Time & Perspective Quote by Barbara de Angelis

De Angelis aims a gentle warning at a culture that treats self-neglect like a moral flex. Her line isn’t the airy “self-love is important” meme version; it’s a practical diagnosis of how resentment is manufactured. If your inner life is run on deprivation, intimacy starts to feel like an unpaid bill. Every act of care becomes a reminder of what you won’t grant yourself, and that turns generosity into grievance.

The phrasing does quiet, strategic work. “Good at loving yourself” frames self-regard as a skill, not a personality trait. That matters: skills can be learned, practiced, botched, improved. Then she shifts to the hard currency of relationships: “time and energy.” Love is described less as a feeling than an allocation of resources. If you’re already running a deficit, giving to someone else won’t feel romantic; it will feel like theft.

The subtext is also a rebuke to a certain brand of martyrdom that gets culturally rewarded, especially in caretaking roles. People who overgive are often applauded as “selfless,” but de Angelis points out the emotional fine print: selflessness can mask an inability to show up for yourself, and the unpaid debt comes due in passive aggression, scorekeeping, or burnout.

Contextually, this sits in the late-20th-century self-help tradition that tried to translate therapy language into everyday ethics. Its sharpest insight is relational: your relationship with yourself isn’t separate from how you treat others; it’s the template you keep photocopying.