To feel sad that I never experienced mutual love because I'm ugly

[KHMP1971]

I turned 54 on Thursday. I am divorced with DS19 and DD15. I split up with their dad in 2017 (it was a horrible relationship and he was emotionally abusive).

I then got into a relationship with someone a bit younger than me who I loved dearly but who refused to commit for nearly 8 years (I loved him and couldn't let go) and then promptly left me in 2023 for someone much younger, blonde and prettier who he decided was The One. He's married to her now. I'm still alone.

He cut contact eith me in May 2024 as his new fiancee didn't like him being friends with me. He said that he had to as he'd found his wife and I needed to "move on".

Still miss him every day. Still feel worthless.

My birthday was depressing. I worked all day came home and then took DD to muck out her loan horse (helped as it was raining and we wanted to get finished) cooked dinner and went to bed. I got a card from DS who is home from Uni and my colleagues gave me an card with a £20 M and S voucher which is dearly love them for.

I'm not pretty. I'm 5'8" but not really in a super skinny model with long legs way. I have dark brown hair and eyes (I'm white - the woman I was left for was a blue eyed blonde) I have smallish eyes, a big nose, thin lips). I've never been a woman men fall in love with. My ex husband/childrens' dad admitted after we split up that he settled for me as he wasn't good looking himself.

I've never known mutual love. The closest came was the man I was with for 7 years who admitted that he "loved me but not romantically". He admitted that he loved her romantically (probably as she's a lot more attractive).

I feel sad for the little girl I was who was so romantic, always dreaming of fairytale and love stories that he life ended up like this. Basically I'm not hor enough to be loved. I'm not monstrous but I dont spark attraction and therefore that's it.

And most men I encounter are married anyway.

How do I come to terms with this? My life is very lonely and stressful a lot of the time (busy mum working two jobs no family) I would give anything to be held, to share something with someone. But I'm just not special, "wife material" or loveable enough and men's standards are incredibly.high, I can't reach them.

Sorry if this is a bit of a ramble. Woke up feeling sad.

Plastic surgery doesn't fix underlying self-esteem issues. It's not about the nose here.

There are lots of 'ugly' people in loving relationships. Your problem is not your genetics but your belief system that love is superficially about looks. Your upbringing maybe the reason. Find yourself a therapist and love will eventually come.

Consider the Freedom Programme so you recognise abusive and shit men. I bet the years of abuse broke down your confidence too. I imagine your parents didn't do much to build you up, either?

OP has not indicated she’s overweight either.

OP I haven't RTFT but I just wanted to say that I AM conventionally attractive and I'm still single, divorced after an abusive marriage and only seem to attract men who want to mess me around. I've never known healthy love either.

This is not about your looks.

It's been deeply traumatic and heartbreaking

This stood out to me. I think you are still trying to make sense of the loss and looking for a tangible reason hence focus on your looks. That's completely understandable. It's suggests you are still recovering and processing the loss. Time truly is a healer as it can take at least 2-4 years to recover from a broken relationship so you are still in recovery.

I had an relationship end badly and ex is now with an objectively unattractive woman but she has money and career status, which is what he wanted. I can see that now, he wasn't interested in me but in how a partner reflected on him. It did make me feel "less than" for a period of time but I'm accepting of who I am.

I would say his new relationship may not quite be as blissful as you think once the honeymoon period is over. He has given up you and your children so he will also reflect on your lives together.

OP you are definitely hot enough to be loved - you've had a couple of relationships. You say yourself you are OK looking, most people are no more than OK looking, especially when older.

As an average looker in your 50s, it's vanishingly unlikely that anyone is going to decide you're the one just by glancing at you in a bar, but that kind of attraction needs to turn into something else to last anyway.

It sounds like you had some fairy tale dreams as a kid which of course are unrealistic but that doesn't mean you can't find a partner who loves you and is sexually attracted to you.

Stop beating yourself up about the younger guy leaving you for someone younger - he was younger so it's pretty normal he'd want a partner his age, as you say yourself, he made this clear from the start.

Most people are similar in looks to their partners. There are nice, sexually active average looking men in their 50s about (and unless they are rich they aren't likely to be able to attract younger partners) - so since a partner is clearly important to you, make the best of what you have looks wise and start dating.

You need therapy
Priority you

I'm sorry you feel low op. I think going to see a counsellor could really help you. You are in many ways a success in life, you have children who you love and who love you, a job, a community. Yet you have taken some adverse things which have happened and made up a whole story about why those things happened. You mention yourself as a child and I think that part of you is feeling unloved at the moment. No-one gets through life without adverse events and being subject to cruelty but you can do things to improve how you feel about yourself. I really think talking to a trained counsellor could help put you in a better place very quickly.

