Breaking down the clauses in "好きになってもらいたいならまず人を好きになる"

Question

I want to confirm if I'm parsing this sentence correctly. It's probably the difficulty of not having commas to break it up.

好きになってもらいたいならまず人を好きになる

Loosely, I'm translating this as

"If you want someone to like you, you should first like them."

I.e.

好きになってもらいたいなら - If wanting to receive someone's liking

まず人を好きになる - First like people.

Also it's not clear if 好き in this context is more of a generally being liked by people vs a liked by a single person?

"If you want people to like you, like others first"

Thanks!

Answer 1

Your basic understanding of the sentence is fine.

it's not clear if 好き in this context is more of a generally being liked by people vs a liked by a single person?

As for the first half of the sentence, it depends, because the sentence says nothing about who you want to be liked by. In other words, the sentence can mean "If you want him/her to like you...", "If you want someone to like you..." or "If you want people to like you" depending on the context. As for the latter half of the sentence, 人 in this context refers to unspecific "people" or "others" in general. It should be その人 ("that person") if it referred to a particular person.

Answer 2

"If you want to be liked, then first you (should) like people".

I think it's a general "being liked by people" because that's the default in this case, as far as my understanding goes.

If it was talking about a specific person, it would say some thing like 「まずあの人を好きになる」but that's not what it says.