Our self-image, can really have an impact on our relationships with others. How we feel about ourselves, impacts on how we receive love from others, our self-esteem can also be reflected in our attachment styles and so if you carry insecurities, you can then develop anxious or avoidant attachment styles. It reaches further than this though:

Limiting your relationships
Because of your low self-esteem you may be willing to put up with behaviours that don’t satisfy you, even though you are aware that you aren’t happy.

Combatting this: When you feel better about yourself and have more confidence, your relationships will branch out, you’ll have more friends and a wider support network and so feel less willing to put up with negative relationships.

Stretching your boundaries
If you have low self-esteem then you may allow people to walk all over you, If you’re not confident enough to assert your boundaries you will struggle to ask for what you want or set limits on what you don’t want.

Combatting this: Learning better communication skills, will help you to turn your confidence round, which in turn will allow you to confidently set and keep your boundaries.

Difficulty expressing yourself
If you struggle to say what you want to say, and speak about your thoughts and feelings, your relationships suffer.

Combatting this: Take baby steps, challenge yourself and push forward in being honest about your feelings.

Not putting the energy in
If you have low self-esteem, you can sometimes be guilty of taking on a victim mentality, this can lead you to not act like an equal in your relationship, or to act like a passive participant and so your energy and passion for your relationship will wane.

Combatting this: Sometimes just putting the effort in will help to boost your self-image, becoming aware that your energy has dipped can be the catalyst for change.

Lack of Self-Acceptance
Low self-esteem comes hand in hand with lack of self-acceptance. If you are unable to accept yourself, it will become difficult to feel accepted by others.

Combatting this: Learn to accept your flaws and that perfection isn’t a viable goal, when you let go of this, you can accept yourself as you are.

Skewed perceptions
What you believe to be true, is often what you perceive. Low self-esteem can skew your perception of the world around you. If you feel bad about yourself, you may believe that others feel the same for example.

Combatting this: Learn to take what people say and do at face value, if someone is your friend, lean to believe that they like you

The inevitability of drama
When you lack self esteem misunderstanding can come up, you may allow people to believe things that aren’t true because you lack the self-esteem to correct them, you may perceive things in a skewed way, this can all lead to hurt feelings and exhausting arguments.

Combatting this: By learning to like yourself, you’ll see situations as they are instead of through a lens of low self-worth