The single greatest attractive quality- confidence

1. Believe in yourself – Single greatest attractive quality you can have

Do you want to know what many people of the opposite sex find very attractive? Confidence. Several studies and surveys in both men and women have indicated that confidence and high self-esteem are most admirable in members of the complementary sex.

In stating the top 15 turn-on for women American love expert Ellen Kriedman lists confidence as number one. Other polls have also shown that men are similarly attracted to females who have self-esteem, confidence and independence.

Confidence is seen in how you walk, talk, dress and your attitude toward yourself and others.

Confidence starts when you believe in yourself and who you are. Confidence is built upon the feeling that you are an important, desirable and loveable person. You believe that you have the fundamental right to and be loved, this is, you deserve the best mate there is for you. This highly attractive quality commands the attention, admiration and respect of others. Without this confidence and belief in yourself search for satisfying love will be not only futile and frustrating, but exhausting as well.

One commentary in the Book daily Meditations for Coloured People had this to say:

“The first step in building relationships is learning to value who you are. We cannot convince others of how wonderful and marvellous we are if we do not believe it... When we value who we are sure to value others who value us as much.”

Psychologist Chuck Spezzano says, “It is your sense of self value that which ultimately allow you to attract a mate of similar value.”

What happens when we don’t have confidence? Simple, we either repel others or cause them to treat us with disrespect. We actually show people how to treat us by the way we treat ourselves. If we don’t love who we really are deep down inside we tend to subconsciously believe that we don’t deserve love.

“There is no greater barrier to romantic happiness than the fear that I am undeserving of love,” researcher Nathaniel Branden says.

This was exactly the cause for the break-up between Suzaine and Jim.

“I really love you,” his baritone voice carried across the room and soaked into her consciousness. He looked lovingly at her. Her stomach convulsed as she avoids his deep gaze.

“I think you deserve better,” she confessed, “I don’t think I am good enough.”

Her rushed his hands through his hair throwing her a wide-eyed glance.

“I can’t believe a beauty queen like her could say such a thing,” he thought. He always counted it an honour to be associated with her. He was disappointed.

The relationship did not last much longer. Suzaine, while claiming that she broke off because of difference in their ethnic background, told her friend that she feared Jim would not have accepted her if he knew what she really was like inside.

Author Josh McDowell says, “without self-acceptance its’ hard to love and accept someone else.” We will always be haunted by the question, “if he/she really knew me, would she/he still love me?”

Here is how motivator Bob Montgomery puts it, “If you don’t respect yourself, you won’t expect others to. So you would slip into being submissive or aggressive. You would be poor company or you would avoid company all together. If you don’t like yourself in the sense of seeing yourself as loveable, you won’t believe it when someone says to you ‘I love you.’ It will go through the filter of your low self esteem and come out as ‘I want something’ After all you know they really can’t love you because you believe that no one could.”

If you don’t love yourself then people’s love you will be strained. According to Branden, it will be like an effort to fill a sieve. Eventually their love bank will be thoroughly exhausted.

You will always fantasise that the person will leave at any time. You will consciously or subconsciously sabotage the relationship. this will be done by demanding excessive assurances of love, becoming overly possessive, over reacting to incidences that a trite. You may even become subservient, demanding, dominating. You will always be seeking ways to reject your partner before he/she rejects you.

“Low self-esteem person who enter relationships are romantic ticking time bombs. One way the other they will destroy the relationship. They ‘know’ that they don’t deserve emotional happiness -- even when this is the very thing they hungrily crave.” Branden comments.

Interestingly it has been observed that such people tend to choose partners who are most likely to eventually reject. A self-full-filling prophecy. They fight mercilessly to get love, then sabotage the relationship if they are successful or conclude that they are unlovable anyway if they don’t. a viscous self-fulfilling prophecy.

Before you begin to love you must have the inner confidence your are worthy of love. You must come to the conviction that you deserve to love and be loved. You must conclude, “I am loveable. I am admirable. I am worthy of happiness and love. I deserve to have the best mate there is for me.”

With this conviction you will always believe that you are inferior. the negative thought that the person will not love who you are deep inside will consistently haunt you. He will think that He/she is too beautiful, lovely, intelligent, righteous good for me. You will think of the other as being superior or the you can never live up to their standards.

Branden puts it beautifully, when he says, “If I enjoy a sense of efficacy and self worth, and experience myself as loveable, then I have a foundation of loving and appreciating others. [Love relationships] will be natural. I will not be trapped in deficiency; I have a kind of emotional ‘surplus’ that I can channel into loving.. But if I lack self respect and enjoyment of who I am, I have little to give -- except my unfulfilled needs. In my emotional impoverishment I tend to see people essentially as approval and disapproval.”

To get satisfying love, we must start with the philosophical conviction that we are inherently loveable and deserving of the best type of love there is for us. We must love ourselves.