10 years ago I told my girlfriend I’d get her to admit she’s beautiful one day. She’s my wife now, and I still haven’t managed it. I’m glad she’s going to therapy now to try to get a better self image, but I’d have kept trying for the rest of my life regardless.
I tell my husband he sees with the eyes of love. Of course what he sees is better than what I see, but I still think I’m closer to objective about my looks. So while I absolutely appreciate his perception of my looks, no I don’t trust it.
ETA I am not unconfident about my looks. Fine going out in the world, feel good enough. I just know what I see doesn’t align with what he sees.
Yeah, my wife will often respond with “I know you think I’m beautiful” which I think means the same thing. But that’s kinda the point - beauty isn’t objective. If someone can see you’re beautiful, that means you’re beautiful, because humans are the ones who made up the concept of beauty, so we get to decide what meets the “beautiful” cutoff. Now, yes, that means you can decide that you don’t meet the cutoff, but why do that?
You haven’t tried the classic “if you’re beautiful say what”?
What?
I almost got her with something similar a couple days ago, but she caught on.
“Huh? No.”
I tell her nearly every day, my kids have joined in. She still refuses to believe it.
maybe try asking if she trusts your (and your kids) judgement, if she says yes follow up with the compliment
If she says no maybe try to direct it like everything you say is wrong and then give a very obvious “anti-compliment”It should at least give a new reaction
I understand needing reassurance sometimes, but constant self-deprecation can be exhausting. You try to show someone you love them and nothing works, like a black hole sucking in all your efforts. And little by little it wears you down until you do want to date someone else, but it’s not about being pretty, it’s about peace of mind.
BPD moment. Mental health issues are bastards of things. I’ve tried to stop. I have stopped. The issue is the brain is literally trained to be like that–constantly on edge after a whole lifetime of needing to be on edge. I’m literally fighting the very composition of my brain when I force the splitting to turn off, but it doesn’t last. I wish it was that easy. The only way that cycle breaks is with therapy and patience.
I’ll tell you the other side of it. It’s being terrified of being abandoned. It’s not knowing if others are being honest, because trusting others has caused trauma in the past. It’s believing you’re horrible, and contemptible, and unable to change. We need the reassaurence because we don’t trust the environment unchanging. Basically, it’s a grounding mechanism. Read about hypervigilance.
It’s a fucking miserable life I’m glad most people will never have to live. Honestly, we need a PSA about it.
100% this. An ex of mine did this all the time and the first couple times are cute but past that it starts being obnoxious and like you said exhausting. I finally told her when she says stuff like that she’s also calling me either stupid for “settling” for her, or a liar by not believing me when I said I wanted to be with her. She stopped for a bit after that but it didn’t last long.
I usually say it nicely like “you don’t think I could get a nice and hot boyfriend? Have you met me??” which seems to work most of the time
Real. Dumped my ex because her self esteem was fucked. She even got jealous of my cousin when we talked.
Work on yourself…
And I bet that reinforced her low self-esteem. I’ll explain what the actual problem is but they don’t hear it, they just hear the other reasons that they invented such as “I’m not attractive enough”.
They didn’t invent it, it’s just reinforced in society you’re not attractive unless (you spend a lot of money on surgery).
Still exhausting to deal with.
When we do this my wife follows up with trimming if that I am broken and my opinion about her looks is invalid
You’re going to be baggy ol raisens together might as well be with someone pretty on the inside and hope that doesn’t get stolen.
Raisins, yuck. Can’t we be some other dried fruit, like mango?
Yes! For example, I’m a banana
> dried fruit
> mango
What
Dried mango
Okay, I’ve dried off, but where do you want me to go?
Into my mouth 😏
vore_irl
Man Go
Apricots slap
Sorry, only have prunes over here
“okay, see ya”
These comments sound funny to say in return but i assure you: they are.Also my fiance and me :3
