So I realise that this question can often be taken as fishing for compliments or shallow, I also realise that this is a difficult question to have answered with no accompanying image, and I know attractiveness is subjective, but I've always struggled to know for sure how I look. This may be a long post but I feel like I need to explain why I just don't know how I look. Like many others, the way I feel about myself fluctuates a lot. Sometimes I think I have an average apperance, one that doesn't really warrant an opinion (positive or negative). But other days, I look in the mirror and can't seriously believe that someone would find me beautiful. I'm lucky to have friends and family that would never make me feel less than pretty, but for that reason I can't take their positive opinions to heart.
For back story, when I was younger I was objectively unattractive. I didn't know how to look after myself and that was reflected in my appearance. I was also quite overweight. (That's not to say that being overweight is automatically unattractive. But in my case and from looking at old photographs, the extra weight, especially on my face, hindered my features and made me look objectively less atttactive). However, at the time I wasn't aware of how I looked. I might have even been more confident in my looks than I am now. But when I look back at pics from that time, I feel somewhat embarrassed at how I could have had that confidence. I know how harsh that sounds, but this has instilled this complex in me where I can't trust what I'm seeing when I look in the mirror. If the girl back then didn't see how unattractive she was when she looked in the mirror, then regardless of how much I've changed how can I trust what I'm seeing now?
From time to time I receive compliments on my physical appearance and have been told that I'm pretty, usually by female friends. But I'm always left feeling pitiful and self conscious when I receive compliments, the reason being that I received similar comments in my "uglier phase". I know personally, I often go out of my way to pay a compliment when I see someone who appears awkward or needing of a confidence boost, someone I think maybe doesn't receive compliments often.
Knowing now that I was definitely not attractive enough back then to warrant someone going out of their way to tell me I was pretty, how can I know now that people are not complimenting me out of pity? I'll also add that I live in a country where my ethnicity is somewhat in the minority, so I also can't tell if people only take the time to compliment me because I "stand out" compared to what their used to seeing, and a compliment is the most PC or polite way to acknowledge this.
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