Dress to Impress-- Why You Should Take Care of Yourself for Yourself, and Him Too

I don't know about the rest of you, but I absolutely hate to be sick. I loathe it more than almost anything else in this world. Especially a head cold. Nothing is less attractive then an endlessly running nose, sniffling, and coughing all day long. When you get sick, there really isn't anything you can do about it aside from waiting it out. We don't have the cure for the common cold. Yet.

This topic came to mind to me because last night I was battling a low-grade fever and I hoped that a good night's sleep would be just the trick to get me feeling good and perky this morning. The sleep, unfortunately, just didn't work. Apparently, I cannot just sleep off an impending cold.

I will tell you one thing that does help me feel better, though. That one thing is dressing up.

That's right. Dressing up. It may be a simple vanity thing, or some deep subconscious feminine need, but whenever I'm sick, making myself pretty is a surefire way to perk up my mood.

I'm not a makeup addict by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just as likely to leave the house on any given day au naturale, without even a dab of something pretty on my face, as I am to apply something. I do, however, notice a huge change in how I feel when I go to the trouble of taking that five or ten minutes to do so.

In other words, I am not one of those "high-maintenance" chicks. I far prefer to be natural, and I do believe that K shares the same opinion.

However. However! By the same token, there are times when I simply feel that I want to look better...and often enough, dressing a little nicer than I usually do or quickly applying some concealer, mascara, and lip gloss does the trick. Yes, I do it for myself, and the truth of the matter is that whenever my mood is so-so and could stand some improvement, this always works! 

I make myself up pretty and maybe even throw on a nice skirt or dress. My mood elevates immediately. Take it from the girl whose average skin care regimen includes washing her face and brushing her hair, and whose wardrobe primarily consists of flip flops, cargo pants, and tank tops.

I look in the mirror and see myself...only better. And that, in turn, makes me feel better. I suppose there's some scientific reason for this, and I know I've found it here and there before, but I'm not going to go to the bother of looking this all up to post on here. Suffice it to say this: 

It is scientifically proven that making oneself look nicer is a surefire way to improve your mood.

Now that that's out of the way...one might ask this: dressing up and putting on makeup is great. It makes me feel nice, happier, insert-good-feeling-emotion here. However, what does that have to do with my man?

This is where things get a little more complicated. But not too complicated.

When two people share space with each other like two married / committed people do, there are naturally a lot of things that they see of each other that others don't. We go through sweaty days, stinky days, cranky days, period days, those days where last night's dinner simply didn't agree with you at all... For parents, it might become old hat to walk around in that shirt with infant spit up on it, wearing sweatpants and slippers all day long. Most humans don't see this sort of thing from anyone else except their partner. 

Sometimes these things are more frequent than the sweet-smelling, sexy-looking, nice days when your man wants to lock you into the bedroom all day and throw away the key.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I, for my part, far greatly prefer feeling sexy, wanted, and desired. 

It's very easy to get into an appearance slump, but it's also correctable and can go a long way toward improving your relationship if it's starting to slump, too.

Think back to when you and your man first got together or were dating. Heaven forbid should a hair on your head be out of place. You were always sure to look nice. He would never see you in sweats and hair in a ponytail. You wouldn't even dream of letting him see your legs unshaved. You wouldn't skip a shower if your life depended on it...all because of that desire to attract him to you, to make yourself appear more desirable than all the other little female fishies in the sea.

But somewhere along the line, that can change. You get committed. Life catches you up. You find yourself with less and less time, especially if you both work or there are babies to take into account. You love your man, yes...but at the same time, you no longer fear losing him.

After all, if he can tolerate the occasional after dinner flatulence, he can tolerate anything...right?

The fact of the matter is, once you get to that certain point in your relationship, looks seem to become less important. You've caught your man, so it's cool now. You're free to let things go a little.

But I'm saying you shouldn't do this, and if you discover that you're falling into this pattern, that you should get out of it, fast. You might be a harried stay at home mother and homemaker or a hard-working woman with a full time job, but you do not have to look like one! 

Do things for yourself once in a while. Hell, do something for yourself at least once a week, if not once a day. Doing so will improve your mood tremendously...and your man will enjoy looking at you, too. Liking looking at you, in turn, will cause him to continue to find you desirable, which in turn will cause you to feel more desirable.

People might claim this sort of thinking is sexist, but I personally do not believe in sexism. It's a simple matter of cause and effect. 

Cause: Children run you around all day, or work keeps you all hours of the day. You're harried and you can barely cope with or keep up with everything.

Effect: You run out of energy for everything, even for your man and yourself. You let yourself slip, and sex eventually goes right out the window in favor of, please God, just one good night of sleep!

