UPDATE IN THE COMMENTS
I (40m) met my girlfriend “Lily” (29f) nearly 4 years ago. She is the assistant director of our local animal shelter and approached me (I own an HVAC company) about being one of the sponsors for the shelter’s annual fun run. I wrote a check, showed up for the event, she asked me to dinner, and the rest is history
Lily is the most compassionate, kind, beautiful (inside and out) person I’ve ever met. She makes such an effort for every single person in her life (last week she put balloons on our mailbox for the mail lady’s birthday). I’m sitting here thinking of all the things that I love about her and I realized I have to cut it off because this post will be too long. On top of all that, Lily inherited a great deal of money from her late grandparents and has a trust fund from her father so she is financially set for life.
I know I have a tendency to be self-deprecating. I’m a bigger guy, pretty ordinary looking, make OK money, and for the life of me I don’t know what this beautiful, younger woman sees when she looks at me. Lily always gets upset when I make these disparaging comments. Her go-to line is “don’t talk about the man I love like that”. I’ve tried to stop, but it all just seems to feed into this awareness that this woman is so out of my league.
Last night, we went to dinner with friends. One of the couples brought their 6 month old baby and Lily was obsessed. At one point she looks at me with this sweet smile and says “I want one”. I, not missing a beat said “probably want to wait for your next boyfriend who’s prettier than me”. I watched her face crumple.
She cried the whole way home. She thinks I don’t want a family with her. She thinks there is something wrong with HER. I’ve tried to explain but nothing comes out right. I love her and I can feel her closing off to me emotionally. She left this morning to stay with her sister “to take some space”. I’m panicking. Please help.
TL;DR. I’m dating an amazing girl. My insecurities are leading her to believe there is an issue with her. I think our relationship is on the brink.
36 comments
Sounds like you need to address your self-esteem. Why don’t you think you’re worthy of love?
What would you think if she had said something similar to you?
The universe is giving you a gift and you’re spitting on it.
Oh bro. You need to fix this pretty soon. You need to come 1000% clean about your own insecurities and also tell her how much better she makes your life and how much you value her. And that you’re going to work on yourself to be a better partner (and potentially a good father!) and not make your kids ever feel insecure or ugly. Appearances don’t matter as much as character. You’ve insulted her judgment as well (about picking you). I would be really hurt by that too. She was reaching out to you in a very vulnerable way and you shut it down.
>> I, not missing a beat said “probably want to wait for your next boyfriend who’s prettier than me”. I watched her face crumple.
This was a stone-cold asshole thing to say; I do not give a fck about your insecurities. You are actually doing damage to someone you claim to love. Shame! What you need to know is that you have to stop being that guy who says utterly hurtful things when you feel threatened. It is within your power;.
It’s not a defense. But I do think the root of a lot of this was an emotionally abusive relationship I was in for nearly five years. She was the opposite of Lily in every way, she hurt me, and I’m realizing now I’ve been inflicting that same damage on this beautiful human being who loves me and lifts me up instead of putting me down. I wish there were words to describe the shame and horror I’m experiencing right now. This goes so much deeper than I thought.
Alright Reddit. I’m composing the big, long apology speech. This is what I have so far.
Lily,
The first thing I want to tell you is how sorry I am for what I said the other night. It was a reflection of my own warped insecurities and my belief I don’t deserve you or this life we’re building together, it had nothing to do with wanting a family with you. I want to marry you. I want to have babies with you. You’re the best person I know, you make everyone you come in contact with feel special and I love you so much.
That being said, I know I’ve hurt you. I know I’ve BEEN hurting you. I told you my last relationship ended because she cheated on me. I neglected to mention years of condescension, belittling, mocking and slowly chipping away at my self-image. I’m ashamed to say at some point I started believing those things she said about me, so much so that when this beautiful woman walked into my office 4 years ago and smiled at me, I thought you were looking at Ben in the chair behind me.
I’m going to go to therapy. I’m going to do the work so I never inflict my ex’s abuse into you ever again. Im going to do whatever it takes to be a better partner to you because that’s what you deserve. I love you and I’m so sorry.
You should let her read what you posted here. I think it’s better than just the apology. You want to fix things? You have to open yourself completely to her before you can fix the problems. Your post is very revealing, let her read it.
If you keep this up, you will ruin the relationship yourself 🙁
She obviously chose you and she loves you. For you to keep putting yourself down like that is not good, mate.
