i'm losing my looks and i can't deal with it

[haventstillgotit]

i am nearly 32 with 2 dc

recently i have been looking in the mirror and hating what i see, i am starting to get wrinkles and am just looking generally shit and tired all the time despite having a healthy diet and luckily getting lots of sleep

sorry to sound big headed but i was very attractive in my 20's, i was a gawky teenager but when i got into my 20's i don't know what happened but i suddenly got a lot of male attention and people said i was pretty etc. i got with my dh when i was 26 and he used to get jealous because men would stare at me all the time, that doesnt happen now.

i'm thin and look ok-ish in clothes but shit without them but my ageing face lets me down anyway

i try my best to look nice but sometimes i think whats the point as i still look shit. feel pretty much invisible. my boobs are heading south and i have saggy skin and stretchmarks from the dc

thats it really. i know its only going to get worse and worse and there's nothing i can do.

It isn't about perspective or about how you shape up compared to otehrs but how you feel about yourself.

Having suddenly blossomed from ugly duckling to swan you defined an up turn in your life by your looks. It feels nice, admiring glances, indeed admirers. But can also bring you unwanted attention IYKWIM.

Now make the best out of what you have. Being knackered doesn't help. A break is single best thing for restorative feelings. You are undoubtedly more attractive than you realise.

I thought I had lost it completely. Then I went out ona course one day without the kids. Shocking. Got hit on twice by attractive men. A shock as I thought I had fallen into invisibility. Pushing a buggy, being with DCs can often make you feel as though you hae DISAPPEARED. You haven't. Honest xx

I agree with bringmesunshine, you can feel so invisible when the children are young.

I found I lost myself when I was home with the kids. DH realised I felt like this and really encouraged me to do things to get my confidence back. I have done dry slope ski lessons (hated, I don't like going downhill fast! Thanks for that Christmas present DH!), 5km run, 10km runs for charity (massive achievement for me as I am not in the least sporty), Swimathons for Marie Curie where I also raised money and challenged myself, swimming far more than I ever thought possible. Now we do it as a family. This year I am in a street dance team (don't ask, it's not pretty!).

I find the more I challenge myself and the more I put myself out of my comfort zone the harder I work to achieve and the better I feel when I do achieve. Which is fantastic for the ego.

You have got it into your head that the only thing you have to offer is your looks, it's not. You write really well, you are obviously intelligent. I bet you are a few pampering sessions away from feeling better about your looks anyway but you need to have confidence in yourself and what you can achieve.

Did you ever meet and talk with those staring men? I did.

L.o.s.e.r.s.

Nothing to cry over there. You know the phrase 'needle in a haystack?' They are the haystack.

My looks are going south too, especially at the chest. I've resolved to do what I can, but to grudgingly accept the life cycle. Just started getting my hair dyed at the salon and I do like it. It was a morale boost.

i think you are honest, not awful

what does leap out at me is that you think your looks are "all you have" hence your despair

ah fuck knows, no advice from me!!!!!

"Do women really go around thinking "I know I'm attractive". (sorry, but that's the bit of your OP I find astonishing)"

"Good god are looks really that important?"

I find these comments disingenuous, at best.

There are tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of attractive women (well, people!) out there. Do we really think they're all pshhawing everyone away self-deprecatingly, totally oblivious to their own attractiveness?

And as for whether looks are really that important, clearly they are, rightly or wrongly. Should someone's entire self-esteem be tied up in them? No. But you're living in some sort of parallel utopia if you think we've achieved some sort of state of being whereby looks are not important.

OP - I can relate to a lot of what you say. I was a geeky kid, tall and gangly and always being mistaken for a boy. I blossomed at the end of high school and spent my 20s being good-looking. I'm 38 now and even with all the added confidence and wisdom, objectively, I don't look as good as I did then, I just don't. And it's only going to get 'worse'.

However, I'm still happy with the way I look in spite of no longer having that glow of youth. :) I'm slimmer than I have been in years through hard work and feel so good for it. Initially after my 2 DC I felt invisible, as you describe. And I must admit, being that generic 'Mum' pushing a pram really does render you invisible, but it's not personal.

I agree with everyone else who's said you need to have something for yourself to gain some self-esteem from, and also to do esteem able things.

Here's something really simple you can do which I can guarantee will make you feel good. Pay other people compliments. Genuine, sincere ones with a smile that reaches your eyes. Do it often. There's so much that is complimentable about other people and it helps you to see that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes and forms. Try it and see what it does for them and consequently how it makes you feel about yourself. You'll get a lot of perspective about all sorts of things this way.

