Not a ten.
I lay no claim to being exceptionally dateable. It can’t be easy to let yourself fall for me, and maybe it’s not even smart. I realize everyone has their own personal red flags, but logically, I must live in much of their overlap.
When you read discussions about evolutionary psychology, debates about weight, or even conversations on general attractiveness, someone will always raise the point that human beings are fundamentally attracted to health. This probably seems like a diplomatic, benign way to speak about physical beauty: Can’t we all just agree that we’re programmed to read signs of health as beauty? Isn’t health really the most important factor in choosing a mate?
Every time I hear that, read that, I flinch just a little. It’s such a casual way to tell someone that no matter how she actually looks, she doesn’t count as pretty.
I am not healthy. My body has not been healthy for several years. I am disabled; I am sick. I have debilitating fatigue, chronic pain, a compromised immune system, and a low tolerance for activity. I wouldn’t have a breath of a prayer of surviving in the wild. Despite the fact that even I get mesmerized by my ass sometimes, in one sense I’m unattractive on the most basic level. And even ignoring bullshit theories and pseudoscience, being in a relationship with me day-to-day must be frustrating.
Want to do a fun activity together? Depending what it is, I might be able to do it if I have a week’s notice so I can rest. And a free week after, so I can rest. Want to do a fun, spontaneous activity together? Haha fuck you no.
Feel like grabbing a bite to eat together? Okay, but right now I’m off gluten, dairy, sugar, and fifteen other things just in case it helps my illness. So far it hasn’t helped much, but it means we definitely can’t order that pizza. Also, I bring my own sugar-free ketchup or wheat-free soy sauce along, which I acknowledge might be weird.
Do you want a partner who can be your workout buddy? Who’ll go dancing with you every weekend? Who lives a normal, productive, active life? Who can work a normal full-time job? I’ll say it now: you can’t rely on me. I may never be this for you no matter how much I try.
Add to this the fact that even if I were perfectly healthy I’d still have my emotional issues and my weaknesses, just like anyone else, and most people would run away, sweating from the adrenaline rush of having just dodged a bullet. Wouldn’t they?
But I know something they don’t: I’m worth it. Not to everyone, maybe, but to the few, I’m so entirely worth it. I will love them so fiercely and sweetly, we’ll laugh together so joyously, and those things I do offer will bewitch them so thoroughly that my health will be a detail, trivia, like the maze of color in my eyes. Like the ridiculous songs I make up. Like the brownies I bake that I can’t even eat myself, but I know you like them. Like my insatiable lust for the people I love.
I’m no one’s textbook ideal mate. No one describes their perfect woman as always sick. But I make up for it. I try to. I have to believe I do.
There really isn’t anything I can say here that’s likely to make you feel any better–and maybe I shouldn’t try: it may not be what you’re looking for and I don’t really know anything about you other than what I’ve read on this blog. But, since I’m here anyway….
Feeling like you have some characteristic that makes you undateable or unlovable makes being dated and/or being fallen in love with (forgive my dangling prepositions) doubly hard. I know I beat myself up constantly about every aspect of my physical appearance to the point of having no self confidence; something that we’re all aware is as unsexy as being unable to come with a clever simile.
But, the cliche that it’s what’s inside that counts is true. You ARE more than any physical or emotional condition, even when fatigue and pain and depression make that fact difficult to remember. And you ARE worthy of being wanted and loved (and achieving any other goal that you’ve set for yourself, too). And if you can remember that, maybe you’ll flinch a little less at the suggestion that you can’t be pretty because you’re sick, because you’ll know that it just ain’t true.
Perfect, start to finish.
‘You had me at hello’? Your personality captivates. Trust me. The first time I met you. . . I still cant shake the image of you as a rockstar, singing and dancing, cane and all. So, you have limits? We all have limits. So you rent perfect? Good thing! That would be boring. So you cant eat at most places? Damn. Guess I will just have to try to dazzle you with my cooking skills. . . .Or more likely produce a laughter-gale-inspiring mess, and moderately acceptable food. Cant go out? Conversation on the couch is enough to keep me captivated for a couple of dozen dates, easy.
What I am saying is:
Anyone who looks beyond the limitations to the vibrant personality in the drivers seat knows you are worth caring about. I can see that you try hard to protect those around you from those limitations. . . I say that selfish. Offer them the chance to see you, while alerting them to the limits. . . And share some joy in the fact that there are those who value you enough to be willing to stride into the briar patch for the value of your company. Anyone who knows me well knows there is a briar patch around me too. As is true of most of the friends we share.
Your friends want to be your friends. . . And are more than willing to drive home an hour earlier than they planned, because you got tired, glad to have spent some time with someone they care about. And those who want to be your lover? It requires the stick of your reserve to keep them at bay. . .Trust me, I watch.
Observing humanity is my favorite game.
“Want to do a fun activity together? Depending what it is, I might be able to do it if I have a week’s notice so I can rest. And a free week after, so I can rest.”
- This describes me with social activities.