Here's another one, though, that's far nicer than the first one:

Cause: You notice you're looking crappy, feeling crappy, and have no energy so you decide to spend an hour giving yourself a mani/pedi or a nice facial you read about in that woman's magazine.

Effect: You are pleased with yourself, and your mood improves. When your husband/SO comes home and notices your mood, it in turn brightens his day. He suggests a little quality "one-on-one" time that evening with waggled eyebrows. Everyone is happier as a result.

The point is, I'm not trying to say you ought to do things just for yourself or just for your man. Why not do it for both reasons? Looking nice can go a long way toward helping out your mood and therefore improve the mood of everyone in the house.

I know this for a fact, because instead of slumping around in sweatpants, I decided to throw on a skirt and some nicely applied, tasteful makeup today. I might not feel less sick, but I sure do feel better about it!

Give it a try if you haven't already, ladies. It can't hurt and can only help!

Insecurity.

One of the things I noticed-- rather recently, to my chagrin-- is how I react when I feel insecure. It's not that I didn't realize it, but rather that I didn't realize what it meant. 

It's hard to admit to oneself that you are insecure to begin with, and it's something that I've suffered with a lot over the course of my life. I have always held myself to an impossible standard, something that I could never follow. I want to be always on the right side of things. I never want to be a disappointment or a failure in any aspect of my life. What I seek in myself is perfection, and of course, I ALWAYS fall short of it. No one is perfect. I know this, as does everyone else; and yet the fact remains that I still want myself to be this way...and when I'm not, I find I disappoint myself.

Of course, perfection being what it is, I find that I am constantly disappointing myself. Because of this, I have a deep-seated fear that by being a disappointment to myself that I must therefore also be a disappointment to my loved ones. There is no greater fear to me than disappointing my HOH. It literally goes well above and beyond any other fear that I might ever have, and causes a significant amount of insecurity in me.

It's a sad thing that I can easily recognize my own insecurities, and yet I feel as though I have absolutely no control over them. I understand that my need to be/seem/appear perfect in all matters is irrational at best. Yet at the same time, I cannot stop myself from thinking and feeling this way no matter how hard I try to convince myself I can. 

I constantly and consistently set myself up for disappointment, and in this one thing I never let myself down. I see the littlest disappointments internally and they by their very nature become huge and irreconcilable to me.

I suppose at the least it's a good thing that I understand this part of myself. If I didn't, I can imagine that I would spend my life moody, disappointed, and depressed and have absolutely no idea why. Usually I can spot these sort of emotional trends coming a mile away, even if I'm powerless to stop it happening.

While I do know what the cause of the bulk of my insecurities were, my largest one over all of these is even more simple: I feel that I cannot control myself and my emotions. This is a source of deep disgust and self-loathing to me, and naturally by proxy I find it hard to imagine myself a loveable person if I feel so deeply disgusted in myself. If I cannot love myself, in essence, why ought anyone else, ever? 

Coming close on the heels of that is the fact that I have a deep, undeniable need to know that I am loved, even if I hate myself on many occasions...which is where I come down to the topic at hand.

My reaction to my own self-loathing and disgust is usually tears. I get angry and frustrated at my own stupidity, for saying or doing whatever stupid thing that got me along those lines to begin with. I all at once feel the need to withdraw. I am unloveable to everyone because I do not love myself, I feel.

Yet at the same time, I always find myself turning toward my HOH. He gives me the reassurance that even if I err and do something horribly stupid, he still loves me and is happy with me. Not necessarily my actions, but my person. While I desire to retreat and turn inward, shunning contact with others, at the same time I long for emotional support and physical touch. Nothing stills me faster than being held, because the act itself tells my subconscious, "What you did or said might not be okay, but I'm okay with you." 

Because of this innate need to feel secure and loved, even when I don't feel that I deserve it, I find that the more insecure I feel, the more I long to touch, to hold and be held. Most of the time I cannot express myself. There may not be words attached with all these crazy emotions, or if there are, I may find myself too tongue-tied to get them out. But I know that I can at least express myself in this way. 

My fear in this area is, perhaps, in being found out...although I'll be found out anyhow, considering my HOH reads this. The fact of the matter is that I'm transparent as a pane of glass, and to me it's shameful that I can have just figured this out when I'm positive that he already knows this is my reaction to stress, doubt, and insecurity. 

And yet, here's the truth of the matter: I'm a woman, I'm emotional, and I'm frequently insecure, and the only cure for it is his unconditional love. My saving grace is that he understands the nature of a woman and accepts me for who I am and what I feel.

Overawed, As Usual...

