Thread: Bring me your wisdom

In my experience, I find people that I like really attractive, even if I know rationally that they would not be considered particularly attractive by other people.

You're a 19 year old guy. Your behavior is not unusual.

Your behavior will change once you actually fall or grow in love, and then it won't matter, she may be attractive or she may be someone you did not think you would find attractive, but once you are in love the question will be moot.

As to how do you fall or grow in love, that differs for different people.

I know I did not find my husband attractive when we first met, now I did not find him unattractive either, but he did not meet my stereotype of handsome guy, didn't seem my type at the time, and well if you had shown me a photo of him before I got to know him, I would have been indifferent. My mother was actually surprised by how much we look alike. But since I have low self esteem that would not have been a turn on. I had a sense of what kind of looks I liked, and in fact at the same time I met my husband there was another guy I had a crush on for his looks, but nothing more. My husband to be and I found we had a lot of subjects we like to talk about in common, so it it started out with us just talking with each other a lot. I know he realized that there was more there to us before I did. We made plans of all kinds of stuff. We hung out more and more. One time we were watching the sunrise together from the rooftop of the house that he lived in (after we had spent a night in each others company awake but not doing anything more than talking and walking and planning), and all of a sudden I had this revelation that I was falling in love with him. I was quite surprised at the time, and looks were kind of irrelevant - not that he was ugly because he isn't, it just in mind was not a major issue what he looked like or rather he looked like the guy who by then was quite familiar to me and who i had foolishly thought was just a friend who I surprisingly was falling in love with even though he did not meet my preconceived stereotype of who i thought i would find attractive. When I years later told him when I first realized I was falling in love with him, he was surprised that it was so late, since he by then had known for quite a while. Plus I don't think that was the moment I fell in love, rather it was the moment when I realized I was falling in love, but the falling in love had already started a long time before that unbeknownst to me, and maybe my silly notions of who I would find attractive prevented me from realizing it earlier.

Originally Posted by Serclfs

I KNOW i'm not attractive (to me anyways which is what matters most)

Start here. You need to be able to love yourself before you can love someone else! You're absolutely right: how you feel about yourself is more important than how others feel. However, if you feel unattractive, that's how you'll portray yourself. Your posture, actions, body language, etc will all be subconsciously influenced, and that's just the outside. An unhealthy view of yourself also leads to unhealthy emotions!

Basically, ignore what you're told is "attractive." Everyone is beautiful, and often times the truest attractions come from knowing someone, not just their appearance.

Originally Posted by Serclfs

How do I stop caring about how I look, or how other people look

There are these magical places on this thing called the internet, where people just talk and learn and spread ideas. Some of these places are called "forums" and most forumgoers have these "avatar" identification pictures, usually not of themselves. And sure, there are places on the forum where you can go to see people's faces, but you don't have to. The web is a great place to start appreciating others for how they think and how they conduct themselves, rather than how they look.

I've been told to lower my standards when it comes to meeting a woman, but I'm not going to pursue a romantic relationship with someone when I don't find them attractive, call me shallow.

Ok, you're shallow. Valuing looks over behavior and rationality? There is so much I see wrong in that. For starters, how are you ever going to love when you're old? All partners age.

Originally Posted by Abra

Ok, you're shallow. Valuing looks over behavior and rationality? There is so much I see wrong in that. For starters, how are you ever going to love when you're old? All partners age.

I'm 19 and have a george costanza hairline, thinning hair and receding (honestly) and have been mistaken for a 30 year old MANY times. I think this is a big part of why I'm this way. I try to deny these feelings "it doesn't matter what they look like! their nice!" I say all the time but deep down that voice is still pointing out their flaws. Maybe it's because when I see myself in the mirror it's what I do. I don't want to be this way.

Have you considered shaving your hair all together? I know it is a possible solution that some men effectively use to combat premature receding hairline. It's a way to change one's looks anyway. It does not work for everyone of course, but for some men it does.

I agree with most of what's been said so far. Except maybe the ridicule of you having high standards and caring about appearance too much. You can care if you want, there's nothing wrong with having certain requirements for a partner. Most people care about stupid superficial attributes all the time, but they wouldn't usually say it. As an extreme example, there aren't many young people who would consider dating an old person. That's caring about appearance. Even caring about some aspects of personality I'd consider superficial. Like how women are more attracted to alpha males, or men who like shy, timid girls who are just pretending to be shy to attract males.

But it may benefit you to try not to so much, or at least to keep an open mind about people. I agree with what Marvo and JoannaB said about finding someone attractive physically once you like them for who they are. If you're just looking for sex, then go for appearance or whatever you want. But if you want a meaningful relationship, a good strategy might be to try really hard to look at personality and not appearance, but allow yourself to avoid considering any women who are downright repulsive to you.

Even if you'd normally consider a person average in attractiveness, or even below average, once you start to love someone or really like them, they'll become more attractive to you. And they become attractive in quite a literal way too. It's not like you just stop caring that you find them ugly. You literally perceive them to be more attractive, and the effect is very powerful. Any 'ugly' qualities you would have seen in them, your mind ignores. And any redeeming attractive features that the person might have, which you may have never even noticed before, will suddenly grab your attention a lot more. This all happens subconsciously, so that the person seems more attractive. I'm not saying that would change a 1/10 to a 10/10, but it may change a 1/10 into a 3/10, or a 6/10 into a 9/10.

EDIT: I didn't read the last couple posts before. I agree with the hair advice given by Joanna and was thinking the same thing. I have a friend who started going bald a few years ago, when he was 20 or so. He lived with it for a couple years until finally he decided to try shaving it off. It worked wonderfully. People no longer commented on his hair or mistook him for being way older than he was. He actually looked good like that. Some men don't have the face to pull it off that magnificently, but it may be worth a try.

