Being a Pickmeisha is Sabotaging your Love Life

Seeking approval, otherwise known as a “pickmeisha”, is sabotaging your love life and you don’t even know it. Often, seeking approval or validation from others occurs because you have a fear of being rejected or disliked. Everyone has the desire to feel safe and secure in our love life and relationships.

“Queen of social chameleons, I mastered the art of telling people what they wanted to hear and being someone they would find impressive—all the while worrying incessantly about what others thought of me, fearing criticism, and holding myself back as a result.” – Sacha Crouch

If you find that you are seeking too much external acceptance, it may be because you have not developed a healthy sense of self-esteem and self-confidence. Feeling approved makes us feel that you are valued as a person. It is important to note that high-quality men love confident women.

Where did this need for seeking approval from others start? According to Psychology Today, most of us can trace this behavior back to our childhood. In adolescence, you need our parents’ approval, without which you cannot thrive. This leads to our needing external approval as an adult.

When Dating Becomes an Audition by Seeking Approval

Approval-seeking in dating isn’t always obvious. It can look like being agreeable, easygoing, accommodating, patient, or “giving him a chance.” But underneath those behaviors can be a much bigger question:

“What do I need to do so he chooses me?”

That mindset can quietly change the entire dating experience.

Instead of asking whether she actually likes him, enjoys his behavior, shares his values, or feels good around him, a woman can become preoccupied with whether he likes her.

That can show up as overthinking texts, changing opinions to avoid disagreement, accepting inconsistent effort, over-explaining boundaries, being excessively available, or tolerating behavior she normally wouldn’t because she doesn’t want to appear “difficult.”

Signs of approval seeking behavior in your Love Life

• Fear of telling him about a decision you have made.
• Taking actions based on getting his approval. Some would call that a pick-me.
• Struggling with being direct and communicating effectively.
• Omitting the truth out of fear he will disapprove.
• Letting his or others’ opinions decide on what actions you take.

If any of these statements are true, you are struggling with people-pleasing and approval-seeking.  This is true of most of us. To a certain degree, you all care about what people think of us. The thing that keeps us from being in touch with our own truth is fear. Fear of others’ disapproval and fear of vulnerability in relationships.

The biggest cost may be distorted decision-making.

When getting his approval becomes the goal, she stops collecting information about him and starts collecting evidence that he wants her.

A late-night text feels flattering instead of low effort. Chemistry gets mistaken for compatibility. Attention gets mistaken for intention. And potential can become more persuasive than the behavior happening right in front of her.

For women dating later in life, this can be especially worth examining because experience, independence, and professional confidence don’t automatically eliminate the desire for romantic validation. A woman can be highly confident in one area of her life and still find herself auditioning in another.

The healthier shift

The dating question isn’t only:

“Does he like me?”

It’s also:

“Do I like what I’m learning about him?”

That shift moves dating away from performance and back toward mutual discovery, compatibility, standards, and choice.

Seeking approval is Sabotaging your Love Life

According to Psychology Today, “When others’ acceptance of you impacts how you make decisions about where to spend your time, you lose awareness of what’s important to you, what drives you, and what makes you happy.”

Approval seeking can lead us to avoid the man whose approval you’re seeking in the first place.  Seeking approval can lead to tremendous insecurity in your love life and the constant checking in with the man you are dating.  It’s as if you are feeling that you are moving in the right direction, but because he may disapprove, you ignore your true feelings and desires. Which can create stress and avoidance in your love life.

Men find needy women and those who constantly need approval or reassurance very unattractive.  Too much blame for your insecurity is placed on him when actually you are acting out of a lack of self-confidence in your dating relationship with him.

Letting go of the need for seeking approval

According to healthysenseofself.com, there are ways to manage your need for approval from others and from the men in your dating life.

1. Take criticism as feedback, not disapproval. Criticism is not always harmful. Take it as being constructive and you’ll mean this will help put the criticism in a healthy context rather than a hurtful one.
   
2. Be truthful to ourselves when deciding what you feel is success. If you develop our emotional self-awareness, you can more readily identify what our desires are. This will define whether our goals and desires are aligned with each other.
3. Learn to say no. Saying no may sometimes feel like you are passing up an opportunity, but it often will open up another opportunity. Saying no in dating relationships and our love life can be especially hard.  Not only will saying no make us feel good about standing by our true position, it will allow you to focus your energy on what you have decided on as being our priorities and/or the man you want to date. 
4. Learning to say no to the wrong type of man is a skill and grows with self-confidence that you can meet other men.  Social media puts a lot of pressure on women to look good, have a fabulous man and the perfect life.  This explains some of the posts your see looking for the most likes or shares which feeds the need to seek approval from others.
5. Working toward a sense of self and self-confidence will open you to possibly feeling loved and living your love life as your own person and confident woman. You will have learned that you have independence. You will realize that there is a version of yourself that exists regardless of other people’s opinions. And you can learn to love yourself even more.

Stop trying to pass his test. He hasn’t passed yours yet.

What would it be like if the people closest to our lives did not approve of our decisions? If it’s about a decision that you are not totally sure about, a person close to us can change our decision even though you may still feel like your first thoughts you’re right. If done often enough, it could lead to major problems with insecurity.