I gave up on finding the "perfect" man years ago. I don't have any hopes of finding a guy who'd want to date or marry me. I've learned not to expect any kind of compliments from men, because they don't normally compliment the fat girls. I basically gave up on men altogether, aside from my dad and my best friend. I remember talking with a girl friend of mine last year about how "men are pigs." We were joking, mostly, but there was a part of us that believed that was the case with the vast majority of men. And then I decided to go back to college this spring and take a Theater Appreciation class and I met him. A man I barely knew who actually talked to me, listened to me, joked with me, teased me, and told me more than once that I looked really nice or pretty on a particular day. And there's absolutely nothing romantic or sexual about it, he's just genuinely nice. I can't tell you how refreshing that is or how much it means to have someone say that to me. I don't get a lot of compliments on my looks, rarely from girls and never from guys.
I remember being younger and sometimes fishing for compliments when I'd put extra effort into how I looked. I wanted so badly to be noticed, to be told that I was beautiful because I didn't think I was beautiful, I needed someone else to tell me that I was. I don't care so much about my looks these days, I don't generally put in any extra effort to look nice. I'm not trying to impress anybody anymore. At this point I'm pretty much like, if you don't like the way I look or who I am, you can take a hike cause I don't give a crap what you think about me. Okay, so not entirely true but I've gotten much better about just being myself and not trying to be someone else or trying to impress others.