You need to find a way to work with your self-esteem. Assure her that you made a very bad joke, and it’s not funny and it was because you felt that you’re unworthy for her. Tell her that you’re now more than ever aware of your issue and you are planning on working on your self-esteem. Tell her that you’re working on your insecurity for you but she’s your inspiration to really start.
Also, flowers. Assuming she’s not allergic.
Oh man, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I read your apology, and I think it’s perfect. I grew up being emotionally and physically abused, and it has taken me years to get over the harm that abuse did to my self esteem. On my first date with my now wife, when she told me that she was a pediatrician, my heart sank, because I thought she was probably disappointed to be on a date with me. But I knew that I liked her and I wanted to see where things could go with us, so I knew I had to shut that negative talk down. It’s still a struggle sometimes when I think I don’t deserve her, but working on my own insecurities helps those thoughts to just be passing moments. I applaud your willingness to seek therapy, and I am rooting for you and Lily!
I’m not so sure about the (detailed) apology. I’d just say I’m sorry, there’s some things in the past that made me insecure but it was wrong of me to bring that baggage into this relationship. She may ask and then go a little deeper if you like, but I wouldn’t just throw it all out there. And if you are a bigger guy, why not be a smaller guy? Get a gym membership, go running, hiking, stop drinking pop, eating junk etc. If you’re Samoan or literally every relative has a serious weight problem than my apologies, but most people can at least improve things. Just accept your woman finds you attractive in some way, and men are underrated by pretty much everyone (most young women are considered pretty, very few young men are considered handsome except by their mom/grandma).
Just think what kind of shallow, cruel person she would be to reject a man as a father for being unattractive. Is that the kind of person she is? It doesn’t sound like it. But that’s essentially what you told her. That might be part of why it upset her, it’s such a superficial thing to insinuate.
I don’t want to be too harsh- as someone dating a person who was previously in an emotionally abusive relationship, I know how the after-effects can linger and affect future relationships, with cycles of seeking reassurance and panicking if you think you’ve offended them, overblown desperate apologies. But, I hope you find some ways to address it and make peace with it, and not carry on that unhealthy cycle.
Just quit pouting about how you feel about your looks!!! Stuff will happen in life you can’t control. If she wants to leave you, it will happen regardless. So why try to make it sooner? Jesus man, you can do it. So just stop already.
Have you sent the apology?
You need to learn to love yourself the same way she loves you. You may think you’re not a 10, but I guarantee a woman who loves you (like Lily does) sees a 15. What you’re doing is disrespecting her love for you every time you make these comments to her, you’re pushing her away. Why? She’s proved over and over again you’re the man for her, step up and be the man she chose! Plan a special evening with her and tell her your insecurities, I’m sure she’ll understand and support you. Act soon before you lose this woman!
Is it bad I’m rooting for the next boyfriend?
Apart from therapy and addresing your unsecurities there, I would also mention that you need to in paralel start working on yourself. You mention that you are a bigger guy so start eating healthier (you can get a nutritionist to help- no crazy diets or over the top calorie restriction ) and start hitting the gym. Nothing will prove your abusive ex wrong as you being in a best shape of your life with a beautiful kind girlfriend. Not to mention exercise and good nutrition is the best thing you can do for your mental health.
You basically told her you don’t want children and she should find someone else to be her life partner. She took you seriously, because this isn’t the kind of thing you joke about. If she wants children and you don’t want children, then there’s no amount of wanting or loving each other than can overcome that incompatibility.
You say here that you were just putting yourself down, but could there be some truth behind it? You are 40 years old and childfree so far. Maybe deep inside you don’t want children. You don’t want to lose her, but push comes to shove, you can’t see yourself as a parent.
If you can’t, then you shouldn’t be. Not even to keep this person in your life.
Because the consequences are so huge, you should be completely honest to her and yourself about this — no cute stuff.
My mother abandoned me at the age of 7. Since then I always have this lack of self-esteem (“she left me because I’m not worth her love”). I’m now a grown person but the lack of self confidence returns frequently in many aspects of the relationship I have in my social circle over my entire life.
I root for you. Try to find out if you had some traumas in your early years that could give sone understanding of the man you are today. Sit her down and explain with all the sincerity you can that all this is possibly out of a traumatic experience you had in the past. Ask her to help you instead of her walking away. Good luck my friend and may you two be happy!
