Confessions of a Former PickMe

  • This is actually hard…

    I want to thank you all for reading, liking, commenting, and subscribing! I honestly thought no one would see my blog as I hadn’t utilized any of the tools the site offers to encourage views. I wasn’t ready to do all of that yet. I probably will be at some point.

    Sharing my life on this blog is harder than I thought it would be and I don’t understand why. I’ve spent the bulk of my of my life journaling and have always found it therapeutic and cathartics. It always provided me with relief and clarity. I didn’t feel that last week. I don’t know why. I have written it all down before in my journals before so none of the content is new to me.

    I was thinking about why and how I became a pickme. I supposed not being treated well by my mother has something to do with it. She is emotionally abusive. I was also not liked in middle school or high school by boys at my school. I had 2 boyfriends while I was in high school that were from different schools. Neither were great choices but it felt like they were all I had. In college things were better in terms of choices but the men who liked me weren’t great either. Again, I went along with whoever liked me. This pattern continued throughout my adult life. In dating I never chose myself over the man. I made him the priority and made having him and keeping him the priority. That’s very hard to admit. 

    As an adult I got more desperate because, as a woman, my biological clock literally was ticking. That’s reality. If a woman wants kids the optimal time to have them from a health and genetic perspective is prior to her late 20s. By that time I was just coming out of medical residency training and just getting started on my medical career. I felt truly desperate and made desperate choices.

    Although I think I am pretty, I don’t think I look conventionally attractive, whatever that means. I guess models are considered conventionally attractive? I have never paid much attention to all of that. I consider myself an average, a regular every day person and find average, regular every day people like me attractive. What’s interesting to me is that I have never found conventionally attractive people attractive. I think that’s odd but maybe it’s because I don’t trust them? They don’t seem real and like people I could trust. It could also be because my mom, who is gorgeous, is not someone I feel I can trust. So, attractiveness could have something to do with my pickme-ism. If I was more attractive would dating had been easier? Then I remember gorgeous people also can get mistreated, cheated on, etc., and maybe attractiveness has nothing to do with it. Honestly, I don’t know.  

    Well that’s it for now. I promise to expand on all of this as time goes on. I just don’t have it in me today. I am struggling greatly with what’s happening to people in my country (the USA). The “joke” from a person in power about human beings in cages potentially being fed to alligators and the overall cruelty of it all is just hard to take. I am having a hard time. 

    divorce feminism life love marriage relationships self care

  • Let’s Get Started

    Confessions of a Former PickMe

    Former pickme? I am not sure because I have not dated in years. I don’t trust myself not to return to my former pickme ways. 

    Let me start off by telling you a little about my former pickme self. I was DESPERATE to get married. I am early Gen-X (but feel like an early Millennial) and was raised by a Silent Gen mom who believed that life was incomplete and that I was malfunctioning if I didn’t have a man. At the same time, she went to school to get her doctorate and started her career later in life. This was all done without a man. She was a single parent doing it all. She did it so I felt I could do it too. I did not believe deep down that a man was required. However, I wanted one because to me getting married meant I was worthy of love and finally could secure my place in society. Being married meant I wasn’t a loser or unwanted or ugly. 

    Well, I finally DID get married at 38 and my choice was a desperate one. We were dating only 4 months before we eloped to Vegas to get married. He told me he would marry me if I told him how much I weighed. There was no proposal. No ring. I was that desperate. After I told him how much I weighed we went to Vegas that night. Pathetic, right? I have never told anyone this. It’s embarrassing. 

    That’s not the worst of it. This man treated me badly while we were dating but I stuck it out. I was used to being mistreated and honestly it didn’t feel any different than what I was used to. I desperately didn’t want to lose him because here was my chance! I had a man who talked about getting married. I was excited to FINALLY receive that kind of acceptance from a man. I also thought being married would magically change how he treated me. I mean, why would he marry me if he didn’t love me? Why would he treat his wife as awfully as he treated his girlfriend? I thought married men treated their wives well and that bad marriages were just a fluke. I was wrong. Marriage was awful. Sometimes he was nice and charming but most of the time he was not. He treated me horribly. He was verbally, physically, and emotionally abusive. He’d ghost me in my own home. He’d go 3 days not speaking to me after I tried to talk to him about things that bothered me. He never liked that. He’d yell, throw something, slam doors, say horrible things to me, and then not speak to me for days. I let him do it. I was desperate to stay married. 

    I am now divorced. We weren’t married long. 3 years. What made me file for divorce? That’s a whole other story that I may share at some point. Needless to say I did get out and have been divorced for 16 years. Despite all of that I still got back together with him occasionally during those first few years post divorce. I have not done that in 13 years thank goodness. To this day I still feel like I love him but I think that’s due to a trauma bond. If I have to see him I have to place constant boundaries on myself throughout the interaction. It’s tough but it’s for my own good. He’s not the reason I don’t date though. I don’t date, because as I stated at the start, I don’t trust myself. I have more stories of desperation occurring before and after marriage. Because of that I just don’t date. I would rather be single, happy, and sane than let myself be sucked into a bad relationship again and risk my mental health. 

    Why am I like this? I have my theories. Maybe at some point I will share them.

    I started this blog to help others. I am sure I am not the only one who has been a desperate pickme and can relate. If you have anything negative to say or want to make fun of me or others like me go ahead but you will be blocked. I want this to be a safe space for people. I don’t deal with negative people anymore. Just be glad you have never been like me, move on, and live your life.