Clarification

Maybe my job is not the main obstacle in my path.



I have come to the conclusion: LJ has about as much use for a girlfriend as a duck has for a checkerboard.



And I am--and have been--in full bad-relationship defensive mode. Love scenes, love songs, anything that reminds me of when I was happier--I just avoid it.



I am very bad at leaving when there's nothing better immediately visible--which is exactly where I am right now. (Turns out Damian and his "girl" are actually married--poor guy.) I could always hook up with Terrence, but not only don't I trust him, I'm not even really attracted to him...though at the moment, my main qualification for being attracted to someone is "he isn't disgusted by me and doesn't consider me a nuisance".



See, what none of you can see, this being a written medium and all, is this: I am not an attractive woman, not in the traditional sense. I have known this about myself for quite a while; it hasn't gotten any better. I don't do the whole girly-girl thing--makeup, fussy clothes, cleavage, whatever--because it makes me uncomfortable. One of my bosses actually advanced the opinion to me that my choice of clothes demonstrates that I'm "uncomfortable with my femininity". Um, no; I'm uncomfortable with wearing any item of clothing that places my crotch at my knees, allows unnecessary drafts to blow into my nether regions, causes me to wobble when I walk, or precludes crawling under a desk to unplug something. I'm perfectly comfortable with my femininity--more than most, actually, which is something any man could find out, providing he was motivated enough to get past my "substandard" appearance.



And that's the problem. I haven't found anyone who WOULD look past it who'd also treat me decently--you know, take me out once in a while, not forget my birthday, talk to me spontaneously about something other than whether or not we're going to have enough money to make it through the month. (We won't even talk about the "we" in that sentence, nor the question of proportions--of how much each half of "we" contributes to the common welfare.) Most guys who'll go out with "ugly" women see it as a compromise--he sees it as I won't remind her how unattractive the world finds her, and in return she'll ignore that I belittle her, fuck around on her, take her money, whatever. Believe me--I've had that spelled out for me, courtesy of CR, who was the original case study in Men Who Date Ugly Women And The Women Who Tolerate Them.



And I'm tired of putting up a good front--for everyone else, for my friends, for myself. Some women blow their man's faults out of proportion and bitch about everything; if I blow anything out of proportion, it's his positives. I find myself defending him in my mind--oh, he's just tired, worried, broke--but that gets old, and I can't do it anymore. I just don't see any alternatives, short of putting myself in a position to become the Crazy Cat Lady, a position to which I'm sure every young girl aspires.