Thread: Is this it?
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Old 06-16-2014, 02:09 AM
  # 5 (permalink)  
DisplacedGRITS
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Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 2,661
Girl, I am the same way! I have an amazing, adoring, loving husband who thinks I'm hotter than the Devil's armpit in an Alabama summer but when I drink, I want to flirt. I want to tease and taunt and I become this odd creature. I don't want to cheat on my husband but I want people to want to be with me. I think it's because I am terribly insecure. I always assume no one likes me or thinks I'm pretty so I get drunk and I MAKE them like me!

Of course, the only one who's being fooled here is me. When I drink, I flirt and if people don't swat me away like an annoying fly, I assume that they want me around. How can they not? Aren't I adorable? Aren't I just the cutest little lush you ever seen? Hey, watch me party! I'm fun! *headshake*

While I am sometimes cute and funny, I have come to find that it isn't the alcohol making me cute and funny. All alcohol does is ease my insecurities so that these natural traits show. Aaaaand then the alcohol obliterates my insecurities and my awareness of social norms and I turn into a freshman girl crashing a frat party. Get attention from all the guys! Heck, the girls too! Everyone like me! Liiiiiike meeeee! Always, I end up making an ass out of myself, taking things too far, sending wrong signals to absolutely everyone and, if my husband is there, upsetting him by dishonoring our relationship.
It was embarrassing to say the least. So, of course, when I saw these people again I would drink to ease my discomfort from the actions of the last time we hung out. Lather, rinse, repeat.

What I have come to understand is that I have to stop projecting my insecurities onto other people. I try to not make assumptions about people's feelings towards me. I act in a way that I can be happy with and consciously lower my fortress walls to let my personality shine naturally. Oh, I make plenty of social gaffs and since I'm sober, I remember them. The good thing is, I can apologize for my mistakes (or stand by them if they aren't mistakes) and I am no longer the girl people fear at parties. No more, "oh lawd, here comes the lush. Get ready for an attention *****." It's "here comes Lisa. Good to see her! She sure is more pleasant to be around." I have found that the people who don't like me don't hang around me and that's fine. There are perfectly nice people in my life who I just don't care for. I don't actively hate them. I just don't want to take them out to dinner, lol.

Remember...alcohol does not make you funny. It doesn't make you witty, smarter, prettier or more fun. Alcohol takes away inhibitions and blows other traits up into cartoonish proportions. We become caricatures of ourselves. Instead of this, find other ways to lower your inhibitions while still being someone you can be happy being. Someone you can respect in the mirror. I brought a card game to a group activity at a bar and I was very well received. These people were total strangers but the card game was a better social lubricant than any cocktail I've ever drunk!

Be the person you would want to hang out with. You'll attract the people you'll enjoy being with and, most importantly, you'll get to take home a person you'd like to hang out with. Yourself! (Oh man...that was corny but I couldn't come up with any other way to say it!)
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