Losing Weight And Men

My feelings about dating and losing weight are somewhat conflicted. On one hand I know it'll be easier to find a man when I get more attractive and thin, but on the other hand I wonder if it means I'll end up with a guy who's too superficial to appreciate me as I am.

Like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice (BBC, 1995) said: "If I could love a man who would love me enough to take me for a mere £50 a year, I should be very well pleased. But such a man could hardly be sensible, and I could never love man who was out of his wits!" I feel exactly the same way about my weight. I'd want to find a man who'd love me for who I am, no matter how much I weigh, but at the same time I feel that such a man would be somehow weird or deficient.

What I fear most is that I'm waiting for something that doesn't exist for me. That I'm trying to grasp at straws that aren't there!

Now I've heard more than once that I've watched too many romantic movies and that's why my expectations of men are waaaay too high. Now the truth is that my expectations of men have nothing to do with romantic movies (although I do enjoy the brief flight in a care-free fantasy world they offer me).

My reason for having high expectations is this: my parents have been married for 44 years, and are still happy together. My eldest brother has been married for 22 years, my sister for 13 years and my other brother for 12 years, and all of them are happy together. (Just to clarify, I'm the youngest of the family and my siblings are 8-16 years older than me).

So I've seen first hand that marriage can work, that you can find someone you truly love and live happily together with that person! I'm not saying that these marriage's don't have their own problems, but still the problems are small enough for the marriage to work. So I'm not expecting a fairytale romance, I'm just looking for someone who I can fall in love with and who'll love me back. So simple, yet so hard to find!

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My Romantic Self Esteem

About a week ago I went on a first date. Apparently if you want to find a man, you have to date. In my opinion, that sucks. I hate dating. Especially first dates. They fill me with terror.


It's not that I don't believe that I'm a worthwhile and interesting person, far from it, I believe I'm one of the most interesting persons I've met during my life! And I've known myself for almost 29 years!


Here's what I think it is: I think women have two different self esteems, a normal and a romantic one. The normal self esteem helps us go through everyday situations, work, chores, friendships and basic human interaction. The romantic self esteem comes to play when we're faced with that ultimate enemy: a man. And what I've discovered lately is that my romantic self esteem is absolutely non existent.


I don't know why that is. I'm not ugly, although I am overweight. I know most men see fat as the ultimate flaw in a woman, but I trust that not all of them feel that way. Although my trust in that kind of comes and goes.

It's not that I go on horrific dates with mean men, far from it, most of the men I've been on dates with have been kind and rather funny guys. The problem is that these guys don't make me feel all tingly and giggly inside. And what's worse, I don't make them feel all tingly and giggly inside.

I just watched Adaptation, where Donald Kaufman said: "You are who you love, not who loves you." I wish I could live like that. I wish I didn't care if others love me or not, I wish I could just be happy being myself and being true to what I feel, no matter how others feel about me. But I can't.

As long as I'm unsure about how the other person feels about me, I keep myself distant, I keep my feelings in check and I make damn sure that if he isn't interested in me, then I'm not interested either. The upside is that I don't get hurt when he doesn't call me. The downside is that I've never fallen in love.

But a part of me believes that when I meet the right guy, I won't be able to do that. That he'll whisk me off my feet, no matter how hard I try to resist it. Or perhaps I've just seen too many romantic movies.

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