Hello Dear Ladies,

I am a long-time lurker here and decided to ask you for a few pieces of advice. To be honest, I'm not even sure if my question is a suitable for this subreddit and maybe I should ask somewhere else, but I'm going to try nevertheless.

I completely don't know how to deal with men. I heard that I'm being called extremely shy, cold or awkard behind my back. I think I'm a little bit of all three. But most of all, I'm afraid of their judgement ( verbalized or not).

Thing is, I was more or less openly bullied in my teens and maybe even early twenties by both girls and boys my own age. Teenage hormones had really bad infuence on me, I had terrible acne, put on a lot of weight ( which looks really bad with my body type- I just apperead swollen all over) and my clothing choices were quite weird to put it mildly. The fact that I was a good student, liked to read and wasn't really interested in drinking cheap wine in the forest were nails to my coffins. I wasn't depressed or anything, I had ( and still have) good friends and for a long time I thought the bullying hadn't left any mental scars. I've never been in a relationship before. I wasn't interested or actively looking for it.

Now I look much better and want to go on dates and try to find my person. But in my head, I see all men seeing me as awkard ugly fatso in weird dress I used to be. They must be repulsed by me. The tiniest amount of flirt of my side surely make them think I'm pathetic loser, 2/10 starting to hit on 10/10. Subconsciously I'm terrifried what he would think. Or better I KNOW what he would think: ''What a pathetic ugly fatso! Does she think I could take interest in her? What a loser!"

I worked on my posture, yet I'm not going to walk femininely if only my male friends or colleagues are present, let alone some other guys, because: ''Does she thinks she's attractive or something? I wouldn't touch her with 10 feet stick!''

A client is entering our office when me and two male colleagues are free. The client comes to me and says to the colleagues with a wave: ''Sorry guys, I choose the pretty lady here.'' I'm dealing with a client and see that the colleagues are talking and laughing. I think: ''I'm sure they're laughing that the client called such hag as myself pretty...''.

It happens all the time. Guys write to me on dating apps yet I'm petrified it's for a joke and I end conversation very quickly. I see a guy I like, but I'm not going to do anything because '' he would be disgusted that I show any interest in him, I'm so ugly...''

You know, on intellectual level, I know I don't look that bad ( certainly 50 times better then when I was a teenager). It's all in my subconsciousness. I know it's probably due to extremely low self-esteem, but I honestly don't know what to do about it. Intelectually, I like myself, I have friends, go out, act confidently enough in my job.

I don't want to be terrified of men or their judgement. I want to go out on dates and enjoy it, want to find my Captain out there. Do you think there's some hope for me? Do you have any ideas what can I do? Please help, if you know how.