Physical attractiveness — a rant

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Sometimes they’re judged for being stuck-up, especially if they’re good-looking AND shy. They couldn’t possibly have issues with self-confidence.

They couldn’t be heartbroken over a previous relationship. They can just find a new man,

I guess they can't be autistic either, because autistic people feel awkward socially and they tend to have difficulty with interpersonal relationships. (Seeing as that's in the diagnostic criteria, and all ...)

Good point. ^

^ Good points.

Even if a person gets into another relationship right away, it doesn’t mean that everything is a-okay, and there’s no hurt, pain, and trust issues. There’s also the possibility that it’s a bad or even abusive relationship, too. It’s impossible to categorize people or to say that one subset of the population has it easier than other. It’s too complex. It’s impossible to make a sound judgement call based on observation/personal experience because it is subject to confirmation bias and will always be limited. We can’t get inside other people’s heads.

I was going to say it also depends on the person's history of other relationships. Someone who has been traumatised or hurt before may feel it even more profoundly if it happens again, and blame themselves or start to distrust others.

Then I decided it can be equally painful if it's a person's first and only relationship.

What matters is how deeply they get attached to the other person, and how badly they were hurt. Part of that measure would include whether or not they had a support system of friends / family / therapists to help them through.

My son has had several absolutely disastrous breakups where I thought he'd never recover, from his first love whom he found in bed with another dude on his birthday, the night before his first university exam, to one who chased him through our house with a hammer. There was one he dated for two years and thought he'd marry but she broke up with him and he took a bus to Manhattan to beg at her door for another chance. She agreed to have a pizza and let him sleep on the futon but sent him home the next morning (no, not with sex.) He was absolutely devastated.

My daughter's relationship with her boyfriend of five years ended so catastrophically I thought she'd need to be hospitalised. She screamed at the top of her lungs pretty much nonstop for about six weeks, actually hitting walls and headbanging.

Then there's me with MR not sleeping or eating for two months but refusing to talk about it, even with him.

I think that, as with pain, people experience trauma differently, too. Some people are traumatized by things that wouldn’t bother others. Often, it’s due to environmental factors, like previous relationships, but according to research, it seems to be somewhat genetic/biological as well.

Regarding people who believe themselves handicapped by being "too" attractive, especially women, I am wracking my brain to think of good examples one way or the other. I tried to date a young woman when I was 19, who told me she thought Bianca Jagger looked just like her (although she'd wasn't Latin in fact her mother was a Métis which sort of had the equivalent affect on her appearance). Concerning relationships, she was clearly in the driver's seat from a young age, knew what she wanted, and could get it (boys with blond hair). The only reason I was able to go on dates with her was because her mother was preventing her from seeing her blond haired boyfriend whom she'd met at college when she was 16. She eventually became an high-level attorney with the Government BTW.

I actually dated somebody who had worked as a model when she was younger. TBH I thought her attractive but never really thought her "beautiful". All 3 of her marriages failed but I wouldn't know about the 2nd and 3rd (I know who her 2nd husband was but no idea why the marriage failed). The first marriage apparently failed because of her husband's alcoholism. She and he were still friends and would sometimes hang out during the time I was dating her.

If I can think of another first-hand example of an especially attractive woman and how I believe it affected her romantic relationships, I might share. Drawing a blank at the moment.

Your examples wouldn’t say much because the sample size is too small. Valid studies contain hundreds if not thousands of people. Also, you can’t get inside people’s heads to know how they feel. You would only know how it appears which might be vastly different from the reality. My marriage was much worse than it appeared to be from the outside. No one offline even knows what he did except for one person that I told.

My daughter's bestie is considered to be smoking hot gorgeous. She's Spanish and has always had a great bod, being a competitive cheerleader and a model. She's also very gracious, cheerful, and outgoing. She attracted many guys from the time she was a child. Despite being so beautiful she was religious and didn't want to date until her 20's when she hoped to marry her first boyfriend. She lived a chaste lifestyle and didn't want to be pursued.

Here's some stuff she experienced:

- One of my partners stole her underwear when she was here for a sleepover, around age 8.
- I wouldn't let her come back to the house when he was here but I didn't tell her why.
- It affected her friendship with my daughter and really upset her.
- She was sent dick pics starting around age 11, even from one of her teachers.
- People started saying she was a b***h and a snob.
- At school dances she stood in the corner because the boys were too intimidated to dance with her.
- She was shunned by other girls in her church and they made up rumours about her being gay.
(That explained why she wasn't dating and it made the boys ask them out instead of her.)
- No one asked her to prom because they heard she wouldn't put out.
- She was SA in University.
- Her eventual "first boyfriend" broke up with her because he saw old pictures of her on Insta.
- He thought she looked too pretty and he wanted her to delete the pictures.
- He said she was putting herself and their relationship at risk from five year-old photographs.

Speaking of Spanish people, many of the young women in the families of people we know in Spain are very attractive, have or are pursuing prestigious careers, have a huge degree of self-esteem, and pretty much do what they want romantically. Ironically they are religious in the sense of being conservative Catholics but they aren't Puritanical in the North American sense in fact their culture strikes me as very hedonistic. Pray then party. I think culture can make a difference. Maybe we're just mean-spirited people on this side of the Atlantic.

What?

You seem to be jumping to a lot of conclusions based on very limited experience founded on appearances.

Just because we have different cultural values does not make us mean-spirited. Spain is not immune to issues with abusive relationships. Spanish people are not immune to trauma in its various forms.