Some days I feel hideous. None of my features seem to be sitting right on my face, my complexion is dull and I look tired as hell.
The kicker is that these days are completely uncalled for, not the ones where one might assume it makes sense to feel ugly. They aren’t always the PMS days, or the hangover mornings or the Monday after a binge-eating weekend.
They can creep up on us on those should-be-happy Fridays when we’ve had a great morning and we’re feeling fresh and motivated in life. And then we go pee for the first time in a little while, and as we check ourselves out at the sink mirror, we physically shudder at our reflection. The face we see doesn’t reflect the person we feel like.
No one else would ever be able to understand what we’re talking about, of course, but especially not our significant others. At least not in my case.
My ugly day soulmate
I had been making the same mistake for years, when it finally occurred to me: My husband is not going to make me feel better on the ugly days. He will never say the right thing when I bring it up, which isn’t to reassure me that he thinks I’m beautiful or to gasp in shock at how I could ever think such a thing.
I don’t tell him because I’m fishing for compliments. I tell him because I have to tell someone how gross I feel, and I’m looking for that perfect response that I can’t quite put my finger on.
At least I couldn’t, until I found my person. My ugly day soulmate. One of my now dearest friends knew exactly what I was talking about the first time I brought it up to her. She didn’t try to tell me that I look gorgeous no matter what. She didn’t tell me I was crazy. She didn’t brush me off. She didn’t reply with her own 10-minute unrelated story. She just nodded understandingly and reassured me that there’s not much I can do about that kind of day, other than to avoid mirrors and remember that it will pass.
She reminded me that the feeling isn’t always logical, and I should give myself a bit of self-care in the meantime: do an extra face mask or indulge in some delicious-smelling body lotion to simulate the luxurious feeling I was lacking.
Her response was glorious. It sparked a conversation that made me feel 99 percent better and 100 percent seen. What I want to point out here is that this wouldn’t be every person’s choice of reaction, and that’s the key to soulmates. We’re all so different, and in need of different things to lift us up. I need my Sandy on the ugly days. I need my Lexie on the venting days. I need my Mom every other day. And I need my husband for almost everything—but definitely not for the ugly days.
We often make the mistake of setting the wrong expectations of people, instead of allowing them to shine where they shine, and to be who they are meant to be. We want all our friends to be the exact right thing at the exact right moment, and that isn’t fair.
It has been an excellent exercise for me to stop and evaluate what I get out of the different relationships I have. It has enlightened me as to how valuable some people are, in ways that I would have never noticed had I not stopped to really see them. And sadly, the reverse is also true. I’ve uncovered that there are people in my life who don’t add value in the places I had falsely assumed they did for years.
The silver lining, in this case, is that once I adjusted my expectations of them, I became more satisfied with these relationships. If I stopped assuming that a certain friend would proactively show me the ways I was important to them, I would stop being disappointed when it never happened.
In cases like these, I’ve been able to also adjust my own actions and efforts towards them in return, which brings me to an important point.
Be more honest with the people we love
We can’t forget to live up to the reciprocal of our expectations of others. We should try to be the person our friend needs when they come to us.
We generally know our friends well. We generally know our best friends—well, the best. We know what they are looking for when they come to us. Are they seeking us out for comfort, hard truths, pity or distraction? And when we answer that question truthfully, do we feel good about the answer we give?
Are we being used or manipulated? Or are we possibly the user or manipulator?
If we find ourselves in relationships where we provide something to someone that doesn’t feel genuine, we should re-evaluate. Are we being used or manipulated? Or are we possibly the user or manipulator? Is the friendship we share based on a version of ourselves that we don’t feel comfortable with?
Maybe it’s a version that we’ve grown out of, and we’re afraid of what exposing that growth to the other person might do to the relationship. Maybe it’s a version of ourselves that was misperceived from the beginning, and now we feel like it’s too late to change things.
It’s never too late to be genuine, and it’s never too late to evolve. We can’t be afraid to become more honest with the people we love, even if it means the relationship may shift as a result. Change is scary, but progress requires it, and progress is often beautiful and rewarding.
In the end, redefining our relationships helps to make things transparent, open and honest. It helps us be a more genuine version of ourselves, and to receive more genuine love from others in return. It sets the groundwork for having realistic expectations of real people with real quirks and flaws, and being able to accept those flaws because we can recognize the special ways in which people shine.
The more we embrace what makes us unique, and the more we accept the uniqueness of others, the more we realize how alike we really are. Aren’t we all just searching for love in the end? And the more love we are able to let in, the fewer ugly days we have. Especially if we find our ugly day soulmate.
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image 1 Image by StockSnap from Pixabay 2 Image by Alexandr Ivanov from Pixabay
