I’ve had a lot of insecurities in my life. My appearance. My body. You name it. But being boring was never one of them.
That is until my boyfriend dumped me out of the blue for “not being interesting enough” (his words, not mine). At the time, I was too shocked to defend myself. So I’ll do it here.
I am pretty darn interesting if I do say so myself. I may be a lot of things, but boring is not of them. I love to read, I have tons of hobbies and a host of friends whom I adore. I have quirks, curiosities and a wicked sense of humor.
However, when I was dating him, I never showed him any of my many, many idiosyncrasies. I was so focused on getting him to like me that I stopped being myself. I had the skewed view that by acting like one of the “cool girls,” he would want to be in a relationship with me.
I stuffed down all of the weird, wacky facets of myself and instead focused on being the kind of girl Cosmopolitan told me to be, the kind who loves watching football games with the boys, with her lipstick perfectly applied and not a stray hair out of place.
The moment I stopped being myself, I stopped being interesting. So I guess at the time, he was right.
Ultimately, he gave me a gift—the gift to realize that there was no use pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I was far more interesting when I focused less on being a “cool girl” and more on being my authentic self.
I had to learn to celebrate myself, warts, acne and all. Because there is no more beautiful version of myself than that.
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Previously published on Medium
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