Home→Forums→Relationships→Dating an attractive guy has made me insecure
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August 20, 2018 at 9:32 am #222191HannahParticipant
I met a new guy on a dating app in May. Things have progressed well and we are now in a relationship.
He wasn’t my usual kind of guy… I would normally go for someone perhaps a little alternative, intelligent, a bit different. This guy is typically attractive, tanned, muscular and handsome. I think he is gorgeous, and not just for the way he looks. I feel like he truly cares about me, in a way I have never experienced before. I don’t feel like he needs me for anything or that he is using me for something. We just love each other.
The trouble is, it has made me insecure about the way I look. I am disappointed as I didn’t realise that subconsciously this mattered so much to me. I don’t want to put too much importance on my personal appearance. But I feel that this has started to happen. Lots of girls follow him on social media, and when we were out at the weekend a man shouted out that his male friend found my boyfriend attractive. I just stood there awkwardly. It has been playing on my mind and kind of reinforced the idea that I am not attractive enough to be with him.
I am wondering if anyone has any advice on how I can refocus on the more important aspects of my relationship instead of becoming more and more insecure.
August 20, 2018 at 11:15 am #222211AnonymousGuestDear Hannah:
“a man shouted out that his male friend found my boyfriend attractive”, you wrote. Next you wrote, “it has been playing on my mind .. that I am not attractive enough to be with him”-
whether you are attractive enough to be with your boyfriend is not up to that man who shouted, a stranger to you and to your boyfriend. Nor is it up to the “Lots of girls (who) follow him on social media”. It really is up to him to determine if you are attractive enough to be dating you.
I suggest you don’t give strangers the power to decide for you if you are attractive enough for him. According to your boyfriend, you are attractive enough, isn’t it so?
anita
August 20, 2018 at 1:53 pm #222253HannahParticipantHi Anita,
Thank-you for replying. Yes you are right, I am giving my power away to strangers that have no significance in my life or my relationship.
I suppose perhaps I feel that he is more attractive than me and that’s why I’m letting myself get insecure about this.
Maybe I need to work on my self esteem but I’m not sure how to do this.
August 21, 2018 at 8:45 am #222327AnonymousGuestDear Hannah:
You are welcome. Working on feeling that you are indeed attractive, worthy of the attention and love of a man, especially one who you believe is worthy and attractive, is a long term goal and process. For now, when you are with him and he expresses attraction toward you and he expresses the value he sees in you, let it soak in a bit, bit by bit, let it in. Take a deep breath when you find your breath shallow, when you feel tense, and relax. Think to yourself: he values me. He is attracted to me. Breathe in the thought slowly. And do it repeatedly.
anita
August 21, 2018 at 10:07 am #222357RevRyParticipantHannah Hi there, long story short, it is your own feelings that you are having problems with, love is love, beauty is only skin deep, my husband often says ‘Your very good looking aren’t you? I’m lucky to have you’ I dismiss his comments and sometimes in guest say yes you are! lol. I was always getting attention from guys, getting touched up, groped, numbers pushed into my hands and clothes etc but not one did I ring or end up with! My husband doesn’t feel attractive (this bits for you) but I know he is that’s what drew me to him, he’s as lovely inside as out! still is after many years, Soooo chilax or you may ruin your rel/ship.
Take a chill pill, go with the flow, enjoy the attention he receives BUT know whose bed he will share at the end of the night YOURS x blessings x
August 24, 2018 at 3:31 am #222815HannahParticipantThank-you both for your replies. It turns out he has been swiping on dating apps the whole time we were together so I guess I really wasn’t enough.
August 24, 2018 at 4:45 am #222823AnonymousGuestDear Hannah:
You are welcome. I am guessing you are not feeling that great now, and wish it wasn’t so.
How did you find out and what did you find out about him “swiping on dating apps the whole time”? Was he dating/ seeing other women or was he active online only?
anita
August 24, 2018 at 12:54 pm #222889AliciaParticipantPeople are so different, you never know what love means to him, with short time. Maybe he says it very often and quickly for girls, he have met. But try to concentrate on your intuition, what you feel, when you think about his intentions.
In some point, when we look celebrities or other couples, then attractive and ordinary people are very often happily together. Just stay confident and dont concentrate on others people opinions.
August 26, 2018 at 12:05 pm #223119HannahParticipantHi Anita,
I don’t feel good at all.
I usually don’t meet people that I ever feel care for me and I did feel that he did.
But finding this out has made me doubt his feelings for me and my own intuition.
He was swiping on them, that’s the only thing I know for sure. He says he didn’t talk to anyone of meet up with anyone but I feel I can’t believe anything he says now.
The reason he gave for being on there was that he liked the buzz he got from matching with people and he should have ended it when we got serious but found it hard to break the habit.
