Is It Just Me Or… Is It Normal To Hyper-Focus on Desirability After A Break-Up?

When I found myself briefly single last summer, I was absolutely broken. Everything hurt. Nobody understood. It felt like my heart was being pulled up and out of my throat every morning when I re-remembered what happened. It was unbearable – but I still found time to take nudes.

I don’t say that to invalidate any of the other emotions, but to highlight one specific feeling that we don’t really talk about (and that I’m pretty sure most of us have felt). Along with the sadness, loneliness and gloom, I felt an overwhelming sense of panic that nobody was going to find me attractive ever again (unless I worked very hard to capture the perfect angle in perfect lighting and perfect lingerie).

Suddenly, it felt crucial to my existence that other people found me desirable. I thought about it every day. I saw myself through stranger’s eyes when I was at the supermarket. I wondered whether I should message some folks from my romantic past and check if they still thought I was *flame emoji*. I put on shit tonnes of makeup and conducted entire lingerie photoshoots only to wipe it all off and get back into my pyjamas to wallow some more on the heartbreak sofa. It was a weird time.

Looking back, what I think I was experiencing is a very natural part of a break-up (especially if the relationship involved cheating, body shaming or any other behaviours that would make someone feel physically unwanted): I was hyper-focussing on my own desirability. And it was fucking exhausting.

Part of me thinks I shouldn’t be writing this (surely I, of all people, should be immune to questioning their worth in correlation to how desirable they are). But nah, it got me good.

I still believed all the things I was outwardly saying about knowing our value beyond our bodies and not existing for other people’s approval. But inwardly I was hurting so much that my brain was grabbing hold of any old coping mechanism it could find. And seeking validation on my attractiveness is a classic that I thought I’d left behind in my early twenties.

It's strange, isn’t it? Most of us probably get at least a little bit of validation from being physically wanted by others, which I don’t think is inherently unhealthy (and you could probably argue that wanting to be found attractive is kind of essential for the continuation of the species…). But for me, that need can become all-consuming real quick. And frankly, I don’t need to be thinking about whether someone wants to fuck me whilst I’m picking out a stalk of broccoli in M&S. My desirability does not need to be my main focus on a daily basis. As I said, that shit is exhausting. It also distracts us from all the other more meaningful things we could be doing with that energy.

We shouldn’t have to calculate other people’s perception of our bodies wherever we go. We shouldn’t have to place our worth in whether someone wants us physically. We shouldn’t have been taught that our desirability is our primary value and ultimate reason for existing! But we were. And we still are – objectifying, beauty standard-filled messaging is still everywhere in our culture. I’m not gonna be mad at myself for slipping back into that conditioning when I was at my most vulnerable.

But I’m not gonna stay there either.

I don’t need another person wanting me to be my ultimate goal in life. I don’t need to pour my energy into securing validation from romantic partners. I don’t need to be desirable. I just need to be me – as authentically and unapologetically as I can be. If someone happens to find me attractive (and I find them attractive) whilst I’m busy being myself, then cool. But I don’t need to spend my time seeking them out, performing desirability and getting those short (hollow) hits of validation.

I have much more important shit to do.

Oh and also I’m hot as fuck purely because I’ve decided I am and I don’t need anyone else’s input to corroborate that. *flame emoji*

Love,

M

💜