I feel loved

I've been feeling a lot more loved by him lately.
We had a-mazing sex this morning, and you know, that's... really great and all (oh, it was great, let me tell you, I woke up so sore.....*huge grin*) but later, over breakfast, we had some lovely conversation as well and it's like... I get the feeling he digs my mind, respects me and appreciates that I'm kind of a unique person. He was talking about one of his exes, a girl who he has mentioned several times as very beautiful- a serious athlete in her teens, an adult entertainer when she grew up, and a body builder/gym-rat when he was with her and, so you know she must've had a bangin' body.
I've never seen a picture of her, but that doesn't matter. The point is, *he* thought she was beautiful, and our memories are comprised of our perceptions, so... *shrug*. (He's also explained that her beauty made her lazy both in bed and out of it, and she expected him to just magically be turned on by her mere presence, but she wasn't a very thoughtful lover or very good at the things he enjoys most.)

Anyway. Sometimes I feel intimidated by his past girlfriends, because they all sound pretty and successful and sweet and I wonder what I have that stacks up against any of them. And I know he's good-looking enough to get a really hot girl, so sometimes I wonder why the fuck he picked me out of a crowd, you know? And I spend a lot of time stressing that he is going to wake up one day and realize he could do better, and leave me.
Anyway, he was talking about this beautiful ex, and he said something to the effect of, "I mean she was a good looking girl, at least as beautiful as you. And also, she had been an athlete, so, you know... *shrug*" (He then went on to expound on how she kinda sucked at giving blowjobs and she just was overly... aggressive and dominant like "I bet I can make you come in 5 minutes" and he was like *eyeroll* 'oh honey, please... '... myself, I was thinking, who wants sex to be over in 5 minutes? Geeze, it's sex, it's supposed to be *fun*; I love to draw it out as long as possible!)

So, he was just nonchalantly talking while we ate, as if internal-monologuing aloud, not trying to impress me or flirt with me or anything. This just seemed to be a matter of fact in his mind... "At least as beautiful as you." The words rolled around in my mind like ocean waves.
Come on, I know he was being generous- she was probably like, 10 times as beautiful as me, realistically- but he didn't say it that way, he said it in a way that matter-of-factly indicated I actually represent some sort of... high standard of beauty in his mind.

Uhm, wait, what? o_o

As for the fact that she was traditionally hot and I'm...uhm, "thick", there are a lot of ways he could have phrased our physical difference, but I felt it was pretty smooth of him to find a statement that explained the difference between us while still allowing me my dignity, lol. I know I'm not an athlete, that's okay. I've got a big booty, and a rack to match, and he seems to like it (mmmwell, this morning he liked it...) so I'm... all for health and fitness improvement, but if he wants to fuck me good, then baby, I sure as hell am not letting my insecurities ruin the mood. They just get stuffed further in the back of my mind with every thrust of his thick hard cock in my wet pussy, and I try to let it go because, you know what? I can easily dig them out and worry about them again later, but right now, we're having sex, dammit, bad-self-image-demons Fuck Off!

Anyway. I don't know if I'm doing a very good job explaining what a sweet thing I felt this was for him to say, or how it amuses me that he was able to navigate a tricky subject with a smooth comment, whether it's 100% true, or he was just feeling close to me and feeling magnanimous in his speech.
I don't know. I don't care, it just made me pause and feel like, oh- wow, you think I'm... I mean, you- think *I* am... "beautiful"? For real? Like even in the same... category of beautiful as this supposedly gorgeous ex?
I don't know. My heart, it aches a little because my brain knows it can't be true and it dismisses this compliment out of hand. I'm not beautiful, I'm only just...'fairly not-hideous', maybe. Heck, my face might qualify as 'cute', maybe, on a good hair day.
But for some reason- people tell me sometimes that I am beautiful. One ex-suitor told me one time that I'm the most beautiful person he's ever met. (Mr. Man is not the first man to tell me I'm beautiful, he's just the last person I expect to flatter me with undue compliments). I just... I really don't see it, in the mirror.
It's got to be some combination of how my soul moves in this skin, or something. Something I can't see because I'm not outside myself.
I have to take their word for it.

