Vanity in A Childhood Lost

I exchanged emails with an Aunt recently. I asked her, if she was willing, to share any tidbits about my childhood with me.
She responded with one example; she noticed that my parents were excessively proud of how beautiful I was. She expressed that she was remiss to watch how they would obsess over getting candid shots of seemingly every moment. It seemed to her, she told me, that I was being groomed for a life of beauty pageants, however unlikely that was in reality. Her opinion, to force a sense of self-awareness onto a child too early is very limiting, was shot down by my parents and my Aunt was vilified for her bravery (and correctness).

I remember being impetuously hateful to those who gave me compliments on my physical appearance. I still am, to a great extent. In fact, sort of comically, but my friend- who was nowhere near as pleasant to look at and perhaps she was jealous now that I think of it- told me after I had shot down a would-be admirer that the proper way to accept a compliment is to say thank-you.
LOL.
I did take her advice, however. Because even though I was fundamentally self-conscious, I did want and crave and need genuine attention. I just knew all along that my physicality was provably not the way to get it. Thinking back, that comment from a would-be friend was an invitation to vanity. Like a vicious poison snake bite, that comment was not meant to benefit me, but her. If I was less focused on the internal conflicts of my existence, and allowed myself to dwell on the mere physicality, I would lower myself to her level where she might feasibly beat me.

And from there I went through the dregs of life. My late teenage years through early twenties was a base carnal existence; a torture to my soul. I won’t get into details. I’ll just elucidate for you that I tend to attract people who are very vain.

Alas, so DH and I have the discussion of Love. I posit to him that the truer definition of Love is Our involuntary response to virtue, and he is foundationally opposed to it. His reaction of fear and anger was surprising to me, although it shouldn’t have been. (please understand, I am in no way discouraged by this-I am in fact, invigorated greatly)
I described for him my own reaction to learning this definition; fear, anger, shame, sadness. All quite negative! All very hopeless and quite judgemental!
However, it also brought me a sense of accomplishment that I had never experienced before. That to earn love would be the most meaningful and worthy goal of my life.
Indeed, I mean that to be my most superlative task.