Attention Is Cheap: Being Wanted Is Easy. Being Worthy Is Harder.

Every once in a while, Facebook suggests an attractive woman as someone I might know. Lots of cleavage, lots of provocative photos, thousands of "friends," including three or four mutual friends. Before I even click, I usually know exactly who those mutual friends are. I have a small collection of male friends who are remarkably consistent in this regard (you know who you are).

Gentlemen, women notice patterns.

If I look at a man's friends list and it has more cleavage than Tampa during spring break, I don't immediately think, "Oh no. Competition." These days, I'm more likely to think, "Oh. Someone enjoys keeping the fan club well staffed."

But there was a time when I probably did see those women as competition. I was heavier then and not nearly as comfortable with my body as I am today. I also believed what a lot of women seem to believe, which is that if I were sufficiently confident and secure, seeing a man I'm with get attention from other women shouldn't bother me.

So I worked very hard at being the Cool Girl. You know her. She's confident. She's evolved. She's definitely not jealous. She doesn't care who you flirt with because she's far too secure for such nonsense. If something makes her uncomfortable, she carefully examines herself to determine which character defect she needs to correct so she can become even more impressively unbothered.

Yeah, that chick is exhausting. I retired her.

It took me a long time to understand that confidence isn't the ability to tolerate anything without reacting. Sometimes confidence is simply trusting yourself enough to say, "I don't like how this feels, and I don't want this in my life." Feelings aren't the same as facts, of course. They're unreliable little creatures that drag old wounds into new relationships, confuse fear with intuition and occasionally throw a tantrum because someone didn't answer a text quickly enough. And while not every uncomfortable feeling deserves to become a boundary, every uncomfortable feeling also doesn’t need to be conquered.

I learned that distinction the expensive way.

After my marriage fell apart, I met a man who absolutely swept me off my feet. He was handsome, charming, funny and exciting, and after what I had been through, being with him felt wonderfully alive. We traveled together, rode his motorcycle, sang karaoke, watched movies and laughed. God, did we laugh. He made me feel beautiful and intelligent and desired, and I loved him. We dated for several years, eventually lived together, and I genuinely wanted a future with him.

There were things that made me uncomfortable along the way, particularly his appetite for attention from women. I saw them. I just kept trying to decide whether my discomfort said something about his behavior or something about my insecurity. Instead of asking whether the relationship felt safe to me, I kept asking whether a more confident woman would be bothered by the things that bothered me. Then I tried to become her.

I also had another slightly embarrassing romantic theory operating in the background. I believed, at least on some level, that if I loved someone enough, supported him enough, believed in him enough and gave him enough reasons to value what we had, I could inspire him to become the man I believed he was capable of being. Apparently, I listened to too much Josh Groban and John Legend. They owe me an apology.

So I invested. Not just emotionally. I helped solve problems. I encouraged ideas. I gave advice. I provided support. I lent money and paid for things when he couldn't. At one point I added it up and realized I had spent or loaned somewhere around $30,000 over the course of the relationship. I don't say that because love should come with an invoice or because relationships need to be financially equal. They don't. I say it because it illustrates how thoroughly I had learned to measure love by what I was willing to contribute.

Eventually, despite all that love and support and impressive Cool Girl confidence, I learned that some of the things making me uncomfortable weren't products of my imagination after all. He was unfaithful. Repeatedly. The relationship ended, and I was devastated.

Years passed. A lot of life happened. I changed.

Then, many years later, we found our way back into each other's lives.

This time the dynamic was different. He told me he had changed. He told me he loved me. He talked about marriage and building a future together. He moved across the country, at considerable expense, to the city where he knew I planned to build my next chapter. He was the one pushing toward a future, and I was the one standing there wondering whether trusting him again was an act of forgiveness, an act of stupidity, or perhaps some uncomfortable combination of the two.

I wanted to believe him because I genuinely believe people can change. It would be rather hypocritical of me not to. I am not the same woman I was ten years ago, and I don't want to live in a world where we're all sentenced for life to the worst version of ourselves. Forgiveness, growth, and grace are all important to me.

But true change has an inconvenient little requirement. You actually DO have to change.