Hey, firstly that is such a lovely story of how you got together and you both sound like lovely people. I think it’s important to not make jokes about your insecurities but instead when you’re struggling with them have a proper convo rather than them slipping out. I wonder if there’s anything she could do to help you with these insecurities for example more reassurance etc. if there’s nothing she can do then maybe even talk to someone else about it just to vent etc. hell you can talk to me if you want because I’ve been there I understand how you feel to some degree. You love her so much and question whether you deserve her and you don’t want to follow the self-fulfilling prophecy of her leaving you or not seeing you the way she already does in the future. It sounds like she adores you for who you are and she sees you in a way you don’t see yourself. The problem isn’t an issue of whether she should or shouldn’t love you because she does, it’s a question of how you can work forward to love yourself a bit better. You are worthy of the love she gives you, but you can’t resist the love because you don’t agree with her for giving it to you because that eventually might end up in her stopping giving you it
That was an asshole thing to say in response. It was disrespectful toward *her* and probably humiliating in front of friends. That’s beyond being self-depreciating. It’s just flat out rude. My advice for the self-depreciating aspect is to get in therapy to work on your self image and stop dragging her down with negative comments about yourself. You and your relationship gain nothing by you doing it.
You need to address your issues and show her you are addressing them. Maybe get some therapy. Tell her why you feel this way. Tell her you are getting help for it. Tell her you love her and are scared.
There’s a lot of good advice here. I think you know you have to work on your self esteem and improve your relationship. I’d like to suggest, once a week, you and Lily tell each other one thing the other person did/said that you loved. And you listen to what Lily says, don’t make a comment or even say thanks. Just take some time to let it sink in, what Lily loved about you that week, understand that you are someone who did something loveable, and get comfortable feeling loved by Lily.
Tell her about this journey you want to make with her, learning to feel comfortable with yourself and to appreciate her feelings for you. It will strengthen your relationship I hope.
UPDATE:
Hi everybody. This is Lily, otherwise known as Alice. A lot of you suggested that my boyfriend who wrote this, show me the thread. We decided to let ME update it because I think it’s important to show everyone the other side of this relationship.
I’ve obviously been in relationships before my current one with “Jonah”. They weren’t bad people but I often felt unseen and unappreciated. Then one day, four years ago, I’m doing drop-ins to local businesses to get donors for the shelter event. I knew there was an HVAC company who fixed our system at the shelter recently and gave us a really good rate (we’re talking like $75 for what should have been a $500 call). So I walk into the office and the very first person I see is this tall, dark haired guy looking right at me and I think I stuttered through most of my usual schpeal I was sooo nervous.
Then he showed up for the event and one of my coworkers saw me checking him out. She nudged me to ask him out because fuck yeah, girl power, and I did. A week later, when Jonah picked me up for my date, he gave me daisies because he’d noticed they were printed on my sneakers the day we met. I know it sounds cheesy as hell, but I swear to god I knew this was the last first date I would ever be on.
A lot of comments are less than kind, and while I understand where they’re coming from (based on a very limited perspective), they don’t take into account that this man has been my rock for 4 years. He helped me through my dad’s death, he held me when our dog was euthanized, he changed the oil in my car, he helps me plant tulip bulbs in the fall, he leaned how to style curly hair (not easy as any other curly haired girl would attest) when I broke my arm.
Yes, the other night was awful, but this is a real relationship and we all say things that we regret or come out wrong. I know him, so I knew why he said it. That is came from a place of pain, not lack of love. It still hurt though, and I needed to take some space to calm down and breathe before we could start getting past it. Our relationship was never in danger and I should have communicated that better.
Jonah showed up at my sister’s house late last night and we sat outside talking for almost two hours, then he took me home. I’m so happy he’s decided on therapy and I’m probably going to go with him sometimes.
I guess the bottom line is nobody is perfect, but this man is pretty damn close. He screwed up, I’ll probably screw up next time, but at the end of the day we love each other so much and our relationship is worth fighting for. Much love to everyone, hopefully we won’t be back on here!
Wake up before it’s too late dude
You’ve spent so much time using this language to stoke your self-pity. I understand that it is hard to unlearn this behavior, but one way or another you’re going to learn that this “forever alone” mindset has supplanted any other trait and become the root cause of your loneliness.
That line about her finding a prettier boyfriend is particularly revealing. It’s fantasy, it’s self-indulgence. Sometimes we get a bruise, or we injure our gums, and we just get this urge to press down on it. It hurts, but in a way that almost feels good. It’s easier to rub our insecurities in people’s faces than it is to acknowledge that it’s a sore spot and trust someone anyway. But that’s what adults do. They trust, and sometimes it gets them hurt, but they take the risk because it’s braver than pretending they never had a chance.
