My Dating Advice

I hear some child abuse survivors are beginning to date.  I may have some advice.  :)  Aw, come on you know I would.

Now, here's the one big, big thing that must be addressed.  It's how we feel about ourselves.  As you know, I've studied this thing to death and therefore I know there is one thing that we can't get around. What does the opposite sex want?  Well, mainly I can only talk for women here, but men might get something from this.

Single men are looking for the high value woman.  That's right.  Let's talk about my mother for a moment.  And this is a memory.  She hated people who were high class, but she hated the low class too.  I can't put mother's personal values into a box if I tried.  They are all over the place.  But if you acted all high class she wouldn't talk to you.

Here's what I think.  She can't get narcissistic feed from a high class person.  She can from a lowly person.  I think its that simple.  But she brainwashed me to be low class, for she said it was better to be humble and then she brainwashed me to hate myself for being low class.  Do you remember my posting about humiliation?  Yes, that's what she wanted.

But I know for a fact that single men are looking for high value women.  I have studied it.  Please don't close this thinking you don't fit the bill here, I'm not done.

I know I have things wrong with me.  Things missing.  I was made that way, and I feel that I can correct some of the damage, but I can't correct it all.  Maybe I can, but I'm sure I'll be paying for a few Mercedes for therapists before healing were to happen.  If it ever does.

I have full medical coverage for therapy.  I could see any therapist I want to, take any drug that is needed.  I look at it this way:  I can spend all my time in the therapists office or I can just go on with my life the way it is.  I choose the latter.  And I embrace it.  I embrace life.

We can have it all in life and in love, when we embrace the actual imperfections that have caused us so much grief.  Hey, after all, I believe my life was crazy, a train wreck does little to describe the pain and agony I went through.  I was never enough, and spent my whole life trying to be enough, and I never made it.

Now, I am enough.  It was not careers that make me enough, or fancy cars or houses.  Just me.  There is still work to be done here on me, but for now and from now on I choose to believe that I am enough.  Just the way I am.

I love that woman who runs that relationship site I frequent.  There she was studying to be a lawyer and every sickness plagued her body.  Every illness and virus, probably bent over the toilet for every exam.  For every test and exam came with pain and suffering.  It was like her body was rejecting becoming a lawyer, although it was the thing her family wanted.  She tried to please them, she tried to be enough that way.  Like most of us she grew up on the pain of equal rights for women, and it was hard.  She wasn't being herself, she wasn't happy.  She was spending the time she had her on earth pleasing others.  And it wasn't working.

She decided to live life the way she wanted and thank God she did because in the end, she was the only one who could reach me.  I found barriers to understanding everywhere I went.  I even tried to study the teachings of Anthony Robbins, and still no go.  She actually uses some of his teachings. She has managed to break everything down into bite size pieces that I'm able to understand.  And not just me, she has a huge following.  Massive career women even, six figure salary women, all saying that they are lonely, they are scared, want children, want marriage, want the white picket fence.

There is a certain danger we all face as ACON's.  I mean to go out there into the dating world.  This feeling that we are lesser than, and how we compensate for it.  Yes, I do feel it is a danger.  Does it not make sense that our flaws can bring the most evil men around looking for something to feed on?

Why do men want the high value woman only?  Because it is in his genetics, he can't help it.  But here is the trick, the high value woman is defined by her state of mind.

If I were to start dating again, I actually think it would be fun.  I could enjoy the whole process this time.  Sometimes, its a habit to look back and see how we can correct the mistakes of the past.  But all I can do is write about it.  This is fun for me, to get to talk about it.  There are sad posts, and sometimes there are really happy posts.  I feel all this positive energy talking about this.

I think what I'm trying to say that we need to accept the broken parts, embrace them, correct things if you can, but treat it as normal.  Then go out into the dating world.  Even if you are attractive and in good shape, hey, he might see you as a beautiful piece of trash.  His genetics won't see past the "flaws" if you don't.  He sees what you project.  If you are broken down and trying to find the right man for your life, it will be horrible.

For one thing, embracing all your bad and good parts will protect you. It is your protection in the dating world.  But if you see yourself as damaged goods, that's how you'll be seen by others.  Good men don't want damaged goods, it is designed in their genetics to choose the best.  And the narcissistic man will only see the chance to abuse you.  There is a hole in your armour that disappears the moment you choose to accept the parts of yourself that you hate.  So remember that.  That is the important and key feature here.  If you are not loving those bad parts,  you will find a creep who will use them to destroy you.

I once knew this girl online that was born with only one arm.  She was a beautiful girl.  She said she could change a tire on a car, can load a rifle, go hunting.  She kept a beautiful french manicure on the one hand, worked out at the gym, she was strong in the way I could tell by the way she talked to people.  She was all that and a case of rum, all the while being disabled.  I saw her pictures, it was like a glamour goddess with one arm.

