REPOST: How to overcome the feeling that oneself is unattractive
T. Gryn
years ago to soc.singles....with Gary's permission, I am reposting it.
There are a couple others by Gary that I will be reposting directly. I
hope you find them worthwhile reading.
Gary's webpage can be found at http://skybird.org/fnl/fnl/
====================
From: fl...@lopez.UUCP (Gary Bourgois)
Subject: How to overcome the feeling that oneself is unattractive
Message-ID: <1990Jul3.1...@lopez.UUCP>
Followup-To: soc.singles
Keywords: Everybody's body is attractive to SOMEbody
Organization: Great White North/UPlink
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 15:27:30 GMT
Lines: 246
I occaisionally haunt soc.singles and soc.couples, and occaisionally
have posted a piece or two when I felt it was germaine to the
discussion. Usually my pieces are lengthy, but not being a frequent
poster, I hope I don't garner any flames for boring you with a
philosophy that is different from much (though thankfully not all) of
what I read on here.
Most of the participants in many of the discussions are far younger
than I. In fact, I am probably one of the older netters, with a LOT
of living under my belt... And though I have come to realize that you
can not tell ANYONE ANYTHING, since we must learn on our own, I none
the less feel that perhaps some of my philosophies might be helpful.
One topic that seems to come up over and over again is the one of
physical attractiveness, and how important it is. Weight has been a
frequent topic, and I have jumped in there myself on THAT one.
Recently there has been a thread in soc.singles regarding perceiving
oneSELF as unattractive, and having acne. Needless to say, I endured
the taunts and jeers that anyone who is different endures. So it is
not surprising that by the time I was in high school, I became a total
loner, a hermit who managed to skip as much school as possible,
participated in NO social activities of any kind, prefering the
comfort of the basement, and my audio and radio hobbies. My picture
or name are not in the senior annual, and I did not go to graduation.
College was not much better. When I was 18, The acne managed to come
under control, but I had balded and thus was the epitome of what I
believed was "ugly", the big three that you still hear expressed as
the NIGHTMARE blind date, short fat and bald. Eyes the color of
dishwater, and in general, in my own mind without any decent or even
"normal" physical feature. I was unable to look in a mirror, and
could not even stand to see my reflection in a store window. I was
one miserable kid.
I had never been on a date when I got to college, and though I did
manage to make friends with many girls, I did not ask any of them out
because I "KNEW" they found me unattractive.
Things suddenly changed, though when I got my first job. DJ on a
local popular radio station. Back when stations allowed their
announcers a great deal of freedom to put their programs together, I
blended all forms of creativity with the best new music I could lay my
hands on. The phones rang off the hook. Although I was still the same
guy, who had no confidence on a face to face conversation, I found the
microphone to be a friend. I always did the program as if I were
talking to someone, ONE person. And a very very special person at
that. Though everything about my physical being was, to my mind,
severely wrong, The Lord gave me a very expressive voice, one that
many of the female callers termed "sexy". Of course I knew the
"truth" and so began to lead a double life. I did not want ANYONE to
know that I was the guy on the radio if they met me in "real life",
and I managed to avoid visitors at the station, since I worked nights
and all the doors were locked.
Some of my experiences during this time of my life, have been written
about before in my article "Radio Groupies" (available on request).
Though I had made a decision to not date radio groupies, I broke that
vow after many hours of conversation with a girl who assured me that
physical appearence did not matter to her. So I went to the
university and we met.
I could tell immediately that she was uncomfortable, and after
spending a long time talking, she finally admitted to me that she
thought I had "lied" to her about what I looked like, so she lied to
me saying that looks did not matter. Having talked to her for several
months, for many hours and shared with her my hopes and dreams, I was
absolutely crushed.
She had been unable to look at me during our entire time together. It
was one of the worst experiences of my lifetime to that point.
I went into a pretty major depression, but continued to work, although
I mostly played records and did not say much other than introduce the
music, and "canned" things like weather forcasts.
Well she called, of course. She appologised, and said we should maybe
see one ahother again. (She found herself lonely without the long
phone calls).
The thing is, this girl was not beautiful by any conventional
description. She too was very overweight, and very plain, which did
not matter to me at all, because I accepted her for who she was on the
"inside" something I had always wanted someone to do with me, but no
one ever had.
Our dates continued to be dismal. She often mentioned the "problem"
she had accepting the way I looked, versus the image she had in her
head when she heard me speak.
It was during one of these conversations at two or three in the
morning in the dorm lounge that something snapped inside of me. My
sanity went totally out the window and I thought to myself (though did
not say to her) "B*tch, I am gonna make you marry me".
To make an interminablly long story less long, I will say I did
precicely that. Through a very strategic program of romantic
wooing, and a number of other circumstances, she finally said yes.
Beware of what you want, they say. You just might get it.
She wanted to be a virgin until our wedding night, and I being
romantic did not press her.
We had a beautiful memorable wedding that we wrote ourselves,
and there was hardly a dry eye in the house. It was like one
of my radio shows, designed to elicit the deepest emotions.
Emotions that somehow never seemed to be present in my bride.
