I've got to end this, haven't I? So fucking stupid.

[CampfiresAndBeer]

My head is in a complete spin and I don't know what to do for the best. I can't think straight.

I've been seeing someone since Jan. Very compatible. He's kind, thoughtful and loving.

But I've been worrying about the fact his ex wife and subsequent ex girlfriend are both far, far, far more attractive than me - slim, fit and beautiful. I'm just not. I'm best described as 'soft and curvy'; more accurately as 'plump'. I don't wear make up, my hair is natural and just left wavy - I never style it. Appearance wise, I'm the right side of 'average' in a good light...

I supposed to be meeting a small group of his oldest and closest friends in a couple of weeks and, to say I've been feeling a bit anxious about it would be an understatement.

I know his friends are going to be judging me on my 'suitability' for him and comparing me to his exes. It's normal and I know mine did when they met him! The fact they judged him favourably is besides the point.

I've been so anxious about it, I've been trying to manage the drive to call the whole thing off - the meeting of friends and the relationship. He doesn't know this. I've been working on talking myself down from just running away from it all but he's just said something that's sent all my barriers up

We were having a jokey text exchange and I responded to something with "ah no, don't say that, I'm already worried your friends will wonder what you see in me!" and his reply was, "Don't worry about what they think. It's what I think that matters and I think you're beautiful".

So he knows exactly what I mean. They will be wondering what he sees in me because I'm not as slim, pretty etc as his exes. And he is also acutely aware that they are going to be thinking that because he also knows it's true. Fucksake, I know it's true!

I'm such an idiot for thinking this could ever have been anything real or proper. My biggest relationship fear is being settled for..

I just need to learn that I'm not cut out for relationships, that this is all I'll ever be - not quite good enough and just stop deluding myself it could ever be anything different.

I'm just so fucking stupid 😢

And really sad.

Also op. You have to stop second guessing him. He knows his mind and you have to believe him. It doesn't sound like he lowered his standards at all. Not to me.

I worked in a really shitty place a few years ago and morale was really low. I started a 'compliment culture' and, although people were a bit unsure to begin with, it kind of spread and I could see other people offering out compliments. That's pretty fucking amazing! That you feel this way you do, yet you started a compliments culture at your work place!!

Tell me more things you have done?

@starshollow1 - @MitziK had absolutely great advice.

She did. But being berated for being perceived as not having read it will not help the op.

Good grief - there's a weird kind of self-sabotaging arrogance to the absoluteness of your belief that you know this man's mind better than he does himself!

If you genuinely believe that he is so shallow that all that he values is physical appearance (which is all you seem to value yourself, tbf, so I can see why you would project that on to him), then wtf are you doing with him anyway?

Sounds to me that, despite the counselling, you still firmly believe what your mother and ex partners have said about you. You seem to take all of your self esteem from what others think of you, and none of it from inside yourself.

Whenever I have met a new partner of a family member or a friend, the only things I care about is if they are a nice person and if they will treat my family member / friend well. That's all. Don't give a crap what they look like, the car they drive, where they live etc.

Please don't self sabotage this relationship by allowing the echos of the vile and untrue things that have been said to you in the past to make you believe you are not worthy of love. This man sounds nice and caring. Give yourself a chance at happiness, sounds like you really deserve it.

Oh and I second the style and beauty boards. I rarely post there but the hints, tips and advice are really helpful.

It feels right. That is very attractive.. the dynamic between you works for him.

If you go and some of his friends idly think "oh she is plump" so what. Sit with that discomfort. You had counsrlling and that is the theory. This is the practice. In theory it is easy to type "dont mind wvhat others think". This is an opportunity to practice pushing the discomfort about what u think they think out of yr head.
I had therapy too and i realise that u need to learn these things twice. In theory and the from practice. Honestly. Please dont bail. Go. Face it. If they think you're fatand not styled made up,let them! You can get past what strangers briefly think.

Also, OP, a while back you said that your boyfriend doesn't have a clue how you feel about yourself and you're good at hiding your low self-esteem. Are you sure about that? Your OP says you were having a jokey conversation but his response doesn't sound jokey at all to me, it sounds like the sort of thing a person would say when they've had to reassure someone on this point before. I think he's more aware of your difficulties than you give him credit for.

Why do you believe that everything is about looks? His exes might have been complete bitches.
It is such a shallow mindset (that is everywhere in society nowadays) to think that to be stereotypically attractive is the be-all-and-end-all. Whatever happened to kindness and integrity and good humour?
You're judging your boyfriend very harshly and by your own low standards. Maybe he realised through dating his exes that looks aren't everything.
I agree with others that you need to do some serious work on your self-esteem. A number of people in your life have been extremely cruel to you, by the sounds of it. Please don't allow them to ruin your life further by influencing you (via your low opinion of yourself) to ditch someone who sounds nice. You deserve him. Please don't punish him (and yourself) for others' actions towards you.

