Summary: Before last week, I hadn’t seen my friend Liz in at least five months. It was summertime, and after weeks of persistent emails and calling, I’d finally convinced her to meet me for tea. I missed seeing my friend and wanted more time with her, but I knew I was lucky to see her at all back then. In the aftermath of a nasty divorce, she'd tightened her circle of friends and all but shut down her social calendar. The heaviness in her voice and her listless demeanor were explanation enough. Mostly, we sat in silence at the café, and when I inquired about her plans in this new stage of her life, Liz told me in a whisper that she’d only ever been with James, her husband, and that she had no idea where to begin rebuilding her life. “I never thought I’d be that woman,” she said, “alone, sad and no plans.” She said James had made all of their plans in the past. It would take Liz a few more months before she allowed herself to see friends again and reclaim her happiness, and once she did, the changes were unmistakable. We saw each other at a concert on Saturday, and she was radiant. I noticed her unmistakably copper curls bobbing near the front of the stage and I got her attention. She was dancing—from the inside out—and she waved me over. What I could gather from our conversation in the noisy club was that Liz had been in survival mode since the divorce—focusing mostly on landing one foot in front of the other—and she'd learned to make a point of letting go of any reluctance to forge a new life on her own. “Screw it!” she mouthed over the noise. “I’m single now … and I am moving on!” She wiggled her hips playfully, determined to dance at any chance she got. As we mouthed to each other over the music. I couldn't help but notice men admiring my friend. And being caught in her current of confidence felt like a complete 180° from where she’d been just months before. It wasn’t that she’d become a different person since I last saw her, or that she was attempting to impress anyone in particular. She told me later that she found the concert listing online and made a last-minute decision to check it out on her own. It was by chance that we ran into each other, and the fact that she was there at all was unlike the Liz of the past who wouldn’t think of leaving home without an agenda and a small group of friends in tow. She wasn’t overly made up yet she was electric in her jeans and faded tee. My friend had changed. Seeing Liz in the wake of divorce and, later, at the concert, couldn’t have been any more of a contrast. The former was devastated at the prospect of life without a man or a ‘rescuer,’ as she put it, while the latter, this current Liz, was a man magnet, fully present in herself and happily oblivious to the heads she was turning. “It was always drummed into me that I needed a man to be complete,” she said. “For a long time, even when I was married and believed I was happy, I still had that creeping fear that he’d leave. Even with him, or any man, really, there was always some part of me that was afraid to be alone.” That was the gist of our conversation in the summer, and judging by the glow around her just last week, she’d all but conquered that fear. Whatever Liz had been doing was working. She was relaxed in her body in a way I can’t recall her being in all the years I’d known her. It was attractive and infectious; she was on to something. The emergent woman in front of me was self-confident; and it was sexy all over—to me and to most of the men in the room. It’s what made all the difference. Here are s few reasons why self-confidence is so sexy. Self-confidence is attractive. There have been countless studies done on what attracts us to each other, and while we might not always agree on what that is, one thing’s certain: we go where we feel pulled. And people with magnetic energy do the pulling. We’re not talking about charm here, necessarily. Self-confidence doesn’t need to schmooze or manipulate,