I haven’t ended things because I don’t feel ready to lose him. I love what we had and I love and care about him.
I feel really sad and disappointed and as if I was just not right for him or not enough.
August 26, 2018 at 1:05 pm #223121AnonymousGuestDear Hannah:
I hope you feel better soon.
The reason he gave you, that “he liked the buzz he got from matching with people … found it hard to break the habit”- reads very believable to me, from my own personal experience. It really does provide that buzz for a whole lot of people, to interact with so many people, all interested in dating. No other medium provides such an experience. It is exciting especially for people who before being a member in a dating site had little interactions and little dating.
Pleasurable habits being hard to break is of course true to all humans.
Because the two of you started dating not long ago, maybe it is fair that you give him another chance to stop his online activity. This buzz it does not indicate that he doesn’t like you or that you are not enough for him. It is an excitement that he experienced before dating you and continued to seek. I hope he does disable or delete his profile or profiles on any and all sites and focus on you.
* I will be away from the computer and back in about 15 hours.
anita
August 26, 2018 at 3:11 pm #223139HannahParticipantHi Anita,
Thank-you for your kind words.
I also do understand the buzz and the attention from dating sites. I am glad that you agree too, my friends have not been very understanding and have made me feel quite bad about the whole situation.
I decided to give it another chance because as you said, it has not been too long and I am capable of understanding and forgiving. However my insecurities are running quite wild, so it will be a matter of keeping these under control.
I hope that we can work on our relationship and grow closer. And I hope I can get my confidence back otherwise I feel that will cause things to fall apart as I won’t be the same person I was when we met.
August 27, 2018 at 6:12 am #223211AnonymousGuestDear Hannah:
You are welcome. I think it is a wise choice, to give it another chance. Tell him simply, honestly how you feel (or keep telling him). Ask him how he feels. See to it that the two of you honestly share and listen to each other, empathetically and respectfully. Make a habit of it and keep it going.
You will need to see, in context of the issue here, that he is motivated to not hurt you more than he is motivated to feel that buzz. See that he values you, cares about how you feel.
What lots of people do in a situation like this is pressure and threaten the other person. Not a good plan of action. All you need is to see if, as is, he cares about how you feel more than he cares about the buzz. So share with him, tell him how important it is to you that he no longer engages in that online activity. And do post here again anytime. I would like to read from you again and will reply every time you post.
anita
August 28, 2018 at 7:57 am #223385HannahParticipantThanks Anita, I will certainly try and express how I feel calmly and see what kind of response I get.
I think the problem is that he doesn’t say how
he feels when we speak about this and I have to
keep asking. I don’t get impatient but try and stay calm so I get an honest response. I get the feeling that maybe he felt insecure or as if he was more into things than I was but doesn’t want to look weak. I am not always very good at expressing my feelings because it makes me feel vulnerable.
August 28, 2018 at 8:39 am #223399AnonymousGuestDear Hannah:
You are welcome. Like you, he probably doesn’t want to feel vulnerable. You wrote that he is attractive and that makes you feel insecure, but notice this: many physically attractive men and women feel insecure too. They look at the mirror and they don’t like what they see, or they hear a compliment about looking good and they think something like: if only that person knew how ugly I am on the inside…
When you ask him a question and he doesn’t answer, maybe it is difficult for him, better not repeat the same question, let it go. Later you can ask him another question that may be easier for him to answer. That other question and other questions in the future will eventually give you the information you need.
anita
August 31, 2018 at 8:33 am #223877HannahParticipantSo I have an update…
We argued because he did not seem to be putting any effort in to make me feel better about what happened. Instead he seemed to be pushing me away.
We didn’t speak for 24 hours. Then he said he felt that he had ruined things and didn’t have what it took to fix it. He said several different things, and I feel very confused. The main things he said were as follows:
-He felt that I deserved better than him. He said that he holds me in such high regard that he looks at himself and feels like he isn’t good enough
-He said he loved me too much and it scared him as he was scared he would let me down again and he didn’t want to live with the guilt
-He said that he thought about why he went on the dating apps when we were together and he was worried it was because something was missing. But he can’t see that anything is missing. This one has made me feel pretty insecure.
-He finally said that he wants to give things another go, with a clean slate.
My problem is that I am not entirely sure I can just let everything go and have a clean slate. I will be dwelling on the fact that he said he worried something was missing. Because maybe it is missing and he either won’t admit it because he doesn’t want to hurt me, or he just can’t think of a specific thing to say so he assumes everything is ok when really it is just not enough for him.
I feel confused. I never put any pressure on him to say anything or do anything. He told me loved me, I could tell that he did. But what has happened does bring that into question. Why would he have doubted things if he loved me?
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