I do understand because i am pretty ugly ( not being harsh on myself but being honest im obese and have really damaged ginger hair from where i bleached it a few years ago) but im also married to someone who thinks i am beautiful and i thought he was way out of my league but now we have 2 kids and are married so i couldn't be all that bad to him :D still having sex 4 years on as well.

I am trying to take better care of my looks at the moment ( started to lose weight etc) but i know he wouldnt mind if i just stayed as i am.

I also had a friend who thought she was ugly, plenty of people did but i along with many others always thought she was really pretty.

Would you be willing to try to love yourself just a little bit? Like, 5%?

Could you be willing to believe that make up and dress size aren't the only things that make a woman attractive?

Could you be willing to believe that some tiny 2% of you is loveable?

If you quieten the voice of your mother and your abusive exes, there is some teeny tiny voice within you trying to be heard, who is trying to tell you that that what you've taken on as belief about yourself is, with love, such utter utter bullshit and is not worthy of your attention. What that voice has to tell you about why you should believe that you're an amazing person worthy of love, is worth learning to listen to, I promise you.

I'm a huge plus size, with scars and stretch marks. Loving myself and believing that I am worthy of being loved and adored has been a journey, I'm much better now and my journey is by no means complete for me. It sounds like your 4 years of counselling has helped you massively. Maybe it's time for some more counselling or some coaching for the next part of your journey. The one where you dare to look at the possibility that you are loveable. ❤

Oh OP - there has been some fabulous and heartwarming advice on here - please please take it on board and tell us how you are getting on xx

He says I make him laugh and he feels safe and happy when he is with me.

I cannot think of anything better, you make him happy - what could be better than that?

You have two options

A. Finish it and you've lost a really good relationship.

B. Meet his friends and then it finishes because they judge you to be inferior,
or alternatively maybe they are nice people and see you for you, not what you look like. Maybe they will be really happy their friend is happy.

Wouldn't it be better to try B? Worst case scenario you end up with the same result as option A. Best case scenario is it goes great. If he is nice, odds are his friends will be too.

Thanks for all the responses. I have read them all. But obviously there are a lot to reply to. I've been back and read over the whole thing again a couple of times.

I just wanted to clarify a couple of things as my head is a bit clearer this morning.

I know it's me and not him. I don't think he thinks I'm inferior to his exes - but he is obviously aware that they are more attractive/better than me and I feel inferior to them because of that. Because everyone else will be aware that he "did better" than me previously. I do think they'll wonder why he's lowered his standards or what he sees in me. And I'm not very socially confident at the best of times. I tend to 'keep out of the way' if I feel out of my depth and I'm worried about feeling like that too.

I also know I haven't said anything to him about how I feel because I don't. I don't want to draw people's attention to my flaws because I don't want to become merely a collection of badly assembled flawed body parts to anyone else and I don't want to elicit well intentioned compliments/confirmation that I'm shit so I just say nothing. I prefer to pretend they just haven't 'noticed'. More than that, these feelings only really emerged this strongly a few days ago and I haven't seen him yet.

I just don't know what's real and what's not. So he told me the first time we spent the night together that he thought I was beautiful and he loved my bum. There's nothing to love about it. It's fat. It's not appealing or attractive in any way. I feel that he only said this because he also perceived it to be unattractive and assumed I'd be self conscious and wanted me to feel secure and so told me he loved the part of me that he felt I'd be least happy with. If that makes sense. I think it came from a good place but I felt really uncomfortable about it and it replays like a broken record in my head.

I'd rather be able to pretend people hadn't 'noticed' me/my flaws if I'm honest.

Why do you believe that everything is about looks? ... Whatever happened to kindness and integrity and good humour?

It's hard to explain. I don't judge other people by the same standards as I judge myself. I never look at anyone and wonder what she is doing with him etc.

I used to think that kindness, integrity and good humour etc would be enough and more important than looks alone. I used to believe that someone would fall in love with me and that I would 'become' beautiful to them - and I still read people saying that sort of thing on this board.

But that's not been my experience. Those things, and all the rest, count for nothing if you "can stand to lose a couple of kilos" or someone older than you has "found it difficult to come to terms with dating an older woman" even though you got on brilliantly together or if you know that someone has "grown tired" of dating "beautiful women" who can't be trusted as they have more opportunity to cheat.

My personal qualities/characteristics didn't matter.

Same with my mother - she criticised my appearance but also every aspect of Me - interests; hobbies; style; physical appearance; habits; personality; my abilities... I couldn't tell you a single thing she liked about me. I realised a while ago that she'd never said anything nice about me. She even managed to criticise me and minimise my achievement at my graduation.

I spent a long time believing my mother. Then I realised and started working to deal with it and remove her voice but, over the recent months, the evidence just seems to point to her having been right after all.

I just feel like I don't know which way is up anymore.

I

OP I agree with pp who have said you need therapy to help with low esteem and the self sabotaging. You seem to give yourself this weird double whammy of thinking love is some kind of remote ideal that only really physically attractive people deserve whilst telling yourself that you'll never deserve it. Then on top of this you're arguing that unless you can have this remote ideal, you don't want anything. You need help to unpack all of that.

