Is your sense of feeling loved based purely on someone else's feelings, or do you, personally, feel loved even if no one else loves you?

I grew up without ever feeling like my parents loved me. They never said they did, and they did not treat me as they treated my siblings in terms of time spent with me. I was never sure that they wouldn’t just kick me out one day, and eventually they did kick me out.

Ever since then, I’ve imagined that if I could find someone else to love me enough, that I’d finally feel ok about myself. I’d feel like I was a lovable person. And many others have loved me, although they have all gone away except my wife.

I was doing fine for years, and feeling lovable for over a decade, before things started deteriorating with my wife, and then I became mentally ill and my self-esteem went all to hell.

The truism is that you have to love yourself before others can love you. Obviously, that’s not true in all cases. Is anyone else one of those who only loves themselves if others love them? What is your story? How did you get to be that way? What does the need for external love make you do?

For those of you who do love yourselves even when alone, how do you account for that? What, in your past, made you capable of this? How does not needing external love affect your behavior compared to others, as far as you can tell?