Who Defines Your Pretty?

Photo Credit: Pollynor

The compliments were making my cup of love runneth over. They were voluminous and quickly became the usual. The new normal if you will. My confidence about my abilities to keep this certain someone intrigued shot to the moon. Every day. It felt orgasmic.

Then it stopped.

It wasn't necessarily on a Wednesday- "you are so freakin’ sexy", and on Thursday- crickets.

I would say it was more so of a gradual decrease in zest. The fervor for my texted selfies became more and more tame. The ooh la la emojis became "nice pic" replies.

And if you're wondering. Yes. I am an over-sharer in many ways.

Especially when I am dating someone that lives in a different time zone. I kind of don't want them to forget what I look like.

That's because I am a giver. I give dating my all. Except, bending over bendy backwards for silly antics, like sending them money or going house hunting and showing the realtor a picture of them on your iPhone and saying, "they couldn't make it today" when we have only known each other a hot minute. That, I don't do.

However, all in all, I actually remain faithful while dating someone, so I can get to know her equally and respectfully.

I show up. I remain present.

Reciprocity is my goal from day one.

But by now you’re probably not shocked to find out that, almost overnight, I found myself suddenly not dating her.

All of that law of attraction mumbo jumbo vanished.

My reciprocity currency totally didn’t honor my deposit. I would love a refund.

Even before the ax dropped, I had found myself second-guessing my physical attractive-ness quotient with her. Nothing excessive.

Only about four times in roughly 28-ish days.

That's so not normally me either. I’ve been very body, sex, and mind positive for about the past five years. Increasingly, I have become confident in being able to keep my partner attracted to me.

I feel like “the” bees knees on any given day.

I am 35. I’ve earned this.

But with this particular cutie, I felt increasingly un-cute.

And that got me to thinking.

Who defines your pretty?

I do mean pretty in the most literal sense of the word too.

Isn’t it fascinating how you can have all of the sexy strut confidence in the world, but the moment that someone that we want to be flat out crazy over our gorgeous-ness doesn’t reciprocate, we second guess our pretty?

When I was dating that cutie and her enthusiasm for my appearance begun to wane, two things happened.

First, I took my selfie game up a notch. Don’t worry, I wasn’t naked.

But I did start to curate them. I would stroll through my phone and even my Mac to find the hottest (at least in my opinion) photos of myself.

I only remember one of them around this time really getting a response out of her. Cleavage was on fleek in that photo. Maybe that was why.

Yet, even going the “here’s a picture of me at the Beyonce/Jay-Z On The Run tour looking hot as hell” route didn’t really get applause.

Next, I tried this:

I stopped sending her photos altogether.

I shrunk.

I figured that there was no point. It wasn’t going to elicit any rave reviews from her.

My intuition was correct.

The entire situation saddened me. Not because she didn’t find me that physically attractive, but that I had let her reactions towards me totally influence my behavior and question the value and perception I have of myself.

I’ve worked hard to not be a shrinking violet. I couldn’t believe that I was doing so with someone that lived 1,823 miles away.

There was a hole host of other lessons I learned while dating her, like the fact that she’s a Capricorn and I am a Sagittarius and those are not compatible signs, period.

And that someone can flirt with you for two years on Facebook but once they meet you, they simply could just not be that into you.

But, more than anything I learned that you should never let anyone steer you away from feeling like a hottie if that is how you truly feel about yourself.

The only person that should define your pretty, is you.