My boyfriend is honestly the best thing that's ever happened to me. He's super talented and intelligent & really handsome too and I go to all of his school band recitals to see him play because I'm just so proud of him. The problem is that I don't understand why he loves me back. I'm so plain & unattractive but he's always telling me the opposite, though I can't see what he sees in me. I appreciate all that he does for me but I just.... don't love myself like he loves me, and I feel guilty.
It’s okay to have low self-esteem and still be in a relationship - the advice that you need to love yourself to love someone else is well-intentioned but somewhat disingenuous - there are plenty of people who have for instance mental health issues or trouble with low self-esteem who are in happy and fulfilling relationships.
It can be difficult to see in ourselves what others see in us, and self-esteem issues aren’t cured overnight by being in a relationship. Ultimately, I think it’s important to be mindful of the biases we have against ourselves, especially within a society with such rigorous and ruthless beauty standards and a tendency to view self-confidence and self-love as arrogant and big-headed. Most people have an inclination to underestimate how attractive or valuable they are. We’re taught from a young age to be critical of ourselves, and it’s normal to have that reflex ingrained in our thought patterns, but at the same time, other people don’t have those same biases, and it’s easier for them to see the things in us that we might not notice. How many people have you known who you think are pretty who have self-confidence issues - I bet it’s more than a few! And you know your boyfriend loves you, and if you trust him, you know he wouldn’t lie to you.
You aren’t obligated to love yourself - you don’t have to feel guilty for not seeing yourself in the same light as he does, because your view of yourself is clouded by the things the world is always telling young people about how they should view their bodies, and training yourself to grow out of that mindset is a really difficult thing to do. But you should also trust him - he wouldn’t be with you saying those things if he didn’t genuinely believe them, and even if you can’t see them in yourself, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
One thing that helps me is to try and be aware of the things I do like about my appearance. If your boyfriend compliments a particular feature of yours a lot, or there’s something you quite like about how you look, try to focus on it. If you’re in one of those moods where you’re standing in the mirror picking out faults in your appearance, try to break the cycle by focusing on the thing you like best. Going one better is trying to accentuate that feature - for instance if you like your eyes, wearing colours that accentuate the colour of your eyes, or wearing mascara/glasses that make them stand out, can give you a little confidence boost, and you leave your house in the morning feeling a little more attractive. Self-care can be as simple as wearing the jeans that you think make your butt look good, or putting on a spritz of a nice body spray/perfume, just to give you that little boost. It’s not a cure, but it’s something that’s helped me over the years, and it might be worth a try. The most important thing is to be gentle with yourself, though - be mindful of the cycles of self-deprecation it’s easy to get into and try to break them, but even if you can’t, don’t beat yourself up. Our partners almost always see us in a better light than we see ourselves, and it’s not something to be ashamed of if you can’t see yourself the same way.
I think it’s worth talking to your boyfriend about this, and also possibly consulting someone like a councillor or a therapist if you’re able to do so to talk this through, and find some ways to help break out of the self-critical cycle that it’s really easy to fall into.
Good luck, and I hope you feel better soon 💞
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