At the end we all get old and looks go. Also, these days you can do so much to look better. May be a nose job will do a lot for you. It changed my life a very long time ago.

You need some help and to work on your self esteem. It’s a cliche but you need to love yourself first.

Your thinking is incredibly disordered. I know very unattractive, morbidly obese people who are happily in relationships. You don’t need to be young, thin and conventionally attractive to be loved.

The relationship you’re stuck longing for again was always doomed to fail. He was younger than you, there was always a (strong) chance that at some point he would want children and your age meant you couldn’t give him that. It’s not her looks, it’s her age and her ability to meet his desire to procreate. But you’re convincing yourself it’s because you’re not attractive. You were at entirely different life stages - you had children, your ability to have more had passed you by. Some men are happy with an older woman and not having children but many think they will be and as time ticks on they realise they’re not. This still could have happened if you were a supermodel.

Oh, OP, your sadness is so apparent in your posts; you sound lonely, and hopeless, which is a horrible place to be. I also feel you’re very entrenched in your views and, as a result, not taking on board anything else anyone might be saying. Would you ever consider therapy? It won’t be a miracle cure but it might help you unpick why you’re so convinced it all comes down to looks. (Your arsehole ex husband plays a part, I’m sure — but I bet there will be other things too, perhaps from when you were a child…)

I’m married to a lovely man. When we first met, through work, I wasn’t over my previous relationship and didn’t find him remotely attractive. Then we met again about eight months later, by which time I’d got over my ex — and I was immediately smitten. I’m telling you this to show you that how attractive we find others isn’t clear cut. Yes, I’m sure if someone’s stunning, it helps in the initial stages, especially with OLD, which can be very superficial, I think — but there are plenty of us around who aren’t stunning, so it isn’t just down to physical appearance.

I actually find it a bit heartless and counterproductive when people lament not having a love life because they're not attractive and others basically deny the problem, either telling them they are (having never seen them) or that it doesn't matter (when it obviously does). The first step in dealing with a problem - whether that means finding a solution or finding acceptance - is admitting that the problem exists.

Having said that, there is one thing I notice that I have often seen from other women making the same complaint: you've said a lot about your face but little or nothing about your body.

You're right, and women generally are right, that men are very driven by looks. But they're often wrong about what men's priorities are within that. Most men are far more concerned about body then facial attractiveness, and many (not all) primarily about tits and general curvaceousness rather than the super-controlled model-type slimness women are told to aspire to by the media.

Another thing: Maybe your ex DID leave you primarily because his new GF was more attractive, and maybe that's objectively so. But all that means is exactly what it says: there's one particular woman out there who is more attractive than you are. Even if you could nail down physical attractiveness to a univerally agreed objective scale, that would still be true of every single woman in the world except one.

You've spun a story around that, loading onto it a whole lot of generalisation that is not inherent in the fact itself. We all do this with our experiences to try and make sense of the world and make the future more predictable. But the other side of that is that in doing so, we impose limitations upon it. If you want to escape those limitations, you need to be willing to consider other possible stories.

So, this wonderful man who you’ve been mourning for two years is a serial cheater?

This harks back to my previous point. You’ve defined yourself by your proximity to shitty men, created a false narrative where conventional beauty = love = worth - despite evidence all around you that this is patently untrue, and gone into a dramatic pith spiral that we’re not going to be able to logic you out of.

I feel very sad fir you reading your post.

I feel like you need to let go of the 'looks' thing. You don't need to be 'pretty', you don't need to look 'young'. You don't need to worry about what men are doing with or think about 'pretty blondes'.

I think you need to find a life that is for yourself rather than feeling its incomplete without a man or that your self worth needs a man's regard. Try to enjoy being able to make your own choices about things. Try having some no-strings flings if you want some company/intimacy maybe and stop searching for that 'fantasy' romance. I'm 48, and if I found myself single tomorrow, no, no one would fall in love with me for my 'beauty', they wouldn't even have when I was younger because most men don't look twice at me because no, I'm not beautiful

But I'm not and have never been sad about that because... that's just not where my worth lies. I'm not happy with my looks because I'm gorgeous, I'm happy because they're not important and have always been able to ignore the constant voices yelling at women that our looks are all that matter.

You need to stop thinking that his shittiness is somehow a reflection on you. He's a turd.

If beauty were all it took, Hollywood would be the land of strong, lasting marriages.

