Suicidal Because Ugly

[spoonyspoon]

Well, that's the catchy headline, obviously there's a little more to it than this.

In short, I'm 26, male, 5 foot 10, about 165lbs in pretty reasonable shape. I'm fully employed, I have a bunch of wonderful friends, eat healthily and exercise regularly, and enjoy other hobbies. On paper, I should feel on top of the world, and yet all I can think about is killing myself.

I'm not attractive. And please, let's skip the "but nobody's ugly!" or "there's someone for everyone!" or "you're just not believing enough!" stuff (I get the last one a lot). At 26, I have never had a girlfriend, or any sort of relationship. I will sporadically get a date, and have had a few drunken one-night-stands, in all instances the other party is not interested in seeing me again.

I understand I am not the first male to ever have this problem, but statistically it's quite an anomaly. Most males have their first girlfriend around 13, or for late bloomers their college years, or even just early 20s. As I get closer to 30, with no woman ever being interested in me, the future is looking scary.

I've spent a lot of time online looking to see if there are others who faced this particular problem, but I can't find an exact match. A lot of men who post similar complaints are those who may be unemployed, or too socially anxious to talk to women, undertake no exercise or have no other hobbies/avenues of meeting new people. I do not have these particular problems. One such hobby I have is on the swing-dancing scene; a vibrant scene which has a favourable ratio of young women to men. I also go to regular "meetup" groups, where young people meet each other in a casual bar setting. I enjoy these meetups, the people are friendly, but I notice the single women ignoring me and being drawn to others.

What it chalks down to for me, is that if I have no belief that this situation will change, I fear I will end up taking my own life. My only goal in life is to be happy, and that's not going to happen in a world in which I'm unwanted. I have tried telling my friends this, hoping they may suggest something that could help me out, but unfortunately they do not believe me when I tell them. Like, really, they are convinced it "must" be something else. It must be that I'm not confident enough, I'm trying too hard, not trying hard enough, I'm too picky, not picky enough, must be a problem with my job, must be a problem with where I live, must be a problem with my childhood; nobody seems to believe me when I tell them in plainest English that being ugly is literally my only problem. And of course, how can people suggest solutions to a problem when fundamentally they don't believe the problem exists?

So, I'm not sure what I hope to achieve by posting this, only that there is some record somewhere online of this.

[smiley]

Hi Spoonyspoon,

Reading this really struck a chord with me due to my own confidence issues and I'm really sorry you feel this way and these things seem like they always happen to you. I want to say to you that confidence is a very attractive quality, that even the least confident of us can achieve. Someone once told me to 'fake it until you make it', and I have found that to be surpringly useful in dealing with my own issues. I hope that you find some use for it too.

In terms of practical advice, have you tried online dating or dating apps? It sounds to me like you want a relationship and personally I have found people on those to be more serious that those you meet in pubs/bars and end up having one night stands with.

If these thoughts get too much, then please give Samaritans a call or see your GP. I'm a firm believer that there is someone out there for everyone, I hope you find them soon x

[tofler]

You've had some one night stands and you've been on some dates. Doesn't that suggest that the reason for you not having a girlfriend is nothing to do with how you look? You're 26, you're still very young and you've got loads of time to meet someone, far more time than you probably realise. Our social skills and the way that we communicate with other people is very important to relationships and dating etc. Maybe there's something you could be working on in this area? For example, are you good at listening to other people or do you do most of the talking?

[spoonyspoon]

Hi Spoonyspoon,

Reading this really struck a chord with me due to my own confidence issues and I'm really sorry you feel this way and these things seem like they always happen to you. I want to say to you that confidence is a very attractive quality, that even the least confident of us can achieve. Someone once told me to 'fake it until you make it', and I have found that to be surpringly useful in dealing with my own issues. I hope that you find some use for it too.

In terms of practical advice, have you tried online dating or dating apps? It sounds to me like you want a relationship and personally I have found people on those to be more serious that those you meet in pubs/bars and end up having one night stands with.

If these thoughts get too much, then please give Samaritans a call or see your GP. I'm a firm believer that there is someone out there for everyone, I hope you find them soon x

Hi, thanks for your reply, I was beginning to think this post wasn't getting me anywhere!

Whilst I appreciate your input, I honestly do not believe that it's a confidence thing. I really have no problem talking to women, and do so regularly to brand new people at either the dance lessons or social meetups I outlined.

In the past year I've been speed-dating a few times. 12 men, 12 women, 5 minute "dates", you get the idea. On each occasion I've looked around the room at the other men, many of which seemed scruffy or socially inept and felt relatively okay, that whilst I'm not Brad Pitt, I've got a decent chance here. So I'm going in feeling fairly confident. During the evenings, it's all smiles and hugs and "lovely to meet you!"s, and I go away feeling pretty good about it. The way it works is that you tick or cross each person, and you find out each day who matched with you. And each time, 0 people matched with me. Literally, every time. So whilst it's a nice thing we can tell to children that "if you just believe you're amazing, everyone will believe it too!", it's not the fix-all-tool.