I feel the same way about being "lovable". I don't think I'm lovable at all. I think I'm annoying, selfish, lazy, paranoid, and control-freakish, as well as messy, disorganized and undisciplined.
But for some reason a lot of people seem to love...me. But I don't see what's lovable about me at all so I feel like I constantly have to accept that people on average are not going to give a shit about me, and if anything better than that dynamic grows from there, then... great.
So I feel like I don't know if Mr. Man really loves me or not. He seems to prioritize things over and above love sometimes- like his hatred of this city, his professional malaise, his upwardly-mobile dissatisfaction with our status quo.

But just this last week, I was up working till like, 6 in the morning in my office. He went to bed long before me, and passed the fuck out. When I finally crept into bed, exhausted, he was laying in a way that made it hard for me to snuggle him... until I found that my fingers were close to his, both of our hands curved in such a way that it made it easy for our finger to interlace. All I did was smooth my fingers over his- and he instantly, in his sleep, opened his fingers to lace into mine, then closed/curled them around mine, squeezing my fingers firmly and locking my hand into his, and not letting go. He made a sort of happy grunt in his sleep, acknowledging my presence. And my eyes popped open and I stared at him in the dim dawn light, sleeping so perfectly, and my heart just...ached to watch his him breathe and sleep peacefully- his closed eyes, his expanding and contracting ribcage, his soft brown curls, his handsome nose, his warm, full lips... and for a moment- I loved everything about him so fiercely, and at the same time, I despaired so deeply that he would never love me as much as I love him, and the pain keened in my chest and I wondered how the fuck I could ever let myself fall so hard for another human being, with absolutely no assurance of reciprocation, without even the hope that this might succeed long enough to become "happily ever after" because I'm- what am I to him? I just, uhm, don't actually know, because he's not really very verbal about it, and he evades defining it (and I try not to press him). And besides, my demons whispered, I'm broken and fucked up and I'm Nothing, I'm worthless, why should he ever care about me, what the fuck is he doing in my life, clearly I'm just some mistake he's just pleased to be not-done-making yet, because he's like a dream to me, and I don't get to have 'nice things', I don't deserve it...

And then I felt his fingers warmly curling into mine, entwined in his sleep, inseparable, almost painful because he was not letting go- a subconscious welcome from his body to mine. And a saving hand, gripping me to keep me from falling deeper into that black-hole line of reasoning- he must love me. He must, right? Men don't just stay, unless they want to stay. Men don't just pull you in subconsciously in their sleep unless they subconsciously feel like you belong there, physically close.
Maybe the way he experiences love and the way I experience love are very different.
I highly doubt he's ever watched me sleeping in the moonlight as he falls asleep and has thought, wow, she's so perfect, how did she ever come into my life?
But maybe that's not 'love'- maybe that's... awe, or obsession, or something. Maybe I love him and then I over-worship him on top of that, and... maybe I don't need him to worship me back, or be "awed" by me, maybe he really just loves me and that's enough. maybe I just need to be cool with both of us having a baseline of trust and companionship and affection, and maybe that subconscious sense of "belonging" he seems to feel for me IS, in fact, his "love" for me. The fact that he's internalized my presence that way.
Or the fact that I seem to be some standard of "beautiful" in his mind, at all. Or the fact that he carted my ass back and forth to work for 6 months while I didn't have a car. Or the fact that he shags me properly into next Tuesday, then gets up to make us coffee and does the dishes (DOES THE FUCKING DISHES, YOU GUYS. You guiyiyys. Srsly. How hot is that? I don't think he knows how hot this is. It's not so much a submissive chores thing, as it is that I hate doing dishes so much, and I'm so relieved that he's saving me from them, I just want to run through the streets singing Deniece Williams' "Let's Hear It For The Boy" at the top of my lungs, then race home and throw him down on a bearskin rug for appreciation sex. But I digress.) You know, he's doing things. He's a doer. That's his... love language or whatever. I think.
So I shouldn't feel so insecure and on pins and needles about where we stand all the time.
Maybe he's been telling me all along.