Learning to Take the Compliment

I have been dating a new man for about a month now.  GASP!  I know, I know, I have been holding out.  We will call him the Bartender.  Obviously he is a bartender (we met at where he works, while he was working).  He is cute, tall, intelligent, is bald with facial hair (just my type), and he seems like he is on the cusp of being a reformed thug without really being a thug.  He has an edge but reminds me to of words I never use like banal and groups I forgot about like Jamiroquai.  We have been spending a lot of time together and for the most part things have been going really well.  We are the epitome of what I used to hate and now embrace with open arms, people who kiss in public!  However, in the midst of the whirlwind that comes from a new romance I am learning something about myself, I have to learn how to take a compliment.

Over the past year I have been on an "I love me" campaign.  Essentially, it took me a few years to both know and truly believe that I am indeed fabulous.  Shoot, I even wrote about it a few months ago (I Am Fabulous and I Am Not Apologizing).  And if you really know me, you know I will let you know this every chance I get!  But today I realized that I had convinced myself that I didn't need anyone else to express to me their affections because I loved myself so much.  Herein lies the problem.

The bartender is very affectionate.  He tells me constantly how much he likes me and how he is crazy about me.  He tells me I am beautiful and how special I am. I mean this is what a women wants right?  Shoot this is what I have been waiting for, a man to tell me what I have known all my life, that I am the best thing since sliced bread.  Yet, when he compliments me it makes me feel uncomfortable.  It actually makes all of the doubts and thoughts that no one would ever appreciate me rise to the surface.  It almost makes me think that he can't possibly like me because I am fabulous.  No, he has to have some ulterior motive.  I mean look at all the other people who never realized it, what does he see that everyone didn't?  All of the other guys didn't fight for me, they easily let me go, so what makes you different?

I am ashamed.  Ashamed that I constantly tout my self-love but at the same time have these deep dark feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt.  It makes me scared.  It makes me sad.  It makes me feel like maybe I am damaged goods and perhaps I will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I will end up alone, with my mom, and 50 cats, which really sucks because I don't do the pet thing.

NO.  I am NOT going to give in to my pessimism.  I am not going to let negativity taint my quest for positivity nor will I will let it effect the possibility for me to find real love.  I am going to keep loving me and I am going to allow others to love me without doubting their sincerity.  I am not going downgrade myself in order to take a compliment.  No, instead I am going to learn how to take compliments and bask in the feelings of warmth, closeness, and companionship. I am going to enjoy those beginning stages and embrace it all instead of pushing it away.