1 week ago
16
Hey everyone! I have been having a pretty cool time lately and today was something that has left me stunned. I’m a 34 yo man who was had quite a life. My life was not a traditional one and was marred with mental health issues. My recent glow up has been the result of loads of self improvement and breakthrough medicines that removed the falsehoods I so firmly believed! I had an ego the whole time but I didn’t see it, it told me I was the worse. Turns out my view of myself was a lot harsher than it needed to be. I grew up in west Los Angeles and I’ll admit, looks are important to me. I always knew logically that I must be good enough, average enough because I have benefited my whole life from my look. I hate that looks are such a strong component in attraction. I have done tons of work and value everything more holistically but they are important.
This glow up is the realization that I’m not my past and my present is pretty damn sweet! I have been online dating for the first time at 34 and it’s been insane tbh. I am figuring out my place and going on a date everyday pretty much. These are gorgeous women and are mostly educated, independently wealthy, traveled and beautiful. They are engaging and incredible women. The dates are great but I have some hang ups I couldn’t shake. My fragile ego who loves the lalalands of life never got at my issues with asking where I stood in attraction amongst my peers. I know this is a silly metric but it’s hardwired into how my brain processes information… my brain subconsciously identifies the attractiveness of people one a 1-10 scale. These metrics are but one element but we do value it a lot. I’m a naturalist and understand we are animals and live in a hierarchy, my self proclaimed 5-7/10 understood my place.
Thing is, my place isn’t all that bad. While uncommon and rife with need for further explanation, I check many boxes… I’m 6’1, great shape, accomplished, intelligent, and charismatic. This stream of new dates has had me in chaos because these are some incredible 10/10 women. I know it can distort our perceptions as these women inherently were out of my league. I started seeing a professional sexologist (35f) as it was the one area my trauma still hasn’t healed. She’s another incredible woman and I trust her. I got vulnerable with her and asked for complete honesty. My avoidance kept me from confirming my shit beliefs about myself but things had to change and I needed to know for the sake of efficiency as I was effectively half blind. She told me I was easily a 9/10 and a 10/10 any day if I had more confidence. My confidence growth is what got me here but it’s still going! I begged her to not cause me to form a belief about this to face plant harder later as I’d given the results to her confidence, she accepted and confirmed… my past and everyone who were waiting for me to come out as gay(?!?! Why is this fr?) it just was way less strange. I still don’t intend to search again as I integrate but I am not planning to let myself self exclude myself from half of my options for nature anymore…
I know people will think that a primitive method of categorizing your position in the animal kingdom can take it up elsewhere. It is the one quality I refused to remove from fantasy. I won’t lie, everything is making sense. I’m not dumb, I’m naive and had a long rough and isolated history. I avoided social situations and girlfriends for work, money, external validation and while old, am happy to be starting better now than ever. So yea. While most people who see me tend to think my life is kush no matter what because this or that will never be able to see the real me anyways. I tried that 5 years ago and she cheated very quickly. Since then I haven’t had sex as I was working on myself. Apparently that’s weird but I have always been weird, loud and proud.
My past was brutal and I sacrificed a lot of the human experience focusing on wealth and success and while it’s been nice to have it is just money. I’m ready for marriage and this minor act has me settling in to my new spot in the world as me without my trauma. Me as a good man still looking with due diligence but now in person and abroad. Writing that was awesome, thanks don’t ever give up this shit is just miracle after miracle now. I truly see a different man in the mirror now. Is perception really that heavily influenced? All I can say is, Finallyyyyyyy
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