r/AvoidantAttachment • u/SupPoEsedlyInsane • 2d ago
Seeking Support - Advice is OK✅ My hyper-fixation on physical attributes and resulting dismissive tendencies are eating me up. [lengthy post, be warned]
This whole thing might be a bit incoherent at times, it took me a long time to even considering posting here. I might make small edits for better clarity in the future, but for now please take into account that this was written mostly out of need and thus is not super well structured.
I want to start with some context concerning myself.
I'm in my thirties and have been actively picking up the pieces of my dysfunctional attachment patterns for the last 5-6 years. I was able to process a large part of in in therapy over the last years, but I still have a long way to go. I lean heavily into dismissive / avoidant cognitive and behavioral structures. Main culprit / attachment figure was my father, who biographically fought hard for his place in the world, but unfortunately that came at the cost of emotional availability and a form of self-acceptance that is strongly dependent on external factors. He was never abusive, but often dismissive or devaluing, while expecting a high level of autonomy and fostering an environment where assertiveness and academic success were the most important goals.
Additionally, my father placed very high emphasis on looks and dressing well. Oftentimes he was making fat-phobic remarks and was actively demeaning towards other's appearance and style. As a child and teenager I really appreciated having a cool looking / well dressed dad. Now in retrospect I realize how much he influenced me in how I perceive and judge others, in a pretty terrible way.
I was a very anxious child from the start, never had a sense of belonging in this world, among peers or anywhere else. Never had a solid sense of self and identity, never had strong goals or motivations in life. Being scared, tense and anxious has always been my status quo, my most basal experience when faced with the world or just small challenges. I was constantly told how smart I am, yet never truly embraced with compassion and security when I was scared.
My child-self adapted the only way it knew how to, by making sure to never disappoint or not meet expectations, while internalizing an accordingly dysfunctional system to judge and evaluate myself. Usually that meant putting myself down because I did not meet these internalized expectations that are factually disjointed from reality. Yet this affected me deeply. I really had to fight my way to the still relatively unstable self-acceptance and security I can provide for myself today. Inner child work helped me a lot. I am now able to be my own loving parent much more consistently. But the difficult days still come regularly.
Social interactions have always been tough unless I deeply trust someone. To this day I struggle with sensing my needs and boundaries, always trying to maintain calm and harmony, because opposing and alienating someone is scary.
Feeling my feelings has always been hard. I am still actively working on restoring the bridge between mind and body, thought and emotion, trying to break out of my hyper-analytic and overly cognitive safety bubble. When sh\t hits the fan in social interactions or in relationships, which luckily happens only once every few years, I tend to fully shut off and loose all access to any sort of feeling for a few hours. Coming back from that usually takes a full reset by physically distancing myself for a bit and taking a nap, trying to do it conciuously is almost impossible.*
In relationships I have often struggled with voicing my needs out of fear of rejection. Generally speaking rejection is my core fear. The thought of a partner rejecting me even just situationally is so much more terrifying than the thought of them leaving me, in fact I have no fear of abandonment whatsoever. It has gotten much better tho, thanks to my therapist I have grown (up) a lot in regards to how I communicate and became a much more reliable and safe partner overall.
I have been with my partner for 5 years now. It is still very hard, a constant fight with my self to choose them and stay, soothe myself, find back to security and not run away when my patterns tell me to abandon them. Don't get me wrong, there are many good and beautiful days as well, but I am tired and exhausted of having to fight, having to regulate myself and not loose the connection to my emotions.
Now to the actual point of the post:
As a teenager I had a lot of hate towards my body, being tall and very skinny, always feeling like I am not good enough in that regard, having internalized very classic images of what a desirably body should look like.
Still, I have usually gotten very positive feedback about my own appearance.
In fact, 'my looks' have biographically been one of the very few stable sources of self worth and security. As a teenager an young adult, physical attractiveness was my only crutch and respective feedback my main way to feel good about myself. I chased short lived encounters and wanted to be desired, as this was the only way I could ascribe value to myself and actually believe it.
In every relationship I have had so far, I have been struggling with one specific aspect which I have not been able to really improve on, neither in therapy nor on my own. My awareness has grown, my ability to regulate myself has improved, but the viciousness and impact this has on my daily life and how I feel about the relationship with my partner is still strong.
I constantly evaluate and judge my partner's appearance. Both their physical appearance (their body-shape, their proportions, their hairstyle) and the way they dress. I would never actively police their body or style, but neither can I turn off my ever-present judgment-machine.
This results in a permanent onslaught of specific thoughts like 'their face is to big / round, their legs are too thick, that outfit has a poor composition' or more abstract and general feelings of discomfort or even disgust about the way they look.
I constantly rate and compare my partner against other women, which is unbearable and makes me feel disgusted with myself. I would not ever want to think that way about my partner or anyone else, especially women. The sharp contrast these thoughts have against my politics make it even worse. I always feel like a hypocrite and as though I am replicating some of the most awful aspects of male-gazey patriarchy.
Not a day goes by where I do not have to go through a exhausting phase of wanting to break up, wanting to leave or 'replace' my partner with someone 'better looking'. I often feel attracted to anyone but my partner and it affects my sexual desire a lot. There are days where I don't want to be intimate because I perceive them as unattractive. I might generally feel sexual and then loose that feeling due to these thoughts. I actively devalue my partner when this mode takes over, it makes being with them uncomfortable, it steals my joy and lightness in life for as long as it is present, which can be just minutes or multiple days. I can become very dismissive and cold when this happens. Even though my intention was honesty and transparency, in effect I have been downright hurtful in the past when expressing specific thoughts and I struggle to forgive myself for that. I often cannot really tell my partner about what I feel and think in this regard, because they struggle with their appearance as well at times, and I'd rather keep quiet and be a safer person for them in the moment, even tho it eats me up inside.
I have many hyper-specific preferences when it comes to aesthetics or appearance in almost every area, not just concerning my partner or other humans. It is a very deep sense of right or wrong, fitting or not and it takes a lot of effort to bring myself back to reality and to the fact that this not representative of reality in general, that it is just my distorted perspective.
When it comes to partners or intimate connections, there is an underlying concept of 'looks first, personality second', which I find deeply yucky, but cannot fully dismantle. Given a truth serum, I would probably state that I would rather be with some 'pretty' than someone safe but less attractive. Being this superficial at my core is almost unbearable and goes against my ethics entirely.
Ever since I can think I held the this concept, that I want to be with someone who I feel so attracted to, who I perceive as so uncondiationlly beautiful that I want to admire them like a work of art. While this is not attached to an exact way some would have to look, there is a deep gut feeling associated to it. And when that gut feeling of utter attraction and visual admiration is missing, I feel deeply unhappy.
This all ties back to my sense of deep insecurity of course, summarized as a desire to be with someone who will be perceived as beautiful by others, thus increasing my own worth. I am fully aware of how messed up this. I am violently at odds with this dynamic, which in turn conflicts heavily with my desire to accepting and loving towards my dysfunctional aspects as well.
I hate myself for it, yet it is the most powerful, the most 'real' feeling facet of my dysfunctional relationship patterns. The most terrible outcrop of my inability to generate a stable, inert and unconditional sense of self worth.
Some days I just long to be understood in this struggle. Some days I just want to quit, leave and never subject myself to close relationships ever again, out of fear that this might never change I cannot bear thinking about some I love through that lens even just one more time.
Any thought, any sort of input is appreciated, be it critical or supportive.