Posted by pinkeye on April 18, 2005, at 20:28:55
In reply to Re: Anybody afraid of growing up? Trigger » pinkeye, posted by Dinah on April 18, 2005, at 19:38:01
What you have said is pretty profound. Especially the part about not dating someone who didn't respect you at least as much as you respected yourself. I think that is the key. It is not a question of how beautiful you are, or how achieved you are, etc to get a nice man. It is only how much you respect yourself and what you think you deserve. I have fancied 4 men totally so far - 2 were married already and 2 were complete jerks who if they come before me now I wouldn't even turn my head to look at them. I never liked anyone who was nice and available. And my husband - I married him more because I wanted to be married rather than that I liked him. I didn't fancy him so much to begin with. That is why my therapist keeps telling me that there is some problem in the way I perceive myself - the way I think I should deserve a man.. and she thinks lot of it has to do with how my father's relationship with my mother and me was.
I didn't understand your last paragraph about your husband treating you as a second child.. did you mean it in a good sense or in a bad sense? My husband treats me like a child many times too, but I always like it.
> Your husband did maintain control when faced with your leaving him if he didn't. Doesn't that mean he values you?
>
> I dunno. I'm no prize by any means. I was once pretty enough, I guess - in a way I never appreciated at the time. But I had enough problems that I was never a prize, matrimonially or datewise. So I tend to think that if nice guys liked me, you don't have to be all that wonderful.
>
> My very beautiful cousin once asked me how "all" the guys I dated were so nice. She must have met "all" of them, because there weren't all that many. :) She was very beautiful, but she had dated some guys who were not so nice to her.
>
> My answer to her at the time seemed lame, but the more I look back on it, the more profound it seems. I looked at her in surprise and said that I wouldn't date anyone who wasn't nice.
>
> Mind you, I was also one of the most cautious daters around. I didn't date anyone I didn't already know, or who didn't know someone I knew and trusted. Which led to dates with very few surprises.
>
> But it also wasn't that important to me to be with someone, and I knew my own worth enough to make sure that anyone I was with would respect me at least as much as I respected myself.
>
> So how did I end up with a man who considers me his second child? I don't know how that changed, or where, so that he no longer considered me worthy of the respect I *still* think I deserve. No matter what he thinks I have or haven't done.
poster:pinkeye
thread:484356
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050409/msgs/486193.html