God, I hear you about the whole beauty standards bit. The entire system of treating women as if they're somehow worthless the moment they aren't young and pretty any more is just garbage. Case in point, those forums. I really hope you're not still on any of them, because fuck those people. Sincerely. And not in a good way. Fuck anyone who thinks a woman is just a hag after a certain age, those guys absolutely deserve to be blue-balled the rest of their damn lives for that crap.
But enough about them. Let's talk about you.
It's good that you at least know you have an eating disorder and body dysmorphia. That part's hard, a lot of people struggle to accept that. And I feel awful for what you must be going through. As someone who's never been uncomfortable in their own skin, I really won't ever understand what that must be like for you, but I can try to imagine at least. Especially as you age out of what most of us would consider young adulthood and into... middle age, I guess? That has to come with all kinds of unpleasant anxieties.
That said, you know you're more than just a body, right?
I'm not married. I really should be, my lady and I have been living together for close to twelve years now. But she has some pretty severe problems with the whole institution of marriage, and I respect that, especially given how women's rights are being degraded in my country. Suffice to say, though, we're really close.
And... she's not exactly a looker. She's 44, she'll be turning 45 this year. She's well over 300 pounds, has back and body issues due to her weight. And this isn't new: she was about the same weight or close to it when I met her. She's never been what most men would call conventionally attractive.
But she's beautiful to me. Because truth is, that body stuff? I don't really care about any of that. When I think of her, I don't see her body. I see the way her eyes twinkle when she plays, how she laughs, how she leans on me when she's had a hard day and just wants to be held. The way she tickles my ear when I'm stressed, and it just makes me melt. The fact that I don't have to pretend around her, I can be my weird and vulnerable self and she won't judge me or think I'm a creep or that I'm disgusting because is struggle with phlegm from time to time and it's gross to listen to.
And it's mutual. I'm not much of a looker either. When we met, I was a hairy, smelly, sweaty nerd who didn't really know how to talk to people or be what most would consider normal because I'm an autist with ADHD. And what caught her attention in the first place was, as coworkers, I asked to borrow her keys so I could take some garbage to the trash compactor, and rather than doing so, I turned around and bolted with them, and she had to chase me around the store while I giggled like a maniac.
That was how I ended up with the love of my life. Not by having a hot body, or by her having one either. By stealing her keys. That's what did it.
I know this isn't going to make your body dysmorphia go away, or vanquish your eating disorder. That isn't the point. The idea is that your body isn't the thing that's going to find a person who'll be worth being with in the first place. And if and when you do find that person, your body, how attractive you are, isn't going to be the thing they think about when they picture you. It'll be everything else, all the little quirks in personality and dynamic, the things that don't just poof and go away or wrinkle up when you cross a certain age threshold. The things those fuck-heads on those forums just don't seem to understand and probably never will.
Don't be hard on yourself for not having the body you want. Because if you find a guy and that's all he cares about, that guy was never worth your time to begin with.