God, it's such a wonder to me, sometimes. Still. I'm feeling totally shitty from Aunt Flo making an appearance in town (started yesterday, but really got going last night), bleeding everywhere, worrying whether these tiny little pads are going to cut it. I've been on the computer downloading books for the last while. I figure to take advantage of reading material before we end up in the car.

The lavender scented candle I lit-- just for the smell of it-- is doing its magic and relaxing me. If only I could take it and my sore, achy self to the big tub and have a soak. Ah well. There'll be time for that next week, when doing so won't make my erstwhile relaxation look like a Carrie rerun.

I look back, and K's sleeping on the blowup bed. We lately moved into the master bedroom, as his mom's finally moved all her stuff out of there. It's nice to have our own bathroom. It's nicer to have that HUGE tub for soaking and a rain shower if we want it. We have a lot more stuff than we ought to, and last night Kenny talked about "cutting down"...which frankly makes me anxious. It's just things, right? Who cares about things? But still, there's that anxiety. I don't want to live in the car. I want a home. But I'll do it anyways, and I won't voice a single complaint. Because I love him.

I look back, and I see him sleeping there. Completely undignified, mouth open a bit, breathing loud enough, but not so loud that it could be considered snoring. His hair's a mess-- predictably-- and he's about a week overdue on a shave. All the same...

I look back, and I get this RUSH of sensation. My breath catches. My throat and chest tighten. Tears prick in the back of my eyes. At the same time, I feel that overwhelming something, making all those little signs by themselves mean...just about the opposite of what they look like on the surface.

It's love, pure and unadulterated. And I think to myself, like I have a million times before, "How the hell did I get so lucky?" Closely following that is a murmured tickle in the back of my mind: "...god, he's so gorgeous."

I thought with some time that this sort of emotional response in me would settle down into something more...sedate. It still hasn't. I wonder, will it ever? Every time I look at him, I become so overawed by...us, by everything. Yeah, the sex has slowed down a bit. We're not teenagers, I guess; humping like bunnies isn't quite so important as "I'm exhausted from sleeping on the floor a month" or "Just not feeling so well today". But the thing that hasn't left is the desire. It's there all the time, lurking away under the surface of me.

I'd do anything. Anything he wanted. Now, surely, but for always, too.

Yesterday, he pinned me to the door and tickled me mercilessly. I protested, gasping for air and laughing all at the same time. I always protest; I can't not, it's just a natural reaction from me. He leaned in and laughed a bit. "What's the trouble? You like being dominated..." It wasn't a question; it was a statement of fact. 

Hahaha yes, yes I surely do. That little pulse in my neck, pounding away erratically. The feel of whiskers against my cheek, scratching my sensitive skin all red and tender. Hot breath on my neck, accompanied by the sound of his exhalations. The sheer force of his presence looming over me. It's thrilling, pulse-pounding, deep down, and at the same time I feel utterly safe.

I realized, I think, at that point, that this is what I need more of. Maybe I just realized it now. Maybe I haven't thought about it much at all.

He doesn't need to dominate me, see. I go willing like a lamb to the slaughter. ...if a lamb could be tickled to death, of course. Then, I would be just such. At the same time, I suppose I need it, just like I tease and taunt him about his weak little love-slaps. Or any of the other things I do-- like the smarty-mouth lipping comments I tend to make. It's all teases and taunts; maybe I'll get a rise out of him and deserve a good, sound thwap?

...more importantly, would doing so give me more of what I want and need? Can't say as I know the answer to that one. Going to have to give it a bit more thought. Hmmn.

Highly Sensitive Person?

Ever since I was a small child, I was always called shy, introspective, sensitive. I never stopped to question it. I only knew it was just how I was. I tend toward being very uncomfortable in crowds, and with people in general, although I can put up a good front in those situations if I absolutely MUST. I would almost consider myself something of a sociophobe, because being around people just effects me so much. I can't be in a crowd and not seem to absorb its mood, and if there's one thing I hate more than anything else, it's feeling emotions that aren't mine.

In my relationship I tend to get very overwhelmed, and there was always a part of me that feels somewhat ashamed of crying over seemingly every little thing. Disappointment, anxiety, even love, effect me so strongly that I feel like if I don't let myself cry, I'll become so overwhelmed by it that it'll paralyze me. The hardest time I have had is simply expressing my love for him. Just thinking about it sends tingles all through me and tears to my eyes. ...just writing about it does this. I guess I kind of thought of myself as something of a freak, unable to control even the tiniest emotion, but now I feel a little bit better in knowing that I'm not alone with it.

I only found this term yesterday, but as soon as I saw it I knew it fit me to a tee.