So when the familiar patterns began appearing again, I noticed. Photos posted in singles groups. Messages to women. Conversations that appeared to be moving toward meeting them. Alongside that was the steady stream of selfies and videos and posts displaying the car, the motorcycle, the apartment, the income, the lifestyle. None of those things is inherently wrong, of course. If you've worked hard for something and you're proud of it, show it off. If you happen to look particularly good one Tuesday afternoon, by all means let Facebook know. The rest of us have survived worse.

But patterns are different from isolated behaviors, and I had seen this particular pattern before.

The explanation I received for some of the more troubling activity was that his account had been hacked. Now, I'm an IT person, so perhaps I have an unfair disadvantage here. Could someone hack a Facebook account? Of course. Could someone theoretically hack an account and use it to message women? Sure. Could a mysterious hacker gain access to a man's account, ignore every available opportunity for financial fraud or identity theft, and instead devote his criminal talents exclusively to recreating the exact romantic behaviors that had damaged this man's relationship years earlier, apparently for the sole purpose of sabotaging a relationship most people didn't even know existed?

I suppose. Anything is possible.

I also suppose Katsu could be running an offshore gambling operation while I'm asleep. He's very clever, and he does have quite a bit of unsupervised time.

Kiba, meanwhile, may be responsible for figuring out how NASA fabricated radio transmissions convincing enough that independent observatories around the world believed they were coming from the Moon in 1969. I haven't found any evidence connecting him to the operation, but apparently the evidentiary threshold for doubting a moon landing is considerably lower than the one I'm expected to use when doubting a Facebook hacker. I should probably check Kiba's browser history.

At some point, probability deserves a seat at the table. But the more important realization for me isn't whether I can prove his explanation wrong. It's that, for perhaps the first time in my life, I don't feel any need to try.

Years ago, I would have investigated. I would have looked for messages, checked timelines, compared stories, watched who commented on posts and searched for the piece of evidence that would finally give me permission to trust what I was already feeling. In fact, that is exactly what happened before. Once trust was damaged, tiny things that probably meant nothing became suspicious. I couldn't concentrate at work. I lost sleep. I felt physically sick when I found evidence that confirmed my fears. Eventually I was hiding what I was going through from friends and family because I didn't want them to think I was crazy for staying.

I won't become that woman again.

I won't be a detective in my own relationship, and more importantly, I don't want a relationship that requires one. I don't need to prove infidelity beyond a reasonable doubt before I decide that a relationship doesn’t feel emotionally safe to me. I can acknowledge that my feelings aren't evidence of someone else's guilt while also recognizing that they ARE very relevant when considering whether this is a relationship I want to participate in.

That's a distinction I wish I had understood years ago, because what I need from a relationship now isn't certainty that nothing bad will ever happen. I need emotional safety and security. That doesn't mean I require a man who never notices another attractive woman or never receives attention from one. Good grief. I have eyes too. Attractive people continue to exist after we fall in love. I don't need a man nobody else wants, and I'm certainly not interested in spending the rest of my life guarding one like a Labrador with a sandwich.

But what I DO need is to be able to trust the judgment of the person standing beside me. I don't want to prevent someone from having options. I want to be with someone who understands that having options and continually exercising them are two very different things.

Maybe that's why, after all these years, my message to the man who seemed to believe attention from women meant he was winning has become remarkably simple:

Put the phone down.

You don't need another woman flirting with you to prove you're attractive. You don't need another suggestive conversation, another DM, another woman waiting in the wings or another little hit of validation from someone you don't actually want a life with.

At some point, you may meet a woman who changes your definition of what it means to be wanted, and the habits that helped you collect attention from women you don’t really care about may be exactly the habits that prevent you from building a life with the one you do.

She is intelligent and accomplished, confident and independent. She has built a life she loves entirely on her own. She doesn't need you to rescue her, finance her, complete her or convince her of her value. She has survived enough life to know she is perfectly capable of standing alone.  And she was ready to choose you anyway.

Don't underestimate what that means.

Attention is not respect. Being desired by a lot of women doesn't make you more valuable to the woman whose opinion actually matters, and keeping doors cracked open with other women doesn't demonstrate your desirability. It simply communicates that being loved by one person, no matter how good that person is for you, still isn't enough to quiet whatever part of you needs to know you could have another.