You’re constantly reminding her that she’s too good for you because deep down you want her to keep reminding you that you’re wrong. You’re putting all the weight of your own self-doubt on her, asking her to be the voice inside your head that tells you you’re good enough. But that’s a lot to put on one person, especially someone you ostensibly love. You have to do some of the heavy lifting too.
Why r u doubting her love for you? I mean she’s crazy about you. If you can’t live without her, propose ASAP
Go to therapy. Fix yourself. Stop traumatizing this sweet girl because you hate yourself, that’s not fair to her. Only you can do the work and become more confident in yourself.
Stop it now!!!! Dude– she sought you out. She is with you. She is amazing. She wants to be with you. You sound like you’re preparing yourself for an eventual break up. If you keep up this self deprecation, you will get what your expecting. When you enter a relationship there are 2 outcomes. You stay together forever, or you break up. Breaking up is the risk we take when we enter a relationship. Don’t self-sabotage a fantastic thing. Treat her like a queen and you’ll be king of the world!
Lily I’m insecure and feel I don’t deserve you. There is nothing more I want in this world than to see myself the way you see me and to have a family with the woman I love more than life. I’m going to get therapy and work on my insecurities because I don’t want to lose you.
A few people have asked why I haven’t put a ring on this woman’s finger, and it got me thinking.
She’s definitely hinted, you know, showing pictures of engagement rings her friends have gotten with little comments “I love rose gold, don’t you love rose gold?”. We’ve talked about marriage, but damn, it’s been 4 years and I’ve been in love with her for about 3 years and 11.5 months. Why haven’t I proposed?
I think a part of me was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for her to realize she was way too good for me and leave my ass. I haven’t been making decisions in my relationship out of love, I’ve been making them out of fear. And I’m fucking done.
Going to buy her a ring.
I would definitely work out the comment about not wanting a baby with her. If you haven’t already explained – do this right this second. And maybe more than once.
You need therapy it sounds like. Maybe that would help her feel better about your relationship if she saw you trying to do something to fix what’s going on the best you can. If she’s so into you – don’t screw it up with any more comments. Either you think she’s lying about how she feels about you or you don’t. It’s as simple as that. It probably sucks for her to feel like you’re calling her stupid or a liar when she says she loves you or wants to be with you in the future etc.
Get on your knees and apologize to this woman before you lose her.
When you speak to yourself like that inadvertently you’re telling her that she’s just with you out of sympathy instead of actual genuine feelings. Each time you talk about yourself that way to her you’re saying that she’s just biding her time until she can get something much better. I mean there must be something wrong with her too to be with a guy that supposedly sucks, right? This grates at her because she has done everything she could to make you believe she loves you but it’s still not enough and she doesn’t know what else she could possibly do to make you see that.
I think the best thing u can do is talk it out with her and express how u feel abt urself and that it’s not anything abt her. From ur point of u, u think ur not good enough but from her point of you, you might be the best thing she had till now. Listen to her view as well , u can always work on ur insecurities and it would be much easier if u speak it out with her help as well.
I hope u guys have a good future together
OMG, please get her back, after I reading your post, I can tell she really loves you and doesn’t care about how much money you make… why you bring yourself so many unnecessary insecurities…
Imagine looking at your person and telling them that you want to have their baby and them replying that they should find someone else.
You fucked up, OP. your insecurity is hurting her. You need find gratitude ASAP.
GRATITUDE: the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
I’d apologize quickly and sincerely and let her know this has been a wake up call that you have some work to do on yourself. Then go actually do the work. And maybe write the word grateful on your hand and make sure when you are interacting with your girlfriend you are doing it through the lens of being **grateful** for her presence in your life and not though selfishness and self pity, which is how you are now.
I hate to say this, but you are emotionally manipulating her. You’re forcing her to suffer because you’re suffering. You want her to feel pain so you’re not alone in your pain.
I know that sounds harsh, but if you frame it that way, I hope it will help you understand why even if you’re using words to be cruel to yourself, you are placing the burden of your sorrows on the woman who you claim to love above all else.
I too am a very kind lady, which makes abusive men really attracted to me. Luckily I learned that pretty fast and all i want from life now is a man who would not take advantage of my kindness so that I’d feel safe to be myself and give my all.
This is truly hard to find. I’m not saying this is why she loves you but remember that the simple fact that you appreciate her kindness and intend to protect her is the biggest gift life could possibly give her. Be that man for her, I’m counting on you to protect this precious woman.