How to date with low self esteem?

I was emotionally abused by my father well into my 30's. His favorite line to use was "you're such a stupid moron", "you're worthless", "you can never do anything right". My mother has very low self esteem too, so she also dealt with his abuse and she always made excuses for why he would make me cry. Needless to say, I haven't had any good relationships with men. I tend to lean on them too much for emotional support, and I think this has come off as looking too needy in the past. A friend says I need to get back online and start dating again. I am very lonely and would like to meet someone, but I'm afraid of being too needy. It's like the more people reject you, the needier you become. Has anyone been successful in dating when you don't feel very good about yourself?

My dad gave me good advice once, he said "You just need to get angry." in response to when I was telling him how scared, nervous, and anxious I was. He said "You have every right to be on this planet as anyone else. You have every right to be here. Get angry and don't take it anymore." He said this really helped him when he was younger. Now, this doesn't mean get angry at other people of course. It just means you finally take a stand and accept nothing less than happiness for yourself. And next time you feel like you're getting too needy in a relationship, then pull back. You have the power to do that. Treat others in a relationship the way you would like to be treated. Be the person you would want to date, before you date someone else. Because you're in a relationship with yourself, first and foremost.

Consider what you need to feel respected and loved. If you identify that first then you will know what is good and not in a relationship. This way you are not being needy but you are taking care of yourself first, advocating for what you need.

My brain knows logically what I should be doing and what to look for in someone and what is unacceptable behavior, but my heart has been so abused and neglected that I tend to cling onto any kind of attention from guys. It's like I'm so starved for attention because I'm ignored by my family and most of my friends and have never felt like I really mattered to anyone.

I can understand that. I was in a relationship with a person who suffers from a variety of aliments. I know it is easier and healthier to walk away at this point but I care. I find myself explaining the recent mean behavior on the illness. You need to decide to care for yourself first.

I think what I need to do first is convince myself that I actually deserve to be treated right and respected. I've never gotten that from anyone, so it's hard to believe you deserve it when most everyone in my life has just shown me that I don't.

You no doubt deserve love just like anyone else.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have had low self-esteem pretty much all my life. One of the things that helped turn it around was someone I dated last year. Dating her and knowing she loved and wanted me boosted my self esteem like nothing else.

So I guess my advice would be if you meet someone who accepts you at a time when you don't feel very good about yourself, then you'll know they're someone special.

Then there are others, like my therapist, who will say that you need to feel good about yourself before you can ever find someone else. Because if you don't then you will associate your self-worth with the person who made you feel good and if the day comes when that person leaves your sense of self worth may leave with them. This makes sense, but it's not factoring in that life doesn't work that smoothly.

It's ideal to think that we can feel good about ourselves all on our own without the approval of others but we need both. We need that sense of being wanted by someone. The only cure to loneliness is love and companionship.

But your self esteem can be improved in many ways. That being said, you don't have to be brimming with confidence to find someone. Sometimes they find you. Sometimes in the most unexpected ways. Just because it's stormy now doesn't mean that you aren't still headed for sunshine. I mean it.

And that's exactly what happened. This guy found me (was a mutual friend of other friends, I had known him for years, but he started to want to hang out and the end of last year), he made me feel special for a few months, gave me the support and encouragement I needed, made me feel wanted, and now he's gone. He's been blowing me off for two months and I don't know why. So now I'm back to feeling even worse than before I starting hanging out with him.

Yea, I've heard that if you don't love yourself no one else will, but like you said, no one feels good all by themselves. Humans are wired to need other people. I just need to figure out how to not put all my self worth into one person.

If your father was abusing you at age 30, you have to take some responsibility for allowing it. What stopped the abuse?

I'm sorry that your family ties involved so much suffering. It's hard to know how to form healthy attachments when you had bad experiences in your family growing up. But there are people with a background of suffering serious abuse who go on to find satisfying relationships.

Examine the reasons for your lack of self-esteem. Maybe you gave up trying to succeed at meeting challenges because your father demoralized you. In that case, you don't feel worthless just because your father said you were. You feel worthless because maybe you didn't work very hard at proving him wrong. Self-esteem isn't given to us by our fathers. We give it to ourselves by working as hard as it takes to meet challenges. Coming from a non-supportive family background means you have to work extra hard. That's not fair, but that's how it is.

I think you're putting a lot of mental energy into mourning your unhappy relationship with your father. That's understandable, but after a certain point, it gets you nowhere.

When people say they have a self-esteem problem, I think what they really have is a life-esteem problem. I've been there and done that myself. We get to thinking, "Gee life has never given me any opportunities for happiness." Actually, we've had opportunities, but we've not made the most of them: "No point in trying, since nothing ever works out for me."

