{"id":40895,"date":"2026-10-24T03:23:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T08:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40895"},"modified":"2026-10-24T03:23:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T08:23:17","slug":"a-beautiful-womans-observation-just-shook-my-old-self-perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40895","title":{"rendered":"A beautiful woman\u2019s observation just shook my old self-perception"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At some point \u2014 about 12 years ago \u2014 Amanda and I had exchanged phone numbers. That\u2019s what she told me tonight, but I don\u2019t remember it.<\/p>\n

She worked at a restaurant in a part of town where I used to live. I had just bought the house where I live now, so I was about to move. We apparently exchanged numbers \u2014 the way people sometimes do when they say they\u2019ll stay in touch \u2014 but I never called her.<\/p>\n

Until she called me out of the blue Friday evening, I hadn\u2019t thought about her for a very long time. If someone had asked me about her, I would have assumed she had forgotten all about me, too.<\/p>\n

But Amanda has been troubled lately. And she said her thoughts kept coming back to a man who used to talk with her about her unhappiness and her dysfunctional family, especially her narcissistic father. I understood a lot about her because I was still coming to grips with my own narcissistic father and my own dysfunctional childhood.<\/p>\n

We talked on the phone for a little while and then agreed to meet at a restaurant near my house about 9:30 p.m.<\/p>\n

I thought I was meeting her just to be an amateur therapist and caring listener. For almost three hours, that\u2019s what happened. But as we were in the parking lot saying our goodbyes, she said something that made me very uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

Amanda said something about me that contradicted everything I believe about myself.<\/p>\n

For any of this to make sense, I have to explain that Amanda was an aspiring model when I knew her. She was \u2014 and remains \u2014 drop-dead gorgeous. She has piercing green eyes and a perfect face. She\u2019s tall and has a body that meets the model stereotypes.<\/p>\n

She was beautiful when I knew her at the age of 22. She\u2019s still beautiful 12 years later.<\/p>\n

Amanda has been unhappy since I knew her. She\u2019s had a series of unhappy relationships. Her modeling career never led to anything more than a bit of local work. She had continued to work at restaurants and had gone from one bad relationship to another. She had one brief and unhappy marriage.<\/p>\n

But at the age of 34, she has little to show for herself. She has no family left. She doesn\u2019t trust the men she\u2019s allowed to take up her time. She never learned how to do much of anything except look beautiful and pose for cameras. And now she\u2019s older than what that industry wants.<\/p>\n

Amanda\u2019s unhappy. She\u2019s alone. And she is terrified that she\u2019s wasted her life.<\/p>\n

She was emotional and teary-eyed through parts of our conversation tonight. She told me that she was admitting things to me that she hadn\u2019t been able to tell anyone else \u2014 things she had needed to say.<\/p>\n

She told me that if she still had even one true friend in her life, she wouldn\u2019t have reached out to me. She said she had a lot of acquaintances \u2014 shallow connections who had been good for parties and fun \u2014 but there was nobody she trusted.<\/p>\n

The restaurant locked its doors at midnight and employees started cleaning up. They told us they didn\u2019t mind us sticking around while they cleaned, but by 12:30, we had started to move toward our cars.<\/p>\n

As we stood in the chilly night air \u2014 not sure what was left to say \u2014 Amanda got emotional once more. I was wrapping everything up and trying to give her a supportive send-off for the night.<\/p>\n

I was telling her how much she had going for her \u2014 that she still had beauty and emotional depth and intelligence, even if she had never developed her skills.<\/p>\n

She grew agitated and started crying again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s easy for you to say,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019ve always been the one who everybody in every room looked at. You\u2019ve always been the smartest guy in every room. You\u2019ve always been the most charming man in every room. And you\u2019ve always been the most good-looking and sophisticated guy in every room.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery man would want to be like you, but no woman would ever want to be like me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

If I hadn\u2019t realized how serious our conversation was, I would have thought she was playfully mocking me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always felt like the smart guy, so there was nothing surprising about that. There are even times when I feel charming, so I could accept that, too.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not the good-looking or sophisticated guy. I grew up completely confident about many things about my skills and intelligence \u2014 but I also grew up with the absolute certainty that I was the ugliest boy God ever created.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never felt the least bit attractive. And now I was standing in a parking lot on a cold night listening to one of the most beautiful women I\u2019ve ever known tell me that I was \u201cgood-looking and sophisticated.\u201d<\/p>\n

I jokingly tried to deflect what she was saying, simply because humor is the only way I know to deal with something that makes me as uncomfortable as her comments made me. But she doubled down on it.<\/p>\n

Amanda is really down on herself right now, so I understand how she could undervalue herself. But it baffled me to find her pouring her heart out and explaining that I couldn\u2019t possibly understand what it felt like to be so flawed \u2014 as she felt \u2014 because she had seen me as flawless.<\/p>\n

As we finished saying our goodbyes, I turned the subject back to her, because she\u2019s the one who was supposed to be the subject. Not me. So I didn\u2019t try to explain how confused her words made me feel about myself.<\/p>\n

But as I drove home, I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about Amanda\u2019s words.<\/p>\n

I suppose if she were an unattractive woman \u2014 or even a moderately attractive woman \u2014 I wouldn\u2019t be so confused by what she had said about me. But this is a woman who had moved in \u201cmodel circles.\u201d She was beautiful enough to attract any man she wanted.<\/p>\n

To put it mildly, Amanda was \u2014 and remains \u2014 way out of my league.<\/p>\n

And as I sit here thinking about it at 3 in the morning, I can\u2019t help but wonder \u2014 yet again \u2014 whether my negative evaluations of myself stop me from getting some of the things I want in life.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never really be the best-looking and most sophisticated man in any room. Or if I am, it might be a room filled with very ugly and strange-looking men.<\/p>\n

(See. Even now \u2014 as I\u2019m trying to draw some sort of conclusion from this \u2014 I\u2019m rushing to make fun of it in order to make the discomfort go away.)<\/p>\n

But even if I never look like a model who\u2019s fit to appear in the pages of GQ, maybe I\u2019m not really the ugliest child God ever made. Maybe I\u2019m not so unattractive that a woman would have to want me for my mind and my heart \u2014 and love me despite my looks.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not something I\u2019m yet emotionally prepared to accept, but I have a lot to think about.<\/p>\n

Seeing myself through the eyes of one beautiful woman \u2014 at least briefly \u2014 makes me wonder what else about my self-perception doesn\u2019t match reality through other people\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

Somehow, that\u2019s terrifying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At some point \u2014 about 12 years ago \u2014 Amanda and I had exchanged phone numbers. That\u2019s what she told me tonight, but I don\u2019t remember it. She worked at a restaurant in a part of town where I used to live. I had just bought the house where I live now, so I was Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-aDB","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40895"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40909,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40895\/revisions\/40909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}