If you don’t love yourself, you can’t love anybody else. And I think as women we really forget that.

Lopez frames self-love as a prerequisite for sustaining healthy love toward others: without a stable sense of worth and care for oneself, affection can become dependent, performative, or depleted. The added emphasis—“as women we really forget that”—points to gendered social conditioning that encourages women to prioritize caretaking, appearance, and others’ needs over their own emotional maintenance. The quote functions as both personal advice and cultural critique, suggesting that self-respect and self-care are not selfish but foundational. It also implies that loving relationships are strengthened when individuals bring wholeness and boundaries to them, rather than seeking validation solely through partners, family, or public approval.