Livre d'Or

Thanks for talking about all this. I think you're right, a really sincere, positive compliment can be lovely, and it's definitely worth appreciating people's appearance and intelligence, not just picking which type of compliment is "best". I really admire that you're able to say outright that you're very intelligent and pretty, because there's a lot of pressure to be kind of self-deprecating (if not to actually hate yourself) so I'm always happy when someone is really confident of their good points.

It makes a lot of sense that you take pride in looking well. And yeah, being complimented on the effect when you've actually put effort in to your appearance is great, but if you're confident already, not necessary, you know that you look good and that's wonderful.

The thing with your friend's husband being an IQ snob is completely awful, I'm so sorry you've lost contact with your friend because of him being such a horrible jerk. Even if he does have a higher IQ than you, so what, those things only measure how good you are at taking IQ tests! I agree that succeeding at uni is a much more important (especially when you've had so much to deal with being ill), but even with that, if one person has the ability to complete university study and the other doesn't, it doesn't mean the first person should be superior and rude to the non-graduate.