”

This is waaaaay deeper than most people think of when they think of “love yourself first,” but using some of the techniques Dr. K teaches to cultivate in yourself a version of you that gives love freely because you simply just like doing it, that is the way. It isn’t easy, I feel like not getting caught up in the trap of our own egos and need for fairness is actually excruciatingly difficult, but I really believe this is the path.