Hi cantdothis,
I don't think you are at all delusional, this behaviour is not that uncommon when we are young.
I am now in my 60s, but I was very much like you when I was younger and I would like to give you some advice that I wish someone had given me at your age.
I think the reason is twofold:
Firstly, I didn't have a good close relationship with my father or my eldest brother so I was looking for male validation too. It is quite normal to seek this if we haven't had it in our family.
Secondly, if you were not in a mixed environment at school, you were not exposed to male interactions like you are now so it is something new to your experience.
The thing I would do differently now if I had my time over again, is to question my beliefs about myself. We sometimes try to impress or please so that people will like us, which is not our authentic self. My advice would be to start a journal, listing the things you like about yourself on one page and the things you don't like about yourself on another page.
Then go through those things that you don't like about yourself one by one and ask yourself where that feeling came from. We are not born with those dislikes, they come from the way people interact with us as we are growing. So is it an authentic belief about yourself? Or is it a learned belief about yourself? There is a big difference between the two and the challenge is to work out which one is the truth. If it is a learned belief, then you no longer need to dislike that part of yourself and instead can embrace it as part of your authentic self. Cross it off the list of dislikes and add it to the list of likes.
Pretty soon you will recognise that the things that you believe about yourself are not your beliefs at all, but someone else's who judged you harshly at some point and you took it on board.
The main goal of this exercise is to learn to love yourself for who you are. When you do this, you no longer need validation from another source, you are confident, non-judgemental of others, and ready to take on the challenges that come your way in life knowing you can overcome them.
I hope this helps and please feel free to continue this conversation if you wish.
Take good care of yourself,
indigo