Like how women are more attracted to alpha males, or men who like shy, timid girls who are just pretending to be shy to attract males.

>implying the first phrase is actually true (define "alpha male," for me)
>implying shy timid girls are "deceptive," instead of just shy

Originally Posted by Serclfs

I'm 19 and have a george costanza hairline, thinning hair and receding (honestly) and have been mistaken for a 30 year old MANY times. I think this is a big part of why I'm this way. I try to deny these feelings "it doesn't matter what they look like! their nice!" I say all the time but deep down that voice is still pointing out their flaws. Maybe it's because when I see myself in the mirror it's what I do. I don't want to be this way.

Stop looking at yourself in the mirror for any longer than you need to groom. It's a matter of training yourself not to obsess. Make it like becoming lucid in a dream, only you are becoming aware that you are judging yourself, judging others, by something that part of you knows is not that important. Then, after becoming aware, you think about something else. Think about self-improvement, about things about yourself that you can change, and how to make those changes happen.

Also, don't let the mental training stress you out, if results aren't immediate. It'll probably happen for the rest of your life, you having those appearance-judging thoughts, popping out of your head every now and then just like many other random thoughts. But how much you focus on them, how long you focus on them, and ultimately, from this, how they make you feel is more under your control.

Originally Posted by Abra

>implying the first phrase is actually true (define "alpha male," for me)
>implying shy timid girls are "deceptive," instead of just shy

alpha male = has personality traits that make him likely to become the leader of a group

You've mistaken me I think. I definitely wasn't trying to say that all shy girls are doing that, or even the majority (I used to be shy and still am in many cases, and that's definitely not the reason). I also didn't mean to say all women are more attracted to alpha males. Just in general.

Originally Posted by Dianeva

alpha male = has personality traits that make him likely to become the leader of a group

You've mistaken me I think. I definitely wasn't trying to say that all shy girls are doing that, or even the majority (I used to be shy and still am in many cases, and that's definitely not the reason). I also didn't mean to say all women are more attracted to alpha males. Just in general.

I'm saying, in general, I've only heard people say these things on the internet, and have not observed either such thing in real life in similar frequency.

I don't usually consider myself attractive, but my husband does. Attractiveness is in the eyes of the beholder. Most of the time I don't pay much attention to my looks, but sometimes I fret, and I think it is normal to do so at least sometimes - I think it is not unusual to have a weird combination of low self esteem and vanity (I know I have) and it's hard to let go of those bad habits. I find though that just changing my body language to consciously more self assured can at times make me feel more attractive and I know that at least on one occasion it actually made me appear more attractive to someone else:

This was before I was married and before I even knew my husband to be. I out of some reason felt like walking in with great self assurance in my stride into an arcade. And a guy noticed and actually hit on me and gave me his phone number. This never happened otherwise to me, and I know it was because of my body language and posture and self assurance in that moment which was unusual for me. So I had manged to make myself look better by sheer will. I never called that guy. I thought it was kind of creepy that he hit on a total stranger because he liked the way she walked into the room, but that's not the point here - the point is that you can make yourself appear more attractive.

Bioshock Infinite Soundtrack - 28 - Will The Circle Be Unbroken (Full Version) - YouTube

I don't want to care about it anymore, i don't want to care if I'm ugly it really SHOULDN'T MATTER! How can I achieve this? There has to e some ancient god damn practice I can do. I don't even want to look at people positively. Should I close my eyes and navigate the world with all my other senses or what. Anyways I appreciate all the feedback, nothing I haven't heard before sadly. Is there a procedure you can do legally to remove genitalia? Maybe that will center my mind.

Sex is such a pointless god damn thing, when robots become conscious then we will see true curiosity underneath this stupid evolutionary trait. Human beings will fade into darkness, a failed experiment of the incessant field lab of the Cosmos.

To stop caring about your looks and change gender at the same time, wear these sunglasses: Amazon.com: QLook Womens Neon Heart Shaped Lolita Sunglasses, Lt Pink: Clothing -- I don't think any man who cares about his looks could successfully wear them. Also if you get very dark lenses for them, it might have the added benefit of making it harder for you to see clearly, and then you might not notice others looks any more. Sorry, I felt that your latest responses called for a bit of sense of humor to diffuse the mood. If you don't find the idea of wearing pink heart shaped sunglasses as solution amusing, please disregard.

Your quote says there's only peace, knowledge, serenity, harmony and the force. Seems like you aren't living up to that very well though. Dude, I don't even have any hair because it all fell out. I'll be 19 in 2 weeks, and I don't give a damn. Learning to accept yourself is a long process which might even take years from when you're first aware of your flaws.

What helped for me was to live a better lifestyle, for example eat healthy, and I've been kickboxing for a long time now as well. I even jog in my free time. But there's one very important thing, and that's switching your thoughts from negative ones to positive ones. How I achieved this was stepping out of my comfort zone, don't see what the world has to offer but show the world what YOU have to offer if that makes sense to you.

Also, sex is not pointless. Sex is awesome.

I think partly we are conditioned to think we must be attractive looking and have an attractive looking mate. I think you just need to accept yourself and not worry about what others think, It gives you more confidence thinking that way also. I'm not saying to be gross and not have personal hygiene and not take care of yourself but really it's up to you how you feel about yourself. It's all just what you think. Some people may think they have to have an attractive partner because it would hurt their ego if they weren't. What would others think of us? Way to worried about what others think. But you can want whatever you want, and it may just be your confidence in the way of getting it?