I don't know what drives that need. Maybe it's ego. Maybe it's insecurity. Maybe it's habit. Maybe attention just provides a dopamine hit. Maybe some people spend so many years proving they CAN attract someone that they never stop to ask WHY they need to prove it. And I don't actually need to know, because another lesson I've learned with age is that understanding why someone behaves a certain way doesn't change my willingness to live with that behavior.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying attention. There is nothing wrong with knowing you're attractive. There is nothing wrong with being charming, flirtatious or sexual. But there is a difference between knowing you could get attention and needing to keep collecting it.

Ironically, I'm more physically confident now than I was a few years ago, yet somehow appearance matters less to me than it ever has. I still want to look good. I take care of myself and intend to present the best version of me that I reasonably can, but I no longer confuse looking good with having value.

The funny thing is that letting go of one way of measuring my value forced me to recognize another. I may have stopped needing to be the prettiest woman in the room, but I am still awfully invested in being the most valuable one.

And I am valuable in a relationship for reasons that have very little to do with my face or my body. I'm intelligent, accomplished, creative, generous, loyal, loving and supportive. I know how to turn ideas into reality. I know how to solve problems. I know how to help someone I love succeed, and I genuinely enjoy doing it. I can take an idea someone mentions over dinner and figure out how to build the technology to make it happen. I can encourage better habits, challenge questionable thinking and, apparently, create artificial intelligence tools that make you look considerably more competent at work than you have any right to look.

I'm useful as hell.

And for a long time, being useful felt a lot like being loved. So when a man told me, "You make me better," I heard it as a profound compliment, and part of me still does. What could be more loving than knowing your presence encourages someone you care about to become a better version of himself?

But when I hear that sentence now, a question immediately follows:

Who do I become when I love you?

Because I spent a lot of years evaluating myself according to what I brought to another person's life without applying nearly enough scrutiny to what his presence brought to mine. I knew how I helped him. I could see the problems I solved, the opportunities I created, the encouragement I provided, the money I contributed, the ideas I helped launch and the ways his life became more functional when he wasn't alone. I could point to tangible evidence that I made his life better.

But did he make mine better? The answer, inconveniently, isn't no.

He brought fun into my life. He brought adventure and laughter and affection. We took trips, rode motorcycles, sang karaoke, watched movies and genuinely enjoyed being together. He complimented me often. He made me feel attractive and intelligent. There are parts of myself that came alive around him that I genuinely loved, and I won't rewrite history simply because the story became painful.

But while those things were very real, so was the other woman I became.

The woman who couldn't focus at work because something felt wrong. The woman who lost sleep. The woman who felt physically sick when she discovered another lie. The woman who watched Facebook comments and wondered what they meant, questioned harmless details because she had learned that sometimes the harmless-looking details weren't harmless, and concealed what was happening from people who loved her because she already knew what they would tell her.

That woman’s story is just as important.

So perhaps "Does he make my life better?" isn't quite the right question. Relationships aren't spreadsheets, and people aren't collections of debits and credits. Fun doesn't cancel betrayal, and betrayal doesn't erase every beautiful memory that came before it.

The better question may be - who do I become when I love him? And more importantly, do I WANT to be her?

That question has changed what partnership means to me.

I don't need someone to make me better by launching my ideas or teaching me how to function. I've spent enough years learning how to carry myself. What I want now is almost embarrassingly ordinary. I want stability. I want to sit down and eat dinner with someone at the end of the day. I'll cook if you do the dishes. I want weekends camping, shared responsibility for whatever breaks around the house or camper, and someone who makes the coffee in the morning because he knows I am functionally constrained before caffeine.

I want someone who accepts that sometimes I'm brilliant and productive and funny, and sometimes I'm moody and short and tired and perfectly content to accomplish absolutely nothing. I want someone who can manage my investment accounts because I'm fully willing to concede that another human being may possess skills I do not. I want someone whose judgment I trust enough that I don't have to be the competent one all the time.

But mostly… I want peace.

