“It’s impossible to feel desire when you yourself don’t feel desirable,” says Hanan Al-Shenawy, a therapist. Self-love is the core and the foundation of all other love, she says. Without loving yourself, you will not be able to love anyone else. “You’ve got to love yourself enough to look inside yourself and not beside yourself for your joy, confidence and self-worth,” Al-Shenawy commented.

The first step to loving yourself, as described by Al-Shenawy, is to believe in yourself and to trust your capabilities. “You should accept your defects and deal with your weak points and try to strengthen them,” she advises.

“I can only love you when I also love me,” adds Ibrahim Khalil, 28, a graphic designer. Khalil explained that life had taught him this, since a past relationship he had been in had left him hurting. “I was filled with anger, especially towards myself,” Khalil said, adding that he had tried to rebound by entering into a new relationship but that this had failed.

As a result, he began to think of his weak points and the mistakes he had made that had led him to the relationship failure and to try to begin to cure them. Khalil said that he had also changed his life style and had returned to his old hobbies, like playing tennis and the guitar. Yoga also helped him find the peace and calm he needed. These things helped him to start a new relationship about a month ago, and so far everything is going well. “It’s great to love yourself. It feels good. When you truly love yourself, you are radiant, charismatic and irresistible to your soul mate,” he said.

Ahmed Samy, 30, a physician, said that self-love was meant to be everyone’s foundation. Once you get it, he said, and really feel what it is like to love yourself, you will never want to give it up. Samy explained that he had been engaged for two years, but that a couple of months ago he had experienced problems in his work that had affected his mood leading to depression.

“At that time, I almost felt I couldn’t bear myself and I felt extremely angry about it. Then I started to detest everything in my work, my life style, my family, my friends and even my fiancée that I used to love more than anything else.” Samy added that he did not know the reason for the problems he was confronting, so he decided to consult a therapist.

The therapist told him that “your only job at this moment is to love yourself and, by extension, to love others. You should live your life and realise that to live is to love yourself first.” Samy said that this advice had really struck him, and once he had tried to live by it he had found that he could begin his relationship with his fiancée again and that his performance at work and his family relations all improved.

Jailan Maged, an accountant, said that for a long time she had failed to fall in love with anyone. “I am 29 years old now, and I have no real experience of relationships,” she said. Maged is the only child of separated parents who divorced six months ago. Her parents had spent 30 years living together for the sake of their daughter, she said, and as a result “I spent my childhood with two miserable parents, watching them suffering because of me.”

Maged said she blamed herself for this situation. “I think that’s why I haven’t been able to love anyone else — because I was always blaming myself,” she said. Her parents recently divorced, and this acted as the spur for Maged herself to seek a therapist. “Find yourself first, like yourself first, even love yourself first, and friendship and love will naturally find you,” is the advice she now gives to others. For the first time in her life, she now feels ready for love, and who knows — maybe she will now find her soul mate sooner than she expects.