I Love My Partner, But Could I Do Better?

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Hey Doc,

Reading a letter you recently answered and listening podcasts on incel culture (don’t worry, not those kind of podcasts) has made me do some self-reflection lately and realise that I’m not quite healed from an anxious attachment style and hold some views that get in my own way a bit.

For context, I’m in a relationship and happy in it, but the question “what if this is the only relationship I can get?” hangs over me sometimes and that’s obviously not a Good Thing. To expand on that, I think there’s an erroneous belief that only good-looking people cheat. I have no idea if I’m good looking or not, but I don’t believe I am. I think there’s a danger for those with low self-esteem to stray because they view any attention as good attention.

Not that I have any desire to stray. But confident, healthy people understand that there will be attention for them should they want to reciprocate. When single, this “beggars can’t be choosers” belief can make you overlook red-flags or, cruelly, lead people on that you’re not interested in. Furthermore, it makes dating an anxious nightmare rather than an exciting thrill. Basically, if you believe that you’re someone worth dating, it’s good for you and your partner. Abundance mindsets are good all round, whether single or taken. What’s a bigger compliment than knowing your partner chose you, rather than kind of just fell in with you?

So, my question is this: how do I believe that I’m worth choosing and that, if I had to, I could choose? I try my best to be open to experience and have varied hobbies and quite a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. I think I style and groom myself pretty well (in a shot of whiskey rather than a cup of tea way), although I should probably be more consistent in the gym. In conversation, I think I can be funny in a way that isn’t self-deprecating or tediously dry and sarcastic and I’m interested in the lives of others.

But.

When I’m out in public, taking a walk through the city, people catch my eye. I don’t mean in a way that they’re more attractive than my partner who does and still would catch my eye, just in a way that I’ll occasionally think to myself “they have great hair” or “that’s a cool dress and track-jacket pairing”. But I don’t think I’ve ever been aware of anyone looking back and it shakes my self-esteem.

Now obviously, people have found me attractive enough to date, and because I’m not Professor Charles Xavier (and if I were, I’d hope to use my abilities ethically), I don’t know this for a fact. I also know that women are less likely to express overt interest, although apparently people play with their hair and mirror body language and stuff, and I don’t think I’ve ever observed that. I think I caught someone look at me yesterday and when I looked back, we exchanged smiles, but that’s the exception that proves the rule, by virtue of the fact it stands out. When I was on the apps, I didn’t have a huge amount of success, but I know most men don’t and nor was I a prolific swiper myself. I don’t think anyone’s ever had a crush on me.

The invisibility as I age, and more so, the question of if I was ever visible, stings. Have I passed up what might have been really great connections because I’ve always assumed my approaching someone would be an insult? Am I deluded in thinking those possibilities would have even existed for me? To put it bluntly: Am I allowed to consider myself capable of being part of this human experience. Would a slight twist of fate have meant that, with my looks and social ineptitude, that I’d be posting about Looksmaxxing and Chads and Staceys on Reddit?

Best,

Claude Reigns Eternal

Right from the jump, I can tell you that you’re dealing with some mindset issues and some pretty fundamental misunderstandings, CRE, and that’s part of what’s messing with your head right now.

Let’s start with the obvious question: you’re asking if you settled for your partner and the answer is… yes. You did. Everyone who is in a relationship has settled for that person, because that’s part of how relationships work. In every relationship, no matter how wonderful that person is, you are settling for what you get vs. what you are willing to give up. Nobody, no matter how rich, handsome, charismatic, famous or any other quality you care to name, gets 100% of what they want, simply because no single person can be everything to their partner. So, every relationship is an exchange: you choose someone with the full understanding that doing so means that you are giving things up. You just have to decide whether what you get is worth the cost of what you don’t get. Part of ensuring a happy and successful relationship is that you are satisfied with this exchange; that is, what you get is so good that you’re fine with letting the rest go. That’s part and parcel of how relationships work.

(And to fend off the obvious: polyamory or ethical non-monogamy isn’t the work-around that folks would think. While other partners help meet the needs that others don’t, you are still having to weigh what you get for what you give up and looking for an otherwise equitable exchange where the holistic whole satisfies you enough that you don’t regret what you are giving up.)

