Whoa. You mean that before you concentrated on your appearance you felt like you had to be working at keeping a guy’s favor, you weren’t forgiven when you canceled a date, and were continually being emotionally invested in guys who weren’t as invested in you? Ouch. That seems… even more unhealthy. Perhaps being able to be in control is good for you, for a while anyway. And maybe it would be good to try to find guys who aren’t quite as… umm… appearance-focused… as the ones you seem to be hanging out with. (I even have a suggestion: most techie companies or hard-science graduate school hangouts, of which there are both in the DC area, will give you the great ratio without, often, the hangups on looks. Of course, as my father-in-law likes to say, you have to put up with “the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”)
I am relatively cute, and I try to have a decent haircut and wear decently flattering clothes, but I don’t spend any time on it at all (e.g., I rarely wear makeup and I probably buy clothes twice a year) or think about it much, and I have never had problems like that – though a) I’ve always been in situations where the ratio was heavily in my favor (see above), and was interested in smart nice guys rather than good-looking ones myself, and b) I actively searched for guys who didn’t love me (primarily; obviously being cute will always help, for both sexes) for my looks (and dumped one when it turned out it was my looks he was mostly interested in, though there were other compelling reasons as well).
(And yes, I’d tell a guy who said the above to go to therapy if he wanted to have any chance with me or someone I care about, if only because that does reveal a damaged attitude towards power in relationships, but also because of that “setting the tone in the relationship” thing. I won’t deny that I know guys like that, but I’d want them to change before they got married. Or, what Wordman said.)
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