There was a time when "boring and predictable" sounded like an insult to a relationship. Now it sounds almost luxurious. I've had enough excitement. I know what chaos feels like. I know what it feels like to wonder and investigate and hope and explain and forgive and wait for the other shoe to drop.

Now? Give me boring.

Give me coffee in the morning and dinner at night. Give me someone who says he's going to Home Depot and, believe it or not, actually goes to Home Depot. Give me ordinary weekends and inside jokes and shared chores and a relationship so predictable that a random woman commenting on Facebook doesn't even register as information worth storing.

That's the kind of better I want now.

So when someone tells me, "You make me better," I still want to receive the love in that statement. I want my presence to make the life of someone I love richer. I want to encourage him, challenge him, support his dreams and help him become whatever version of himself he chooses to build.

But I no longer want "you make me better" without a comparable "and I make your life better too" somewhere in the relationship.

Not in identical ways. Love isn't a barter system. I don't need someone to create GPTs for me because I created GPTs for him. I don't need someone to earn what I earn, solve the problems I solve or contribute precisely what I contribute. Reciprocity isn't sameness. It's mutuality.

My presence should create something good in your life, and yours should create something good in mine.  And if being with me helps you become more motivated, successful, organized, ambitious or hopeful while being with you turns me into someone anxious, distracted, suspicious and physically ill, then "you make me better" is just a nice way of saying “I benefit considerably from what this relationship costs you.”

I have spent enough of my life becoming capable of carrying myself. I don't want my primary function in a relationship to be carrying someone else. I want a partner.

Which brings me back to where this whole train of thought started: women, attention and that Facebook friends list full of cleavage.

The woman I am today isn't threatened because other women find her partner attractive. Frankly, I expect them to. I'm not looking for a man nobody else wants. I'm looking for a man who doesn't require constant confirmation that they do. I'm paying attention to what he does with attention when it arrives. Does he enjoy the compliment and move along, or does he cultivate it? Does he collect women around him because each new admirer provides another tiny reminder that he's still got it? Does he protect the relationship he's asking me to invest in, or does he continually introduce ambiguity into it and then expect me to prove my confidence by tolerating that ambiguity?

The question for me has never been whether a man is attractive to other women. It has always been whether he has the judgment, confidence and emotional discipline to build something meaningful with this ONE woman.

I don't need to make someone a terrible person because he can't give me what I need. I don't even have to know why he can't. Maybe he really does want the future he describes. Maybe part of him genuinely wants marriage, partnership, stability and a person beside him who makes him better. Maybe another part still needs the little rush of being noticed by strangers. Both things can be true.

But wanting a life and being capable of protecting what that life requires are not the same thing.

I think that's one of the hardest lessons I've learned about love. Someone can love you and still be unable or unwilling to love you in a way that is healthy for you. Someone can genuinely want a future with you while continuing to make choices that make that future impossible. Someone can recognize your value and still lack the discipline required to protect it.

Love doesn't automatically cure whatever came before it.  And apparently neither does a really good custom GPT.

At this stage of my life, I don't have time to wait for a catastrophe before I decide to leave something that costs me my peace. I don't need photographic evidence. I don't need a confession. I don't need to find someone else’s earrings on his nightstand. I don't need to win an argument about what technically constitutes cheating. If I reach the point where I feel compelled to monitor, investigate and worry, I already have enough information about whether this relationship is healthy for me.

That's my boundary. Other women are entitled to have different ones, and the men I date are entitled to decide mine is unreasonable. That's the wonderful thing about boundaries. Nobody has to agree with them. They simply determine who gets access to your life.

Perhaps that's the message I would really send back, not only to the man who thinks attention means he is winning, but to the younger version of me who thought being secure meant learning not to care.

Put the phone down.

And I will put the detective badge down, too.

Neither of us needs to prove anything.

Attention is remarkably easy to find. Facebook will deliver it directly to your suggested friends list, cleavage included. But being known deeply, respected completely, trusted safely and deliberately chosen by someone whose respect you genuinely value is rare.

If you're fortunate enough to find that, recognize the difference.

You don't lose your freedom when you stop auditioning for attention. Instead, you stop trading something valuable for something cheap.

 

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