Do you find yourself comparing yourself to every woman you see when you are out with your partner? In this Coaching Hotline episode, I answer a listener’s question about hyper-vigilantly scanning other women and feeling like you are constantly being ranked against them.
I share why this pattern is not a personal failure, but a result of the way women are socialized to see other women as competition for attention, validation, and being chosen. You’ll hear why the solution is not trying to prove that you are the most attractive person in the room, but building a sense of your own value that is not dependent on your appearance or someone else’s approval.
Welcome to UnF*ck Your Brain. I’m your host, Kara Loewentheil, Master Certified Coach and founder of The School of New Feminist Thought. I’m here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life on your own terms, one that you’re truly excited to live. Let’s go.
Welcome to this week’s coaching hotline episode where I answer real questions from real listeners and coach you from afar. If you want to submit your question for consideration, go to unfuckyourbrain.com/coachinghotline, all one word, or text your email to +1 (347) 997-1784 and when you get prompted for the code word, it’s coaching hotline, all one word. Let’s get into this week’s questions.
“How do I stop hypervigilantly comparing myself to other women when I’m out in public with my boyfriend?”
So this is something that a lot of women do, and some men may do it as well, but we really are focusing on women’s socialization here on this podcast. And that’s because of how we’re socialized, right? Women are taught that they are in competition with other women for the attention of men and for being chosen and validated by men. And so it is completely natural that you would then be comparing yourself to other women because you’ve been taught that you’re supposed to do that.
You’re supposed to be constantly trying to figure out where you are in the ranking and the hierarchy. And you’re supposed to be constantly anxious that someone who is above you in those rankings is going to steal your man, right? So you have to have so much compassion for ourselves. Of course we do this. We’re taught to do it.
And women are also, you know, socialized to believe that the reason that you would be chosen and validated by a man are things like mostly your appearance, maybe a little bit your personality, your job or whatever, but mostly your appearance. And so it doesn’t compute to think like well, my partner could be with me because they like who I am as a person even if they find someone else may be more attractive for instance. Like that doesn’t fit the socialization narrative so we assume that it is what we look like and we’re constantly comparing ourselves to other people.
The way you stop doing this is you have to build your belief in your own value and worth in and of yourself and in your relationship outside of your appearance, right? And so you really have to be practicing thoughts that help you build a sense of self-worth for yourself beyond like what you look like or whether you are with a partner or not, right? That you would have self-worth even if your boyfriend was checking someone else out or even if he left you for someone else.
You have to have thoughts that would ground you in your own self-worth and your own value even if that happened. But then I also would be practicing some thoughts around the idea that your boyfriend actually loves you for more than what you look like. I hope that’s true. I assume it is since you’re with him, right? So you have to kind of like wiggle this thought or this presumption that you need to be checking out how other women look in order to like spot a danger to your relationship. Because the truth is none of us probably listening to this are the most attractive person in the world. If there even is such a thing, there’d be one of them. And then however many billion of the rest of us.
So all of us could be in a conventional attractiveness sense, right, outshone or outranked by someone in the world. But that doesn’t matter. Your boyfriend is not with you because he’s never seen someone who looked
a different way. And so you have to protect that from happening. Your boyfriend is with you for whatever is special about your relationship and whatever is special about you. And so you have to practice building your belief that your relationship is about more than where you are in the ranking of whatever women happen to be in your vicinity at the time.