I don't mean to be hard on you. It is awful hard to go forth and meet challenges when when we haven't had a safe harbor of warmth to return to as needed. But, if you wait for your emotional needs to be met before you'll have any faith in life, then you'll never get your life off the ground.

Being active in a variety of settings helps prevent overreliance on any one of them. You could consider involving yourself in volunteering, politics, church, a second job. Maybe develop new skills or hobbies or sports. Perhaps you could go back to school. What sorts of new things might be of interest to you?

My father has actually still been verbally abusing me well into my 40's. The reason I've put up with it is because I'm still financially dependent on them. So I can't just tell him off or cut my ties with my family. I still need them for money, and since my parents have no clue how to show love other than giving money, I can't risk being cut off from them.

I've thought about volunteering, but I have some medical issues that cause fatigue, so it's hard enough sometimes just to get thru my full time job. I can't stand up for more than 15 minutes without my blood pressure dropping, so that's why I haven't looked for a second job either. I can't do retail or anything that requires standing. I love photography and have recently started my own Etsy shop, so that's been a small accomplishment.

It's just been very hard lately because I've lost most of my friends and having so much alone time isn't good for me. I have hypothyroidism, which causes depression and adrenal fatigue which makes it hard to cope with stress. So I guess on top of already feeling bad about myself, I have the medical issues that are making it harder to be happy or motivated to do things for myself. In order to have friends I've had to pretend nothing was wrong with me, even when I felt like crap. I'm also not happy with most areas of my life, so I feel like a failure.

My parents also don't want me to succeed. I still do my laundry at their house because I don't have my own washer/dry, and my parents know that's the only reason I go see them. So they actually want me to fail and keep needing them for money so they can keep seeing me. That's not a good feeling knowing if you succeed your parents will be mad at you. I know at my age I'm not supposed to be so dependent on my parents anymore, but that's been a lot of the problem. With all my medical expenses and jobs with low salaries, I've always needed their help with money, so I've had to put up with however badly they treat me. A few years ago something happened where my dad was yelling at me so bad I started crying. My mom literally just sat there staring at me. Didn't ever give me a hug or any words of comfort. My dad kept saying he didn't care if I was crying. I would love to never see them again since they're a huge part in me feeling messed up, but I'm not in the financial position to.

It never mattered what I did to my father. I could drop a fork on the floor by accident and he'd yell at me saying how stupid I was for letting the fork drop on the floor. Anything set him off and he'd be on a screaming rampage for hours. My parents never told me they loved me or were proud of me.

I guess I have to disagree about where your self esteem can come from because all you know as a child is your parents. How they treat you from a young age does shape how you feel about yourself. If it was that easy to give ourselves self esteem, there would be no need for therapists and everyone would be healthy and happy.

If I could cut ties with my parents and never be around that environment, I could probably heal better, but because I have to see them every week and still deal with my dad's abuse and watch him abuse my mom and not be able to say anything, it's like I get triggered all over again every week. I could be feeling good about myself and then 1 hour with my parents and I feel bad all over again.

It's also not just my dad. I've been let down by most men I've come across in my life.

I read through your posts so I hope I didn't miss anything. Would you consider counseling to help you with your situation, including your self-esteem? It can be very helpful. It would be worth it to look for free or low-cost counseling, since money seems to be an issue. Many counselors offer reduced rates to a few clients, so it pays to ask.

You might also try to find other ways to get out from under your dependence on your parents--is there a laundromat near by instead of going to your parents?

Also, this might be helpful. When your father starts to yell at you, say quietly to your mother and father: "I won't put up with abuse. I'm going now." And then leave. Don't prolong your leave taking. You want your father to see that his action has a re-action from you--that you remove yourself from his presence.

You can stop experiencing your father's abuse by removing yourself from it.

I don't believe you are ready for a serious relationship until you improve your self esteem; but you might go on casual dates out to the movies or dinner without looking for a heavy one on one relationship.

See, the problem with standing up to my parents right now or leaving them is that they'll cut me off from their money, and right now I literally can't pay all my bills on my salary alone and I'm too sick from my health issues to get a part time job. When my parents help financially, they include strings, meaning they will only help you if you do what they want. I have washer/dryers at my apartment, but in order to keep getting help from them, I have to keep going over there and stay on their good side. My dad would never admit he's abusing anyone. To him, this is how people should be treated. I believe he was emotionally abused himself by his mother, so I'm sure this is just the only way he knows how to be. He's probably insecure himself and being a bully makes him feel better. I actually feel sorry for him.

