Basically, I was a beauty at 14 and it maimed me. Men would glom onto me in a trance-like state until I married at 22, and then afterward they still glommed onto me. They would honk their horns, whistle, shout, walk into walls, stand beside me and stare in a stupor. I got sexually harassed at work and thought it was my fault. I got love letters from men I didn’t know. I got propositioned constantly when I was married although I didn’t dress provocatively and I didn’t flirt. I could just be reading or something and some guy would wander over and try to pick me up. Clerks would give me free stuff and waiters would flirt even though my ex was right there.
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In my marriage I started to get some identity and started to rebel against being treated like an object, and I put on weight. My ex would get angry at my slightest weight gain, and would act out including weighing me and measuring my food, and doing stuff like peering in food cartons in the pantry when he got home from work to see how much was left. After I had my child he was so upset at the remaining weight while I was nursing that I had to stop nursing because he made my life hell with looks, remarks and neurotic behavior. Needless to say, I just put on more weight after that.
The problem now, seven years after my divorce, is that I am still pretty but very overweight — I need to lose about 60 pounds. I can’t seem to make myself get back in shape, although I feel bad physically at this weight and my health has suffered. My joints ache and I am sure I’m pre-diabetic if not actually diabetic. My finances are in the toilet, my credit is shot, my career is nonexistent, and I don’t have health insurance. I am so depressed because my life has been such a failure. Most of all, I’m lonely. I was hoping I would meet someone right now who could see the real me, and accept me, and that way I could take the weight off knowing I had someone to whom my appearance didn’t really matter. But in our superficial culture, most men won’t even look at me. I feel like if I lose the weight nothing good will come of it — I will just attract the same types of men who glommed onto me before, that my ex has won, and he was right, that the most important thing about me is my looks. Yes, I’ve been in therapy about it, and we talked about this rebellious reaction and about boundaries so I could fend off unwelcome advances. But like men with money who attract gold diggers, women who are very pretty can never know if the men flocking around them are doing so for the right reasons.