Being around other people makes me feel like I am getting crowded out of my own mind. It’s psychologically exhausting. To make things worse I start to go crazy if I -don’t- socialize every once in a while.
I’ve never really thought of it as a drawback to dating me so much as a limit to who I should date.
You think you’re hard to date? I’m an egoistic arrogant anti-elitism objectivist supergenius who hates being around other people for sustained periods of time and almost never has anything to say. (Although on the rare occasion I do have something to say, it doesn’t tend to stop; so I’m either driving somebody crazy not talking at all or driving them crazy talking endlessly, probably about some bizarre subject most people have little to no interest in.)
If I thought of it in terms of how undesirable I am as a dating partner to the average person I’d have a hard time being quite as arrogant as I am. (Which might help my desirability to the average person, come to think of it.)
But that’s not what it is. I’m not dating the average person, but somebody whose eccentricities mesh well with my own.
For somebody, your inability to be active every day is a positive thing, because you’re not going to be pushing them into something every day. For somebody, your eating habits mean they won’t feel so out of place as they grill a waiter about whether or not a menu item contains egg derivatives or red wine – or your eating habits mean they get to try out cooking exciting new approaches to cooking on a regular basis. (I drive my housemates crazy cooking things nobody has any business cooking. For example, whey-protein-powder based bread. It’s spongy in a rather unpleasant way, but tastes surprisingly good with melted chocolate.)
The idea of being accepted for who you are, which is a philosophy I sense in this post, is entirely wrongheaded. You shouldn’t be looking for acceptance, but desire and compatibility. You shouldn’t look for somebody who can live with your oddities, but somebody who breathes a sigh of relief and says “Yes! Finally!”
If I were a man, I’d still think I hit the jackpot if you were mine. Everything inside that beautiful mind of yours, that comes out in your blogs. It’s hot, sexy, confident. And even if it isn’t, it’s how I see you.
This is beautiful.
I completely understand this. I have two separate rare diseases that require fifteen different meds a day, and monthly trips to three or four different doctors. Consequently, I always feel tired, and sick, and there are a LOT of things I cannot physically do. I’m hospitalized often, and I constantly feel like I’m broken and nobody would or should want to be in a relationship with me. I have so many problems that I felt like I needed to warn my current boyfriend away from me when he showed interest; I realize that I am inherently unattractive, as I am not healthy, and it hurts.
Basically, what you said just hit very close to home, and I suppose I wanted to share in the off chance that it might make you feel less alone in that. Sometimes it’s hard being the gimpy one.
You guys are really the best. I need you to know that.
Oh, honey.
If I weren’t taken.
I’d take that bet.
Aw, sweetie– I hate seeing you feeling this way about yourself. We all will come up against the brick wall of physical limitations sooner or later but that’s no measure of who we are as people or what it means to be intimate with our fabulous, bad selves. You sparkle like a diamond with one of the most radiant, gorgeous smiles I’ve ever seen. And physically, yeah, I saw you had a cane, but you physically look nibble-worthy, too. You are beautiful, incredibly sexy and SO much fun. I’m saying all of that from my heart, and I haven’t even had one of your brownies. I’m not the let’s-go-kayaking type anyway, but I’d vastly prefer to snuggle up with someone with a big mug of green tea and talk about books or films or ideas than run about sweating and skinning my knees anyway. Now, sweating at home and carpet burns, otoh… Anyway, you’re gorgeous and your health is something which must be regarded and guarded, but it would by no means be a deal-breaker to me or to any of a lot of other folks whom you have bewitched. You’re a hot pool of womanhood, regardless of the health issue. It’s something you have but it’s not who you are.
Screw evolution! We’re cultural beings. The one feature that has ensured our survival is that we are able to adjust our environment to our needs instead of the other way around. And this means we’re able to afford diversity without fearing for it to be killed off by evolution! And this in turn means that for any person there will be someone who meets their needs and has their needs met by them… it’s not about scoring “high enough” on an absolute scale, it’s about fitting together according to an individual pattern (approximately – there is probably no such thing as perfect fit).
On the other hand, if we must consider evolution, then maybe we actually need this diversity: Maybe those of us who don’t “function well” under the current conditions are like indicator plants, signaling to the rest of the species that some of the conditions we adjusted to our short-term needs aren’t so good for our long-term wellbeing, and that we should re-adjust them (because they’re really far off from our “natural habitat”, and while the whole not-dying-of-diseases-or-famine part is pretty awesome, the everything’s-sanitized-and-the-air-is-polluted-and-our-food-is-overprocessed part is not!). That’s pretty important, and – methinks – incredibly sexy :)
I’m so sorry you’re in a rough spot right now but please know that you have a lot of admirers. In fact go ahead and get a big head over that fact. It’s healthy once in a while.
Just adding to the crowd of commenters telling you how damn awesome you are. This blog is fantastic because of your intelligence, perceptiveness, humor, and commitment. Thank you for using some of your energy to make it keep happening. I know the feeling of being the wrong shape for the very narrow mold of Acceptable Human Female Dater, but I want to assure you that you are so worth dating and knowing.
You sound great, but I was distracted by Ten.