I got the feeling she embraced her missing arm with a great deal of dignity.  You say she had no other choice?  Sure, she did.  She could have worn baggy clothes to cover her shoulder, stayed at home, never wore makeup.  And why even bother with the fancy manicure?  I mean really.  But it made a statement about who she is.

We need to figure out what is normal.  To learn to accept that being normal is relative.  I can be normal.  I know I have to fix things that are harmful, I have a few fleas, but overall, there is no one like me.  I'm irreplaceable, unique person, that can be loved for who I am.  Quirks and all.

If there is one thing I can change while looking back on my life, other than my mother being a freak. I mean the one thing I could have changed, it would have been never to go to therapy.  It's not that they don't know much about this (they don't) but I should have spent my time doing the things I loved. But no, I had to spend my time and my life correcting myself.  My last ex-husband wanted me at a job working.  And I couldn't work much, so I went to counselling.  I spent a lot of time trying to be enough and I never was enough. And all I wanted to do was enjoy my time here.  Time is so limited, we can't spend it trying to please, or correct things, life must be lived.

But I'm not saying therapy isn't for everyone.  But there are certain things we need to accept and embrace regardless.  If we can do that well, just like the girl in the story, we can actually transform ourselves from low value to high value.  She was high value, and you better believe it.  She would make you believe it.  It is my belief that these things don't matter all that much.

I'm not saying to go out on a date and make an announcement that you are an ACON.  But you are not going to go out on your date, trying to cover something he might see.  You can be open, vulnerable, caring. Just get out of your head and into your feelings, where you can explore this guy out well.  See who he is.  He may not even be worth worrying so much about.  Then you can be on to the next.

It is my belief that if you can do these things, you will find the best soul mate there is.  He can eventually see your disability and he will treat it with the utmost respect and be your hero.

For me this is normal.

So I guess the trick is to find the balance when you start out dating.  Of course, we don't want to disclose everything that's deeply personal and we want to hide the things we don't like about ourselves.  But what about the parts of ourselves we hate but have embraced anyway?  I try to look at it this way.  To try to find the balance where I'm not creating superficial relationships.  If all he sees is that I'm attractive and make a lot of money, that I'm perfect, why would I need him for?  How does this make him feel about himself?  Feminism has taught us that we need to be all that, or we don't stand a chance.  But reality tells me that a real man needs to be needed.  I imagine all those hunter and gatherer cultures, where the man would be the big man when he speared the woolly mammoth and took it back home.  Just the fact that he was needed to do so made him feel really good.  Its how we make him feel about himself, not how gorgeous or how well we can take care of ourselves.

Among my studies about relationships, one key thing kept popping up.  Men are not falling in love with beautiful perfect women.  No not at all.  She might be beautiful but she is not perfect and no one is perfect.  The difference is in embracing or not embracing the "bad stuff".  Hey, if you make it ok, it will be seen as ok.  It is not a job interview, you are trying to find love.  And love is in the imperfections.  He is looking for a problem to solve, someone to fit that part of his life.  Afterall, there are no more woolly mammoths to make him feel good about himself, to make him feel like the big hero, thousands of years hardwiring there.  So much hardwiring, in fact that feminism can't take it away.  He needs this and all I want at the end of the day is to be loved and cared for, not to be perfect, or project perfection. At the end of the day I want to breathe in my imperfections and have them loved too.  This is why hero movies have the biggest audiences.  But, in order to have the hero, we must be willing to be open for it.

Is it really all that bad?  These imperfections?  Maybe they are.  I have no doubt that ACON's have serious mental health issues.  Can we embrace schizophrenia or bipolar disorder?  Or other serious health issues?  I think we can.  Let's admit, we are all a little older, and most people our age carries some flaws anyway.   That is just a matter of fact.  And the fact that you might have a serious mental health issue is a matter of fact.  I may never change, it is just the way it is.  So sure, why not embrace them, embrace life at its fullest.  You have good parts too.  It is all a package.  As for me, I know I don't feel that well, my thoughts are screwed up, but that's ok too.

And, really this is just my opinion here, but it seems rational.  Sex seems to be all over the place. Placing women as well as men as "needing to get laid".  Historically, I believe that sex wasn't that easy for men to get.  And I believe women were not all that keen on it, if he couldn't protect and provide.  Men had to risk their lives to get sex.  In other words, to hunt.  To beat out that other men, and be competitive and to win.  So it makes perfect sense to me that he will be looking for something that would be worth his while.  To make him feel good.  Even nowadays, he needs to fit the bill.  He needs a place to feel successful.  This is survival, this is not frivolous.

So, overall, if you see parts of yourself that you just despise, learn to embrace them.  In a way they really are survival mechanisms that kept you alive.  That makes you high value.