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In addition to being my mother, my mom is my best friend and number one advocate. She has given me countless great words of advice, but it’s been the most recent ones that really stuck:
“Would you let your friends treat you the way you’ve let guys treat you?”
Think about it, would you still be friends with people who ignore your text messages and phone calls, betray you, lie to you, ditch you? No. So why would you let a guy?
I believe that as a girl in today’s society, most of us struggle with the concept of self-worth. Let’s face it—we chase assholes and ignore the nice guys. Well, nice guys finish last because nice girls don’t realize they should come first.
I know that personally. I’ve had a problem realizing my own worth. It’s almost like I never want to be a member of a club that wants me in it. I’ve desperately chased guys who aren’t as interested in me because I want them to see what I’m worth.
So, why exactly do we push away the nice guys and chase the assholes? I know that from past experience, when a guy has truly showed an interest in getting to know me at my core, the thought process goes like this, “Why are you being nice to me? You don’t know me. You don’t know the real me. If you knew the real me you wouldn’t like me. I’m just going to point out and make up flaws about you so I can convince myself not to like you. Because honestly, I don’t want to be vulnerable. Or is it that you like me more than I like myself?”
Is women’s concept of self-worth skewed because of society’s standards? Has technology ruined chivalry? Not too long ago, dialing up the number of a girl you were interested in made your stomach drop. Now, a guy will ask a girl for her number, text her “hey” and the two of you will continue to play the game of waiting x-amount of minutes to respond so that you sound cool and collected and like you aren’t desperately waiting for the other person to answer. But let’s face it—you both know that your phones are most likely in the palm of your hands. “Want to come over and watch a movie?” Ninety-eight percent of the time really means, “Want to sit in my room and watch five minutes of a movie and then hook up the rest of the time?”
Young women constantly complain how they wish guys would take them on dates to coffee and dinner and text them during the day to ask how they are, instead of at 1:00 a.m. on a Saturday night when they’re drunk and horny. So, if so many girls have a mutual feeling about this, then why do guys continue to get away with treating us like shit? It’s like a never-ending cycle. We dump one shitty guy to end up back with a guy with similar negative characteristics! We don’t love ourselves enough to cut a guy off as soon as he starts to treat us poorly. On the other hand, are we even conscious of the fact that we’re being treated poorly? It’s become so common that we consider it the status quo. Obviously, life is not all black and white, and we can’t see all guys that way either—yet generally, we continue to let the same types of guys get away with the same types of things. It becomes extremely frustrating, and it almost makes women lose hope in finding a great guy.
It’s not that “no one can love you until you love yourself,” it’s that you won’t recognize how you deserve to be treated until you look at yourself in the same light that you wish others would look at you. Self-worth is a hard concept to grasp and truly feel. It’s not so easy to love yourself. As women, we are all hard on ourselves. We stare in the mirror for too long, analyzing every inch of our body and face. We’re hard on ourselves about school, work, friends, our diet, going to the gym, shaving our legs, putting on make-up, dealing with our periods and the acne and bloating that comes before. We need to give ourselves credit in this high-pressured society. Ask yourself—would you be as hard on your loved ones as you are on yourself? It’s much easier said than done, but it starts with changing your mindset. Constantly remind yourself that you are doing the best you can, every day, with the knowledge that you have been considering the circumstances you’ve been given.
If a guy isn’t willing to give you the credit you deserve for being the awesome woman you are, he never deserved you in the first place. It wasn’t that you weren’t worthy, it was that he wasn’t capable.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Domna Dali at domna.dali@colorado.edu.
