What used to be, "What is Wrong with Me?"
I have never been a "Dating Machine". In college, I think I managed three dates. Not even one date a year. I attributed this to one reason: I was fat and ugly. I believed that because during the first half of my senior year in high school, I was subjected to my ex boyfriend (who had dumped me for my best friend the year before) and his best friend waiting for me at the top of the stairs by my locker to greet me every morning with, "Good morning! You're especially ugly and fat today." When they would see me in the halls, they would make comments like, "Fat-ass."
I believed them because I was a bigger girl. I was a humongous size 9!!! A size which would make be blissful these days. But, among the girls in my school, that did make me a cow. It was the late 80s -- eating disorders were prevalent and access to fast food was extremely limited in our small town. Low self-esteem was the obvious result.
Over the years, my confidence in myself improved, but the number of dates increased only slightly. So I couldn't blame it on being fat -- there had to be something wrong with me. Then RLF came to live with me and we would go out together and I would get upset when she would get hit on at a bar and I would not. I didn't blame any guys who hit on her because she is quite lovely -- I blamed her for not "toning it down" around her "plain" aunt.
She would get frustrated, "Uhm! That guy was hitting on you. You just wouldn't talk with him!"