But this is also why you’re coming to this from the wrong angle and you’re letting your mindset get in the way. Who cheats and who doesn’t isn’t as simple as “confident people stay, insecure people stray”. Yes, some insecure people will treat any attention as good attention. But that’s not the same as acting on that attention. Similarly, confident people, believing that they are always going to have options, may decide to exercise those options despite having a committed, monogamous relationship, or they may think that they’re such a prize that they can get away with breaking another person’s heart without suffering any consequences. Or they may think that they can get away with it because they’re just that clever and that sneaky.

This is where your mindset is fucking you up. It’s not about who’s confident and has a secure attachment style, it’s about you assuming that you’re the loser and your opposite is the winner. If it wasn’t about attachment styles or confidence, it would be something else; you’re just reacting to how you feel about yourself and extrapolating outward based on those feelings.

Case in point: you assume that nobody has shown interest in you as you’ve been out and about. But… how do you know? What reaction are you expecting to see that would convince you that someone is checking you out and how different does that look from what you do? I mean, I’m assuming that if you see someone sleek and sexy, you don’t turn into a cartoon wolf howling and beating himself over the head with a skillet. In all likelihood, your “checking them out” looks like “your eyes flicked over to them,” or “you turned your head slightly as they walked by”, so why wouldn’t that be the same for what other people are doing?

Well, unless you are giving every person walking by the hairy eyeball, how likely are you going to notice what they’re doing? Is it possible, for example, that you’re so focused on what you are looking at that you simply miss what other people are doing? And would you accept that someone was checking you out in an approving way if you did see it? Or would you just assume that they’re judging you?

This is where your mindset and attitude comes in. If you believe that you’re “invisible” or undesirable, then you’re much more likely to assume that they’re judging you negatively instead of checking you out. If you see someone do the classic “make eye contact, look away, look back and smile”, would you think that they’re into you or just that they caught you looking and they’re giving a smile in hopes that it’ll placate you and you aren’t going to get weird?

This is why how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself is important. People are beggars in as much as they perceive themselves to be beggars. Perceiving yourself as a beggar means that you’re much more likely to be single for longer and that the relationships you get into won’t be good for you simply because you’re working from the belief that you’re not “allowed” to have standards or to prioritize what you want in a partner. It means that you’re going to be coming into every interaction with the belief that you have to seek someone else’s approval, rather than considering whether they’re worth your time. As a result, you’re coming to the interaction from a place of insecurity and supplication, two things that are pretty universally unappealing. Why should someone want you if you’re sending the message that you’re not worth wanting? There’s a reason why no product seriously advertises itself as “we’re ok, I guess. There’s better stuff out there, so we’d get it if you chose that instead.”

If you’re going to base your self-worth and sense of desirability entirely on whether someone else expresses desire first, regardless of how you feel, you’re much more likely to end up in a toxic or unhealthy relationship. Toxic people, after all, look for people who have weak boundaries and low self-esteem; these are the people who are the easiest to manipulate. And even good, well-meaning people aren’t going to want to have to manage someone else’s emotions and self-esteem for them. There’re few things more likely to kill a relationship than for someone to constantly question whether you actually like them and call you a liar when you say “yes”.

Nobody is a beggar unless they decide they are. Everyone can be a chooser; it just requires understanding that other people are choosers too. Relationships are double opt-in, after all. If you choose to believe you have no options – and choosing to be single and to keep looking is an option – then you’re still being a chooser. The difference is that you have chosen someone where what you get may well not be worth what you give up… but it’s still a choice.

This is why the issue is ultimately how you feel about yourself. You need to be your own biggest and best fan first, because otherwise you’ll have a much harder time believing other people could be a fan. Work on your self-esteem and how you see yourself and you’ll be amazed at how many more people you will spot checking you out. It’s not that they were never there before; it’s simply that you didn’t believe that they existed in the first place and dismissed what you did see. Once you believe, you’ll see it.

Good luck.

Hello Dr. NerdLove,

I was perusing YouTube looking for feel good material as I improve my confidence in myself. I found a lot of videos of women talking about how they’d happily date a short guy if they liked him.

Of course, comments gonna comment and a vibe I picked up on was that men who are short or “deficient” in whatever way need to make up for it by being exceptional in other ways.

While obviously having good presentation, social skills etc. is essential, I find the whole “compensation” thing really weird.

As a short guy myself I’ve really learned to love my height and what it means for me (due in no small part to your blog).

What do you think on this topic?

