When you cannot love yourself, it is because you are identifying with a story.  You are finding things to resist.  I cannot accept this, and I cannot accept that.  You are identifying with labels, acts, thoughts, and none of these are your eternal, basic essence.  Get rid of the memories, feelings, thoughts, mental constructs who you believe are you and return to pure being.  Then there is nothing TO love, there is simply love.  Find that essence, your true nature, and you have found the keys to the kingdom.  They have been there all along, beneath the veil of constructs, all of them temporary.  Remove the conditions, and what do you find?  Unconditioned being, the basis of … you are correct:  unconditional love.  Love thyself, thy true self, and then you will find understanding for the slippery, illusory separate constructed self.