[Jack_]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Umm...Jack didn't seem to be saying Lauren was right to make that accusation. Just that it is understandable that her expectations may be skewed by past experience.

I can totally relate to that. As a kid I was bullied fairly relentlessly for most of my school life, because I had very severe and disfiguring eczema. Strangers used to stare at me. Small children on buses wuold ask their parents, in loud voices, 'what's wrong with that girl's face?'. As a very small child, I experienced the parents of other small children pulling their little ones away from me 'in case they caught it'.

When I was in my late teens/early 20s, though the eczema was no longer so apparent, and particularly not apparent on my face, if someone looked atme on a bus or in the street, it would never, in a million years have occurred to me that they might be looking because they thought I was pretty. Even if a lad looked at me, I'd assume he was looking because I was ugly, or because they could see the (by now very faint) signs of eczema.

It took me a long time to stop making that assumption of people.

You do become conditioned to the responses you've been used to from other people.

THANK YOU

This is precisely the point I've been trying to make, but you've made it much more articulately than I've been able to. Thanks.