Great answer from @Catza , OP.

I was very attractive, experienced first hand pretty privilege, had men falling at my feet blah blah blah - I still ended up badly treated and a single mother. I’m in my 60s now, lost my looks (and do not care) and have no intention of having another relationship. I am though very happy and content in myself, by myself. I have two wonderful adult children, friends, a dog and my health (which is not perfect but more than manageable).

To be frank your situation is far from an exclusive club and women from all visual ranges are members. My advice is to love yourself and be the one who gives you self worth.

Where is your anger op? He cheated twice and you still moon after him. That’s your issue right there and therapy is the only answer.

As hard as it is to do love, you have to accept yourself as a person people DO love, because they clearly do.

its just romantically, there’s an issue in that you don’t love yourself, and given the situation with your abusive ex, I’d say that there is a vulnerability, a hole in your self worth/esteem that draws abusers and self serving individuals to you.

the only way you can change the outcome is to change the input.

invest in yourself, in building your self worth and self love and it will ignite a glow within that will bring more positive and kind people towards you.

I’m now 57, I was single for a long time, I’d see couples who weren’t at all good looking, but they’d found each other, and I was alone. It really made me feel shit at times. But I soldiered on, believed in myself and eventually found the most wonderful partner. We’ve been together 10 years next year

HAVE FAITH!

Being traditionally attractive doesn't stop men from treating you like absolute pig's garbage.

You settled for men who weren't right for you, and that's why things went the way they did. It could happen to anyone, even a supermodel.

Focus on your life, career, hobbies, kids, travel, self improvement, therapy, charity work.

There's loads of great things you can achieve that don't involve having a man. Most men hold us back in many ways even if they do love us.

This is not “ugliness”.

This is low self-worth.
It started somewhere in childhood.
Figure out where. That will help.

People aren’t all that clever. They’ll believe what they keep getting told. So stop calling yourself ugly, please.

Is it loneliness op not ugliness? As a single parent I feel it at this time of year. But it’s about making changes isn’t it. I’m probably in your last relationship now he is younger and probably won’t commit. I know I need to make the changes. Maybe join some groups for woman I’ve seen walk and talk groups that look worthwhile. Or other hobbies. I think it’s about making things for you. Your confidence sounds low. As we get older it’s easy to look at the negatives as looks change but I don’t think anyone is ugly. On Instagram there is a good page called sologirling which may be worth a look. You are comparing yourself to others who you believe look better but it’s skin deep!

I think you need to seperate your opinion of your appearance from history of relationships and future prospects. Because while it's true that the more conventionally attractive you are the more men will be interested in you on sight, appearance is of much less importance when it comes to finding and keeping a partner than you think.
Appearance is just the first step to get started. After that it's about compatibility.
Your two partners didn't find your appearance a barrier to 'getting started', so why would it have become the reason they wanted to end?
Your first partner may well be speaking the truth, he went for a partner he considered a similar 'level' looks wise as himself. So what? Many of us do, we are just not cruel enough to weaponise that to insult our partner.
Your second relationship failed because he was younger and wanted a similar age partner. This would no doubt have been the case had the younger woman been less attractive than you once he'd decided he wanted to marry a same age woman.
From your description, you sound like most of us. An average looking woman who is clearly able to attract men should she wish to. You've just had two failed relationships, again, like many women, both plain and beautiful.
If you want to try again then there is no reason why you won't find a man interested in you. The hard part tends to be finding one you'd actually want.

The answer from @BillieWiper is a wonderful answer @KHMP1971

I sympathise as I feel the same. I'm early sixties and still single after a divorce 20 years ago.
i wouldn't say I was ugly - although am def deteriorating now 😂

I have not found anyone... or I made poor choices with those I did have relationships with. I feel sad and lonely at times but have also made my life good in terms of my DC, and a good job and friendships.

I find setting goals helps me. What do I want to achieve in the year in terms of myself, hobbies, service to others???
I write them down. Maybe under self care you could have some therapy and do some physical exercise? Use time spent scrolling to learn something new?

A new year can be good in this way in terms of challenging yourself to make changes.

Dont make men the thing that defines you.
There are many incredible women who don't find happiness with men - make your aim to find happiness through doing stuff for you.

And finally, no one is ugly... so make that your first aim - to stop seeing yourself like that. (( without being trivial - good skin, haircut, colour, outfits, teeth all help)) Once you've had therapy and started doing stuff for you - part of your self improvement could be this final layer of stuff - Invisalign, stylist, top hair salon - but be warned - this in itself doesn't bring happiness it's just a top layer.