Validate me, please!

So first thing this morning, I read Roo's most recent post and the post that she links to. And so here I am, once again, thinking about my body, thinking about that thinking, beauty, men, and above all, validation. Like all women, this is not a new thing for me to be thinking about. For the past year or so, I've felt ok about my body, but appalled to know that the reason I feel ok is because N is constantly complimenting me, so genuinely that there's no denying that he actually does think I'm beautiful.
It's a weird thing for me to consider. In my least self-deprecating moments, the best I can muster is to believe that I'm ~ok~, could be better, could be worse. The words pretty, and beautiful certainly never enter into any self evaluation. But with a year of full-on praise, I've been generally able to maintain my ~ok~ opinion and haven't sunk back into butt-ugly image for quite a while. But its not like I've had some grand epiphany that allows me a better self-image, its more like I've been in a self-help group of two for the past year, and after continual repetition, I've started to digest what I hear everyday. I can never feel quite comfortable with it because I know the reason I'm being kind to myself is because a boy is being kind to me. And why am I still giving this boy or that boy more control over my self-image than I have, whether their reflection of me is ugly or beautiful? It's maddening and makes me feel like a child. And just to increase that childish feeling, when I'm not in a relationship, I start to diet and exercise, with the full belief that I can thin my way into someone's heart.
But the thing is, I know, deep-down, that there's someone to validate whatever it is that I choose to think about myself. If I want to be an ass hole or an angel, ugly or beautiful, genius or dolt, there's going to be someone right around the corner to validate it. So why is this the never ending post, the never ending issue? Why is it that I can't get there myself?