I'll see if I can find some super cheap or free counseling. I live check to check, so I don't have much extra to spare. I'm behind on some of my bills this month already.

As lonely as I am, I'm honestly afraid to even start dating again. I'm already putting up with enough bad behavior from friends because I'm afraid to let them go and have no one or have to start all over and find new friends. I'm really afraid with the way I feel now, I'll just end up putting up with bad behavior from someone I'm dating just to get the attention.

So while on this website, a recommendation for a book popped up and it couldn't be more perfect. It's called Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families. My local library didn't have it, but I found a used copy on Amazon for less than $5. It also has an accompanying workbook that I found used for $7. It was written in the late 80's, but it got great reviews and was recommended to several people by their therapists, so I'm hoping this will help me.

Enjoy the book and workbook. I think that was a good use of 12 dollars.

I'm glad for you that you have your own apartment. That gives you a safe place to go to for escaping the abuse ar your parents' home. You actually have accomplished some very important things - like having a full-time job and an apartment of your own. That's a lot for a depressed person to achieve. Give yourself a pat on the back for those two really big things.

You know they don't usually put people in jail for not paying their bills. If a sizable portion of your bills is from credit card debt, here's an option for you. Default on the consumer debt. Then make up your mind to live on the income from your job. Apply for foodstamps and a housing subsidy. You can make it on your own, if you accept the limits of your income. Do that for 6 months, and I promise you that your self-esteem will shoot up.

However, if you totally believe that you cannot do anything different from how you are doing, then I promise you that you will stay miserable.

Also it might be helpful to realize that your father was projecting his own frustrations onto you. The example you provided us where you dropped the fork on the floor and he would call you stupid for dropping the fork - that to me, sounds like he was so frustrated in his own life that it had nothing to do with you, and he would look for any opportunity to take out his frustrations on other people. So it didn't have anything to do with you personally, yet you took it personally of course and internalized his words. Some people just weren't cut out to be parents and they can't handle the stresses of every day life.

Rose76, yes they actually DO put you in jail for not paying your bills if you let it go for too long. Twelve years ago I had to file Chapter 7 Bankruptcy because I had gotten so far behind on my bills that the court had summoned me. I called a friend who's husband was a cop at the time and she told me if I didn't file bankruptcy the next day, the courts would come take my car away (the only property I owned at the time) and put me in jail. Maybe every state has its own laws, but where I live, if you default more than 6 months on your bills after it's been sent to a collections agency, they WILL come after you. I already had my credit ruined once, I don't need it ruined again.

And just so you know, where I live, our social services department has been under scrutiny for years for screwing over the low income. There's a waiting list a year long for anyone even wanting to get on food stamps now because our system here has gotten so messed up. They're also tearing down all the low income housing to put up luxury homes. I live in a state that's run by extreme conservatives who don't help anyone but the rich.

And telling someone who's depressed and already feels unwanted and unloved that they'll just be miserable if they don't do what you say is really not very helpful. That's what my friends and family already do to me. If I don't do exactly what they tell me to, then to them I'm not trying. Everyone has their own path in this world and has to do what works for them.

Cosmic Rose, I've told people a million times, I'm glad I was born, but my parents should have never had children. They're way too selfish and have absolutely zero compassion. It's a shame how much people who want to adopt have to go thru, but anyone can get pregnant without being checked out to see if they should have children or not.

I agree, my mom should have never had children, she was extremely inappropriate telling me things no young child should know about at a young age and she completely left when I was 14 and was a total dead beat parent who was too selfish to be there for me when she got remarried.