I've been feeling just like this OP. I wonder if it is something I learnt from my mum. My mum had no confidence in anything, didn't like anything about herself or her looks despite the fact that she was very pretty (no longer with us). She would only ever point out her imperfections and the parts of her that were to do with aging such as her neck and say "this will happen to you one day". It's no wonder that I associate these changes with negative feelings!

how old are you whosegot ? if you don't mind me asking?
its really interesting that you have said that as my mum was EXACTLY the same. i remember right from me being a really young age her always saying she was fat, ugly, old, wrinkled, etc. She was none of these things. Infact, looking back, she seemed to have a really strange attitude to the way i looked, she would never ever compliment me in any way and rarely even does now, not even on my wedding day (ok, wedding DAYS, been married twice ) ....
yet she would say things about other girls appearance, ie my female friends, cousins etc, about how gorgeous, slim, tanned etc they were and stuff :( but never me.

At least you had looks to loose keep that in mind some people dont

haventstillgotit I did wonder if your experience might have been the same. It was annoying me that some people were dismissing your feelings on this, it goes much deaper then vanity.

I am nearly 35. I've been noticing it more the last year or so, possibly because I have half a stone to lose. I really put the weight on around my face which completely changes the way I look. Also it gives me a bit of a double chin, something which my mum hated about herself. I also have chubbier legs, something my mum used to point out in me (in a jokey way but still) and also in herself as something she hated. Even my mums sister was taking about it recently, she said I had "suprisingly chunky legs". Leave my fucking legs alone! I am sure that my mum and her sister got this from their mother as well, she was a very negative person. It just travels down the family.

My dad is also quite critical of female appearences and hasn't a tacful bone in his body, so will say things about my arse being fat. He would say things to my mum as well, not to be nasty, but because he has no edit button on the things that come out of his mouth, this is probably part of why she had no confidence. I'm not sure if my mum would compliment me or not, the occassional "you look nice" maybe. Sometimes she would say I looked like her sister and she would also sometimes say her sister was very pretty when she was younger, so I guess that sort of made me pretty by association.

Still though, I was painfully shy and lacking in confidence as a child, I felt a bit neglected in some ways, then was awkward until I was about 16 when I suppose I blossomed. I had low self esteem which meant I got taken advantage of, I got A LOT of attention from men. It's hardly suprising that my confidence is now entwined with the attention I get from men.

I was also sexually abused as a child which I am sure complicates this much further.

I often think that a positive role model about looks/aging etc would have made all the difference. I want to accept it but not sure how.

teafanatic003 I'm not really sure that is relevant. It can be very upsetting for anyones looks to suddenly change, whether that is because of aging or an accident or whatever the reason. Psycologically it can really affect a person. Whether or not they started out pretty and so should be grateful I don't think comes into it.

I am not convinced that if an average looking person was disfigured in an accident that they wouldn't be that bothered compared to if it happened to a very attractive person.

Your looks are what you see every single day in the mirror and if you are not mentally prepared for them to change then it's going to hit you hard. It doesn't sound like the OP was prepared because of her childhood.

Tempingmaniac Who says you're not attractive!!!!

This thread is great. It has made me laugh, but also sad. I laughed at Pissfart saying you'd be grateful to have your own teet !!. And I am saddend to read your sadness. I was never good looking, never attracted attention, but thats o.k. becasue I was comfortable in the idea that I scrubbed up well.
I am struggling to understand what has happened to you , to make you end up in this palce, where you view yourself as such. Not good. Why don't you take a mate for a spa day pamper. Things like that often make us feel better about ourselves.

I know how you feel. When I was younger I used to get a lot of male attention when I went out and was pretty big headed confident in the fact that if I really wanted a partner, I would get one quite easily.

