Is it really a valid thing to do?

[Caterpillar]

As an older woman (well...older than you), here are my thoughts on relationships. Relationships are about 'fit', not about finding the 'ideal' partner.

This is very, very true. I had a strangely comfortable fit with my fiance right from the beginning and it was based more on things like humor and communication style than anything having to do with looks. He's not a match to my physical "ideal", but that ends up becoming irrelevant under layers of personality and natural biological chemistry.

Also, there is no universal "ideal", no matter what the media may try to shove down our throats. Not only do men look for different traits like ghotiff laid out, they favor different appearances too. I've always been overweight, so I've naturally dated quite a few guys who preferred bigger women. One guy I was with for a while was attracted to clear, fair skin and didn't care whether the woman possessing it was a size 4 or 24. Whatever physical traits you possess, some men will be attracted to them.

It sounds to me like you've created an ideal in your mind which you can't possibly measure up to. Maybe a first step in letting go of this would be to accept that this is your ideal. Nobody else has this picture in their head. They have their own ideals, which are likely very different from yours. They can't be judging you by your ideal because they don't share it. Even if you magically changed yourself to be an exact match to your own ideal, you'd still be a miss-match to the ideals of many others, and plenty of people are going to find you a good match just the way you are.

I know it's hard to get outside yourself enough to see from others' perspectives, but I think if you put some work into this, it might help you have a bit more balanced view. You seem to have already recognized that your thinking is negative and inaccurate, which is a great start.

 

[Promicarus]

@jess_trustno1

While writing self-deprecating preoccupations off as "just a symptom" is both legitimate, and necessary...that doesn't tend to help counter them much, at least first.

So as a male, and imminently eligible batchelor (ok, just kidding to lighten the mood :) ) I just wanted to cast my first-person vote in favor of internal beauty over external beauty--EVERY SINGLE TIME.

In fact, it's so regularly been my own experience that women thought of as physically attractive (at least in the traditional western sense), tend in fact to turn out to be among the least attractive in every important way...so much so, in fact, that fairly early on, I developed a physical attraction to what others would term "plain girls", even to the point of feeling an aversion to "customarily beautiful" girls, who attempted to chat me up. Not out of some kind of heartbreaking experience I had with one, or any kind of resentment, per se...just because I lliterally found them less attractive, on the whole-right off the bat, so to speak.

And it's something which stays with me to this day. So think of it this way...would you even WANT to be with someone who wouldn't/couldn't look deeper than just surface appearances, and had no more creativity than to just base their attraction on what conventional society tells them SHOULD be attractive? That sounds like a curse, in itself, to me-to be saddled with such a superficial boob! No?

Beauty comes from within, alone...and when you meet someone WORTHY of you...he'll be attracted to THAT. Just to let you know that we're out there (here), and not to judge yourself by the commercialized mainstream world's standards. Be well.