To answer your original question @rr13 , no.
Believe me when I tell you, if you go out there seeking a relationship right now, the way you feel about yourself, you are like a giant bullseye target with the words " Come and get me." pasted on your back for all the predators out there.
I wish the world were different, but there are so many people who see someone who is obviously suffering, and instead of thinking..."I'd like to help them. I know what that feels like" They - on autopilot, just react to your vulnerability, your sensitivity, your woundedness.
As nice as it would be to have a kind hearted person rescue you...I have never ever ever had that happen.
Except when it came to my tried and true friends, it takes time and effort to make good friends, put some effort into them, the ones that show that they aren't superficial jerks, and see how that helps you now.
What you are needing most is a kind of love that is healing, secure, trustworthy and real. And that takes a long time to develop. This is why so many people find comfort in church, and religion. Because this is what they share. Have you tried that road?
I personally don't go to church, but I am very actively pursuing spiritual paths of different religions and I find it to be both fulfilling and fascinating. This is how I'm healing, by finding this truth, and this love within.
You've heard it a million times, I know...because its' true.
I'm getting to where I don't care so much about finding or having a relationship with someone else because I'm finding an amazing relationship inside of myself.
I really don't want to settle for just anyone, I want someone who knows how to do that too, because they're going to be capable of the deep constant and true love that comes from having it in themselves.
Honestly, you don't seem to have it in yourself right now, and if you found the sort of fairytale romance where someone just dropped everything to rescue you, I would be so shocked. I have never in my life ever seen anyone get rescued...um only after years of abuse and they rescue themselves...which is where you are now...rescue yourself. Be your own Joan of Arc.
Why not? Well, if you can't do it yet, maybe you need to reset your connections in your brain with something like EMDR or EFT. Research it. It may get you just what you need.
AND if you take some time away from dating to heal and help yourself, and rescue yourself, you will be so much better when you KNOW that you are where you want to be, and won't need to or want to settle for - guess what - a re-enactment of life with your mother and father. You being like your mother is, and the man you pick who you think can rescue you feeling like your father, that he has no idea what he's doing and no idea how to do whats' right for those that are trusting him to quit being a ****...someday.
And you don't want that, I'm sure.
So, thats my answer for you, take time to rescue yourself, grow and get beyond your sad little puppy self right now, and become that which you know you are and find that which you know you want beyond anything else.

rr13, you are misinformed. But I think that may kind of be how you like it. Your level of literacy shows that you are plenty educated enough to know that a friend whose husband is a cop is not the proper source of legal advice. (For some things yes - like the law regarding the speed limit.) A summons from a court regarding debt actually means very little. (It just means that if you don't show up, you lose by default, which puts you right back where you were anyway - owing the money.) A lot of the law dealing with debt is Federal, as opposed to State. You filed for chap. 7 bankruptcy in a federal court, not a state court. Individual states have laws against credit card fraud, and you really have to be guilty of something extraordinarily devious to bring that law down on you. States also set the statute of limitations for when debtors can't be legally pursued. Nobody was coming to put you in jail. (If you hadn't been making car loan payments, they sure could repo the vehicle.) So you filed chap. 7 and you know the outcome of that. (BTW, the courts don't take the car. It's a collateralized loan. Look up how auto repo works before you say that. Tons of info on the Net.)

You are very wounded and you are finding life very tough. It's tough enough without making up false boggiemen. No one's coming to grab you and lock you up because you are 6 months behind in your bills . . . or 16 months.

But, okay, you value a good (or not so bad) credit rating and don't want to default. You have a right to choose your priorities. That's fine.

Be careful where you get your info. There is nowhere in the USA where states have instituted a "wait list" to get on food stamps. (There are wait lists for housing subsidies.) Getting food stamos can be delayed in some localities, but not for months and months. Federal law doesn't allow that. Some states are better than others at complying with federal law, but no state gets to do whatever the heck it wants.

You definitely don't have to listen to me, or your friends, or your family. (Though you listen fast enough to some dumb sources of info.) By all means, do what works for you. But ask yourself: "Is what I'm doing working for me?" If the answer is "no," then consider coming up with a different strategy. Doing the same thing, expecting different results is guaranteed not to work. That's not a rule I made up. That's just how life works.

Your parents let you down, as did your friends. Nobody has any compassion. Everyone, but you, is selfish. Did you ever meet anyone who was decent and fair towards you?

Rose76, please do me a favor and don't respond to anymore of my posts. You're nothing but a bully like my family and friends. You don't know anything about me and the way you're talking to me right now is completely rude and uncalled for in this type of environment. This is a board full of people who have been abused and hurt by people they loved and trusted. This is not the place to act high and mighty and make people feel worse about themselves.

DON'T CALL ME MISINFORMED OR SAY I LIKE IT THAT WAY. YOU'RE A RUDE PERSON AND I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU.

Check out North Carolina's social services. THERE IS A WAIT LIST FOR FOOD STAMPS. DON'T CALL ME A LIAR. I WON'T TOLERATE IT.

Just for your reading pleasure Rose76, here is an article written last year that talks about a computer glich that held up food stamps in NC for over a month. That was last year and today people are STILL waiting because of how screwed up North Carolina's social services program is. I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. I GREW UP BEING CALLED A STUPID MORON AND WON'T TOLERATE ANYONE EVER MAKING ME FEEL STUPID!!

Try being nicer to people who are wounded. AND NEVER EVER TALK RESPOND TO ONE OF MY POSTS AGAIN!!!!

How A Government Computer Glitch Forced Thousands Of Families To Go Hungry

Here's another article dated this year stating how the food stamp system in NC is still screwed up and how the federal government had to get involved because thousands of people went months without food.
More NC Food Stamp Problems Causing Demands From USDA