I was horrifically bullied throughout secondary school and all of it was directed at my perceived lack of attractiveness. So for five years I had hundreds of my peers telling me every single day that I would never, ever have a boyfriend because I was too ugly and strange for anyone to possibly want me. There were physical aspects to the bullying that were bad enough for the police to be involved but it was the emotional bullying that left lasting scars.

I've had the last laugh, because I'm a tall, slim redhead. Much of the bullying was jealousy, as it may have been with your mother. I've finally, in my late 40s, undone enough of the damage to have what I hope might turn into a lasting relationship. A friend of mine asked if the man in question was good looking to which I just replied "not really, no, but that's not what's important". What counts is that he's kind, funny, cares about me and we have a lot in common. I do fancy him a lot, but that's because handsome is as handsome does.

The facts are that I am less attractive and fatter than his exes. That's just a fact

OK. You may not be as slim as his exes. You may not be as close to society's ideal of what constitutes attractiveness at the moment. However, if you take attractiveness to include all those other things about a person, the lasting things that really count, then my bet is you're much more attractive than they are. But you're not going to see that without a lot of help. I hope you can get that help and I hope it works out for you.

No matter what you write you are simply wrong.
And I don’t know how you change your mindset but you need to

You need some counselling to learn to tune out your mother’s voice (and indeed those of everyone else around you - even your boyfriend because if your self esteem relies on his validation, if ever he takes that away you’re back to square one!)

FWIW I’m in a similar position. 7 years on, I still worry that my DP doesn’t find me attractive (or if he is deluded enough to actually think I am, his friends will be judging me for not being as obviously attractive as his ex.)

He has admitted to being very hung up on what others think about him, knows his choice of clothes, car etc is made to impress and that he validated any decision which is not the obviously impressive one by getting in there first and stating why he chose said item. I worry that I’m also on this list of things he feels he has to apologise for - I imagine him saying things like “yes she’s a bit older than I’d like or a bit fat, but she’s great in the sack” etc

Having spoken to him about it and told him of my worries, he says that everyone knows how miserable he was with his ex, that she was selfish and caused a lot of trouble, so anyone who would judge him for being with someone like me who is beautiful, kind and thoughtful etc over being with someone who others might see as more conventionally attractive (Barbie doll) clearly wouldn’t have his best interests at heart.

It takes a lot for me to believe him, but having had a bit of cognitive hypnotherapy to try and reset some of my feelings about myself, I am getting to a point where I feel justified in being with him. He isn’t better than me, neither is his ex. Their physical attributes are just an accident of nature (or indeed paid for in her case - meow!) and I am every bit as worthy of love and affection, if not more so.

I know it’s not easy to reset years of negative self-talk and more years of negativity from the people who should have built you up, but you need to stop this now and start to value yourself.

@CampfiresAndBeer everything you write resonates with me, I completely understand your "non-logic" unfortunately I have no answers. It is incredibly difficult when compliments are as painful as criticism.

Huge hugs

I think you need to get back to counselling.

Maybe end it with this lovely guy because you are not in the right place yourself and maybe you never will be with him .
It will always be an issue for you that his exes were attractive.

I just don't see what there is to value

It is incredibly difficult when compliments are as painful as criticism.

Criticisms hurt but compliments feel like an insult to my intelligence.

Every one thinks they are flawed.
It is not just you .
Read MitziK again .

I do understand where you’re coming from. It makes sense in a nonsensical way.

But this poor guy will never be able to do or say anything that you won’t scrutinise and pick holes in so I would probably end it, for his sake. It’s great that you’ve had counselling but it sounds as though there’s a lot of work for you to do, still.

It’s not for for him to have to constantly think about what he’s saying; to not compliment his girlfriend on something he finds attractive in you , for fear of you using it as a stick to beat yourself with.

I feel for you OP, you sound like somebody who’s been through the mill x

How’s he insulting your intelligence, he said he thinks you’re beautiful and he likes how you make him feel.
He hasn’t said you look like sienna miller.

You’re getting the two things mixed up.

@CampfiresAndBeer

It's just occurred to me...

Is the problem that we don't want to accept we might be wrong? Too fragile to cope with the facts we hang on to that give us some security /safety?

EG some men really do like "fat" women, find them incredibly sexy.

Well that blows your "I am unworthy because I am fat" narrative.

That means I will have to find a new reason to think I am unworthy, I may have to offer up my "intelligence", that I am not as bright as I thought I was, now giving that belief up would be catastrophic...

For what it's worth give the guy a chance by talking to him properly?

@differentnameforthis that was not my intention, if someone has posted here for advice it makes sense to read it (not just what you want to hear but perhaps what you need to hear) & yes of course it cannot replace counselling/therapy. I don't think I ever suggested it did.

Reading further from you OP I think you'd help your self-esteem immensely by prioritising therapy above a relationship at this moment in time. All the best to you