On our wedding night, she informed me that she did not love me, and
that she married me because "I made her" (Interesting use of words,
since I never told her about when my brain went "snap").
Needless to say, the wedding night was NOT one of love and romance.
Indeed many days later, she remained a virgin. When she finally
concented to consumate the marraige, she was unable to respond to me,
again, she said because of not being attracted to me. I was a gentle
attentive lover, but that aspect of the relationship was, for the
duration of those 7 years, totally unsatisfactory. Though the doctors
could find nothing wrong, she claimed that normal sexual relations
were painful, and coupled with her great fear of pregnancy, I finally
gave up, even though she was on the pill.
So after 7 years of insanity, power struggles, and shattered dreams,
we parted company. No one in either of our families had ever been
divorced, so we just stayed together for convienince. Until it became
just totally inconvienient and unbearable for us.
So I left. We talked about it for years, and agreed it was the only
way, but she was pretty surprised when one day after one of her insane
screaming binges, she came back home from her babysitting job, and
found I had taken all my clothes, radio and audio equipment, and my
cat.
There was no real fight in court. No kids, only the house as
community property, which reverted to the bank. She moved away and I
became a hermit.
I did have one brief relationship with a woman in Minneapolis, with
whom I discovered much about myself. One thing that amazed me was
that when we went out, or made love, she LOOKED at me. Though the
relationship did not last, it did do a bit for the self image.
BUT then I went back to my original feelings, and I felt that this one
relationship was a fluke, and chalked up its lack of longevity to the
fact that I was short fat and bald, (the big three) and assumed that
my girlfriend just lied, since she was deceptive on other issues.
Now comes the interesting part, of HOW I managed to overcome the
problem I had with my self image, and if you have read this far, bear
with me, the article will come to an end, I promise....
I managed always to have friends, some male, some female, but I always
kept my distance, reverting to my old ways of being a hermit. Being
a bit older, I got out of Rock Radio, and into public radio, which
catered to an older audience. I also got into TV announcing, and
continued to use the microphone as an outlet for the sensitive caring
person trapped inside the nonstandard and unacceptable frame.
Then in 1979 I bought a video recorder. This was when these devices
were the size of a small stove, mind you, but I had to have one.
Since I was in the hobby of exchanging audio tapes as a form of
correspondence, I thought it would be fun and novel
to send a video tape letter to some of my friends, so I borrowed a
black and white camera from work (It was HUGE) and sat in front of the
thing and tried to communicate.
Remember now, this is the guy who can not look at himself in the
Mirror. Playing the tape back was a very unsettling experience at
first. I erased it and made another one. The second one was not much
better than the first. It was weird. Hearing my voice coming out of
that weird person was unsettling...(I was used to the sound of my
voice, something most people who do not use audio recorders will tell
you they can not stand, though THEY could look in the mirror, and I
could not)...
So, I decided to try and make the tape more interesting. I used
props, funny hats, all sorts of things. I mailed the tapes out, and a
couple of my friends liked the idea so much, that they went out and
bought black and white cameras of their own. For me a new era began.
In time, I found that there were parts of my visage that I could
accept. My eyes, which on the first tape were lifeless pools of
dishwater, became more lifelike, as I used the video pLaxBack to learn
to make myself more expressive. I learned to gesture, and I learned
to smile. I never had realized that nature had gifted me with fairly
straight front teeth. I had spent so much time concentrating on being
"ugly" that I had an image of myself that was actually worse than what
the camera revealed.
I guess you could call it video therapy, and I think it would work for
anyone who, like I did, thinks of themselves as unattractive. The
initial viewings will reinforce those negative feelings, but over
time, I think this same method would work for anyone. And THESE days,
video equipment is EVERYWHERE, and CHEAP.
I got so enthusiastic about the video corresponding hobby, that at one
time I exchanged tapes with several people, and even used to write
about it in a national video magazine and hosted a monthly column
devoted to videosponding.
It changed my life. Now I CAN look in the mirror, though to me the
mirror image is BACKWARDS. I am totally accustomed to making
videotapes, as the camera became the same friend the microphone had
become before it.
And this changed my relationships. I found that when I accepted
myself, and also used the same techniques (Ones that normal people do
naturally) such as making lots of eye contact, gesturing, smiling and
the other things the videotapes taught me, I found that people seemed
to like me more.
Then one day, to my surprise, I met a woman who was attracted to
heavier men, especially ones who were bald and had beards. Being that
she is only 5'2", my height was no problem for her at all. After 10
years, we remain two halves of the same person, though Elaine often
tells me I am a narcissist.... Pretty funny eh?
.......
If you have read my other articles, this one comes between "Radio
Groupies" and "How I found True Love"
I think the saga is now complete.
I won't bore you any more....
Those who managed to read the entire article, and got to this point,
you may now have a donut of your choice.
(No article length flames, please, I only post once every 6 months in
here)
--
=Marquette MI: It's Not the END of the world,
but you can see it from here=
== Gary Bourgois flash@lopez (rutgers!sharkey!lopez!flash)
GWN UPLink ==
== 3.950 Nationwide Amateur Radio Nightly after 0200z=
Learning Channel ==
===== WB8EOH = The Eccentric Old Hippie = WB8EOH =====