I have just spent an awesome weekend with people who I could just talk and talk and I was feeling understood, validated, interested in the topics they were speaking about, and almost re-parented. I spoke with an old married couple and it is unbelievable how many wise things they had to say. It put everything into perspective. The old man was speaking to me to like a colleague but we very fast got into personal topics, and since he was actually an emotionally grown up person (lucky him!), something happened: I realised that in that moment I felt fine about myself while talking with a man. And I realised that this is what I have been missing my whole life: non-threatening healthy emotional connection with a man. Wow! He surely is not aware how important that was to me. I am happy I realised it on time, before forgetting it. I will use it in my therapy. I will remember it and build on it. That is a perfect start of something that was very hard for me to come up with out of the blue: feeling good in my body when talking with a man.
Second thing I noticed multiple times that I would have an automatic thought "oh, come on, I am not worth that" whenever someone whose company I enjoyed would express sympathy or attempt at creating a connection with me. It was actually so hard not to back off, and to step up and smile back, instead of moving the sight down in an embarrassment. And of course, what would those people think after I have rejected their sympathy. Probably that would push them away.
I am trying to be that smiling self confident woman. It feels very awkward, and I actually have no idea what I am doing, but it seems to work so far. I think that the quality of interaction with the new people I end up around has been increasing recently.