King Under The Mountain

You’re asking the wrong question, KUTM, and it all comes down to one specific word: “compensate”. Words have power, after all, and that one word changes the meaning and intent of the question.

Here’s the issue and here’s why you’re getting this wrong: attraction is about having something that people want. Everyone who is attractive has a quality or qualities that people desire. Without those qualities, there is no attraction. End of story.

But what those qualities are is highly variable, in no small part because hey, humans are sapient and sentient. The folks who get hung up on evo-psych end up reducing people to the level of animals – that we’re somehow at the mercy of our instincts or basest desires. But we aren’t. Part of the gift and curse of our self-awareness is our individuality and how our lives and personalities are shaped and molded by our experiences, upbringing and environment. Much of what we consider to be attractive is cultural, not inherent. For a long time, people in Oceanic and Southeast Asian cultures considered blackened teeth to be desirable because how it demarcated humans from animals; as a result, people would blacken their teeth with lacquer. Colonial powers found it disgusting and used pressure to enforce more Westernized standards of beauty. In Japan, for example, teeth blackening lasted until the Meiji era, which coincided with increased contact with – and increased influence by – European cultures and the desire by the Meiji leaders to westernize Japan.  

Similarly, the body types people consider desirable change like fashion. If you look at classical European art, you may notice that the body types chosen to represent figures like Venus or Helen of Troy or other great beauties tended to be more zaftig, often with larger hips and buttocks, softer and more rounded stomachs but also smaller breasts, than what is currently considered to be conventionally attractive. The supermodel Twiggy almost single-handedly kicked off the waifish look, which reached its height with Kate Moss who looked like a heroin-addicted Victorian urchin.

The desirable bodies for men are just as varied. The Greeks and Romans considered things like large penises to be signs of low intelligence and low culture, the mark of the barbarian and the muscle-bound statues of Herakles or Zeus had proportions that were considered to be marks of divine heritage, not necessarily what humans were expected to achieve. Fifty years ago, hirsute men were considered to be especially hot and sexy, while hairless torsos left people clammy and gave them the ick. Since then, men have adopted more of the styling and body types that were predominant in gay culture and suddenly body hair became distressing. Harrison Ford was thought to be the peak of manliness when he took his shirt off in Raiders of the Lost Ark and famously was working out like crazy to achieve that look. Except now he looks far more like a guy who’s pretty fit compared to Brad Pitt in Fight Club or every male actor in a Marvel movie. Meanwhile, a lot of women squee over the more lithe figures of many KPop idols or more twink-ish figures like Timothee Chalamet and just as many dig the dad-bod that David Harper sported as Sheriff Hopper.

The wide variability of what is “attractive”, and the non-existence of a universal standard, is why you’re asking the wrong question, with the wrong word. “Compensate”, in your question, implies that there’s inherently something wrong with being average height or shorter than average, and there isn’t. It implies that they are having to make up for some deficiency. But it’s only a deficiency for people who prioritize height, not something wrong with them as individuals.

Attraction is about the holistic person, the sum of their being and qualities – the intellectual, emotional, personality, talents and quirks as well as their physical attributes. Each person is going to have qualities in different proportions all based around their personal development, background, experiences and so on. Similarly, each person is going to have things that they are particularly drawn to, value or prioritize at different levels.

Someone not having one particular quality doesn’t automatically mean that they’re unattractive; it just means that the balance of their sum totality may or may not add up to what a person is into. For folks who may like tall people but don’t make it their top priority, someone who is of average height can still be attractive, simply because they have other qualities that those people also desire.

Nor is this restricted to height. You can, for example, like women with large breasts but still be into someone with smaller ones because there’re other things about them that you also find attractive. Someone else may not have the same cheekbones as a particular movie star, but they have other qualities that people find desirable. In both cases, those people aren’t compensating for the lack of double d’s or cheekbones you could grate cheese on, it’s that the overall balance of who they are makes them attractive.

In labeling this as needing to “compensate”, you’re coming to it from the position that there’s something wrong, as opposed to it being a neutral fact about a person. Treating those qualities as “compensating”, rather than “this is what I bring to the table” only serves to damage your self-esteem and makes it that much harder to come to any relationship with the desire to find someone who’s worth your time. If you feel like you’re “compensating”, then you’re apologizing for your existence… and that’s not attractive at all.

Good luck.