Now - I have wrinkles, bags under my eyes, can never get my hair right and men never seem to look twice at me so I have to rely on my personality to pull now.

oh whosegot you sound so, so similar to me :(

my dad was the same too, he would make "jokey" comments to my mum about her being fat, big arse etc, she would laugh it off but it must have hurt her, i'd be so pissed off and hurt if dh said anything like that to me :(

i too was very very shy and lacking in confidence. i didn't have a great relationship with my parents, they were never very affectionate and have never ever told me they love me.. i didn't have a great time growing up at all really, was also badly bullied at school, and it was never ever dealt with either by the school or my parents. i get on fine with them now, but my mum has even admitted she was/is not a very good mother. i have had terrible relationship break ups and problems in the past and have come to her, heartbroken, out of desperation, hoping she can help me, and its like, she just doesn't care. she is cold. the weird thing is, she is a brilliant grandparent to my DC, as is my dad

like you, i definitely have very low self esteem. i learnt to rely on male attention to feel good about myself. but i also got taken advantage of too, i lost my virginity at 14 to a man of 21 and we were in a "relationship" where he mentally abused me for over a year, told me i was ugly, compared me unfavourably to his exes and other women, making me feel worthless and shagging other girls while we were seeing eachother. but at the same time he would say he wanted to get me pregnant and try and get me to come off the pill god he was a prize. anyway my parents did nothing, but they must have known it was inappropriate. if my dd ever (god forbid) got into a situation like that i would go to the ends of the earth to stop it, and my dh would hunt the "man" down.

Blimey. Just seen OP's latest post. God, you poor woman. O.k. now we are getting to the heart of it. This goes ALOT LOT deeper than the info in the OP.
What does your dh have to say ?
What does your best friend think ?

You're 31. Surely you don;t look that different to when you were in your twenties? It'll be worse when you're 40.

haventstillgotit My dad would see someone on telly with nice hair and say to my mum "you should get your hair done like that. Not a direct insult but a suggestion that my mums hair wasn't good enough. Weirdly the styles he picked wouldn't have worked on my mums hair at all, but then I suppose he's not a hairdresser. I always wanted to tell him how that sort of thing would make my mum feel but I didn't want to make any more of it then my dad already had incase it made my mum feel even worse. I did a few times though and my mum would say it didn't matter but I know she just said things like that to keep the peace as my mum was a huge peace keeper in the family, at her own or my expense usually.

My brother used to hit me (he has problems) and my parents were unable or unwilling to do anything about it. I ended up in abusive relationships and they were suprised! By not doing anything about it they unintentionally taught me that it was ok, that I deserved no better. When they found out about the abusive relationship they were shocked and angry for literally 5 minutes . . . then went back to watching telly

Mine weren't that affectionate either and the love word was never said. This did change but not until my mum was in her last few months of life, we all become more affectionate with each other and would hug when we said goodbye. Me and my mum still only ever said I love you by text but an improvement anyway.

It's interesting about when you lost your vaginity. I had a sort of boyfriend when I was 15 and he was 26! He said he was 23. My parents still didn't do anything about it. I think my mum felt that if a guy asked you out it was rude not to go. She drummed it into me about putting everyone else first and never hurting other feelings and although she never really disciplined me there was guilt instead. So I never felt that I had the right to say no.

Over that year when I was 15 I had "relations" with lots of guys really. Lost my vaginity to a guy I hardly knew who was 21. Later slept with a 27yo. When I was 16 I had a proper relationship with a 23 yo and when I eventually broke up with him I was told I was too fussy.

Sorry going on now. Sorry if I've gone off subject, it's just that I think all these little things add up to feelings of low sef worth.

cumbria81 Wow positive! You're missing the issue.

Also wanted to say that I am really glad you started this thread as I had been thinking about doing the same.

Like some other posters here I've ALWAYS been a minger. As an ugly person I'm struggling to feel sorry for the OP.

clitorisorclitoraint Maybe you would feel sorry for her if you read some of her more recent posts (and maybe by me as well as we have similar stories) and you would see that it's not as simple as a very pretty woman upset by a wrinkle.

Which or your friends and acquaintances do you find the most attractive? I bet it's not the slimmest, or the least wrinkled, or the one with glossy hair. It's more likely to be the ones that are always smiling, confident and friendly.

I've really lost my looks the past few years, I'm 36 and have had 3 children in 5 yrs. My hairs gone grey and wirey, I have terrible skin, wrinkley and spotty and my tummy will never be the same again! Sometimes I do feel down when I see my reflection but try to remember attractiveness isn't all about the things above.

Change the things you can and accept the things you can't/.

I am only 25 and can identify with a lot of your teen experiences, OP. I was a pretty teenager (late teens) and now that I've had DC I am struggling to find my worth after my body has gone to shit. The advice on this thread, and the fact that I am finding it is not just me who feels this way, is really helping.

Stopped reading women's/fashion magazines at about 20 as they just made the feminist in me RAGE, and haven't looked back. That is the only advice I have, as someone in more or less your position.