Okay, this is a really specific and embarrassing thing that I’ve been ruminating on to the point of exhaustion since yesterday, if someone could read this and try and give me some advice, I’d really appreciate it. It feels like too personal & embarrassing of an issue to go to family & friends about, and I know that there will hopefully be a lot of likeminded individuals here, who understand what it’s like to have a tendency towards obsession. So, my friend brought me along with her to apply for a new job. I’m 16 (17 in July), and have been looking for a little part time job to do alongside school. We walked in, and it was this room of about 12 people who had all previously applied for the job. Me and my friend were applying for waitressing. There was two owners of the resteraunt there that day, one Italian man, and one British man (I’m British - live in England) The second guy would just stare at me intently while he was talking, and never looked at anyone else, and it felt uncomfortable and it seemed like he was attracted to me - bear in mind he knew I was 16, and he was probably in his mid to late 30s. He was telling us an anecdote about how you can never ‘get away’ with being off work sick when you’ve been drinking in a pub/club the night prior, because he’s on a group chat with all of the pubs/clubs in our area, and he will know if you have been drinking the night before. Because of how much he was staring at me, I had to respond to him saying, ‘well, you won’t have to worry about me because I’m only 16!’ And everyone laughed, and then the Italian man said - ‘look, you are staring at her haha!’. My friend afterwards was like, ‘what the fuck, that man would not stop staring at you’ - and it made me not want to go back, because it just felt really weird and uncomfortable. A couple of days after our first shift, me and my friend found out that this man and another co-owner (not the Italian man) were actually gay together… now, this is where things got slightly obsessional. I am a perfectionist when it comes to my appearance, I’m never happy unless I feel that I look pretty and feminine. I’m HIGHLY critical of my own appearance, and am constantly checking myself to see if I look okay. If I feel that I don’t, then my mood drops instantly and I usually want to leave the situation I’m in - that’s how much I obsess over appearance. This guy was giving off the vibes that he was attracted to me - but he was gay… (not to go off of stereotypes, but he SEEMED like a straight male, if that makes sense) I started to have this horrible feeling in my chest, like intense dread and disgust with myself. ‘What if I look like a man?’ I thought. ‘His boyfriend is quite feminine, what if I look sort of like him?’ Each time I thought this, I was almost brought to tears it was that devastating of a possibility. I try so, so hard to be pretty, and the idea that I could appear masculine in any regard was like my life was crumbling around besides me, and I KNOW how dramatic that sounds, but it was just how I felt. Has anyone got any thoughts on this? I’ve not stopped thinking about it since I heard…