DEAR MAE: ON SEEKING APPROVAL
Recently, I received a letter from a reader:
“Dear Mae, can I ask you a question? This is really embarrassing to admit as a mother and a wife but my entire existence is around getting approval from men ... since forever. I’m in my early forties now and I just cannot stop seeking validation from men, wanting to feel desired and seen as attractive. I don’t pursue anything further—I just want to be validated, seen, respected, and desired. All I want is approval. And my whole energy goes towards that. I don’t know what to do. My kids are almost teenagers now and they don’t need me as much. I use all my spare time at the gym, or on superficial things, and at the end of the day I feel SO empty. I question what my purpose is. I know it’s wrong to live like this, yet I cannot stop. What should I do?”
First of all—don’t be embarrassed. You are brave to bring this out into the open. Shame keeps its grip in the dark, and the very act of writing this down, of speaking it aloud, and reaching out to me is a powerful step toward loosening its hold.
As I read your words, a few things rise up.
It seems you’ve taken on a definition of yourself that says: I am only worthy if I am desired and approved of by men. And that worth is tied to your physicality, your sexuality, perhaps even your youth.
There's also a sense, in the way that you've voiced your issue, that you "know better" but "energetically find yourself in a loop." This gives me a hint: the definition of your self-worth as a woman that needs to be desired by a man is likely something that's deep in your nervous system (that is, your subconscious). Meaning, it's likely something you've unknowingly picked up in your childhood.
If you can acknowledge that much, I want to gently ask:
・Since when did you begin to believe this?
・Who modeled it for you or helped you to believe that's true?
Believe it or not, I'm familiar with this because it's very similar to the dynamic I witnessed growing up in my own family. My mother was a former top model. My father—how to put it—a charmer, a go-getter. They married at 19 and 20, had four children by 30. In the air of my childhood home, I absorbed without anyone ever spelling it out:
1. Men were more powerful than women
2. Women were supposed to serve men
3. A woman’s joy was supposed to come from being desirable to men and serving men
4. And in my case—women would typically be betrayed, even after bearing children and giving everything.
Now, these are not absolute truths. But as a child, they felt like truth because I didn't yet have the perspective to know otherwise. And when you grow up breathing that air, it’s easy to build your whole identity on those foundations.
But here’s the problem: those foundations are flawed.
You can’t build a strong house on a cracked base. And when you begin to question yourself—as you are now—it shakes you to the core. Because it’s not just about the gym, or approval, or even desire. It’s about realizing: Wait. The truths I’ve lived by… they’re not true at all. In fact, they feel awfully OFF.
That realization can feel like your world is crumbling. In fact, that's true—the old identity that you had built around your worth being seemingly directly tied to approval by men is dying. But in this crumbling of the old, you are finally about to meet your new self, your true self, beyond the flawed constructs of these false beliefs.
The “bad news” is that yes, it will rock your world for a while. The “good news” is that this is the doorway out of generational patterns. The doorway into your own life and freedom.
Like any addiction, approval-seeking is a cycle. In the beginning, you’ll need to catch yourself every time you notice it. Gently turn in another direction. Maybe ease up on the gym for a while and try something purely for yourself—something not about being looked at, but about feeling alive from the inside.
And please be careful of adding new “shoulds” on top of yourself. “You should love yourself.” “You should validate yourself.” These sound nice at first, but I don't believe them or recommend them at all. Because “should” is just another way of saying: you are not enough as you are.
Instead, here's what I want to suggest:
Come closer. To yourself.
Find out what you like. Not what your partner likes. Not what men like.
You.
Because here is the deeper truth. And this might sting a little: it’s not that men are disapproving you. It’s that you are disapproving yourself. Abandoning yourself, again and again, by placing authority for your worth outside of you. And the men in your life are simply mirroring that back to you.
So what if you became the one who showed yourself: I have nothing to prove. To anyone. In fact, I'm simply here to enjoy my innately awesome existence?
What might that look like? More importantly, what might that feel like?
This, I believe, is the only way to truly experience your own worth.
I know you are worthy. The question is: will you take the time to discover it for yourself?
With Deep Love,
Mae