I have this idea that my dad (my parents were never married and I lived with my mom most of the time, visiting my dad every other weekend) having Playboy calanders up when I was a child has fucked me up. I have been in a relationship (2 years was my shortest) since I was 15, I am terrified of not being someones girlfriend, I am desperate to please my boyfriends sexually, afraid they’ll leave me or grow to dislike me if I don’t comply, and I have not worn a bikini in public since high school (I am 27) because I feel like if I don’t look Photoshopped and I’m not completely hairless, I might as well keep my clothes on.
Do I have to go to therapy to grow beyond this?
To grow beyond what, exactly? You strike me as a garden variety neurotic, a typical self-absorbed girl with a few unhealthy relationship habits and the usual mixed bag of mild-to-moderate body/abandonment/daddy issues.
Sure, your parents screwed you up a bit. That’s what parents do, but I’m not picking up anything in the way of legitimate childhood trauma. Basically, you’re just a drama queen with a victim mentality who uses words like desperate and terrified without any real sense of desperation or terror.
You want me to save you a bunch of time and money? It wasn’t the Playboy calendars that fucked with your head. It’s the fact that your dad was a selfish man-child who only hung out with you a couple of times a month. Boom. There’s your big therapeutic breakthrough. Whoop-dee-fuckin’-doo.
Now stop “complying” with your boyfriend, and wear a damn bikini if that’s what you feel like doing.