I do a lot of online dating. Well, I'm on a lot of sites. Carefully selected some good photos, decent bio. Literally nothing. I can swipe until I'm out of swipes, and get nothing. Have not had a match on Tinder/Bumble/PoF/OKCupid in over a year. In apps that you can, I'll send out the first message and get nothing back, most apps use the Tinder model of requiring a match first. So once again, this puts to bed the notion that it's all about confidence, if when presented with a photo and description of me, women in large numbers say "hell no!". But it's okay, I just need to believe harder, right?

I have called the Samaritans a couple times, and whilst their approach is friendly, they really seem to offer little to no advice on what to do next. They just get to a point where they say they can't really help me, which isn't all you want from your local suicide hotline.

People have suggested my GP, but I'm honestly not sure what they expect to come of it. That I should walk into a Doctor's office and say "Doctor Doctor, I'm sad because girls don't like me!" and expect a medical professional to solve the problem.

[smiley]

Hi Spoonyspoon,

Reading this really struck a chord with me due to my own confidence issues and I'm really sorry you feel this way and these things seem like they always happen to you. I want to say to you that confidence is a very attractive quality, that even the least confident of us can achieve. Someone once told me to 'fake it until you make it', and I have found that to be surpringly useful in dealing with my own issues. I hope that you find some use for it too.

In terms of practical advice, have you tried online dating or dating apps? It sounds to me like you want a relationship and personally I have found people on those to be more serious that those you meet in pubs/bars and end up having one night stands with.

If these thoughts get too much, then please give Samaritans a call or see your GP. I'm a firm believer that there is someone out there for everyone, I hope you find them soon x

Hi, thanks for your reply, I was beginning to think this post wasn't getting me anywhere!

Whilst I appreciate your input, I honestly do not believe that it's a confidence thing. I really have no problem talking to women, and do so regularly to brand new people at either the dance lessons or social meetups I outlined.

In the past year I've been speed-dating a few times. 12 men, 12 women, 5 minute "dates", you get the idea. On each occasion I've looked around the room at the other men, many of which seemed scruffy or socially inept and felt relatively okay, that whilst I'm not Brad Pitt, I've got a decent chance here. So I'm going in feeling fairly confident. During the evenings, it's all smiles and hugs and "lovely to meet you!"s, and I go away feeling pretty good about it. The way it works is that you tick or cross each person, and you find out each day who matched with you. And each time, 0 people matched with me. Literally, every time. So whilst it's a nice thing we can tell to children that "if you just believe you're amazing, everyone will believe it too!", it's not the fix-all-tool.

I do a lot of online dating. Well, I'm on a lot of sites. Carefully selected some good photos, decent bio. Literally nothing. I can swipe until I'm out of swipes, and get nothing. Have not had a match on Tinder/Bumble/PoF/OKCupid in over a year. In apps that you can, I'll send out the first message and get nothing back, most apps use the Tinder model of requiring a match first. So once again, this puts to bed the notion that it's all about confidence, if when presented with a photo and description of me, women in large numbers say "hell no!". But it's okay, I just need to believe harder, right?

I have called the Samaritans a couple times, and whilst their approach is friendly, they really seem to offer little to no advice on what to do next. They just get to a point where they say they can't really help me, which isn't all you want from your local suicide hotline.

People have suggested my GP, but I'm honestly not sure what they expect to come of it. That I should walk into a Doctor's office and say "Doctor Doctor, I'm sad because girls don't like me!" and expect a medical professional to solve the problem.

I don't think it's about a professional solving the problem, but it might be useful for you to look at counselling or CBT and unhelpful thinking patterns if this is making you feel this way.

[spoonyspoon]

I don't think it's about a professional solving the problem, but it might be useful for you to look at counselling or CBT and unhelpful thinking patterns if this is making you feel this way.

I don't understand how it would be useful. I'm not against therapy as a practice, but I don't see how it applies here. The problem is literally strangers finding me unattractive, so how does me going to counselling sessions help with that particular problem? Often I feel fine with how I look, it does not affect the outcome. What's the best case scenario for therapy?

[tofler]

Best case scenario, as smiley has already said, it can help you to identify unhelpful thinking patterns and to see things from different perspectives. At the moment you have tunnel vision about this issue, also known as "black and white thinking" which means that you dismiss anything that doesn't match your version of "reality".

[spoonyspoon]

Best case scenario, as smiley has already said, it can help you to identify unhelpful thinking patterns and to see things from different perspectives. At the moment you have tunnel vision about this issue, also known as "black and white thinking" which means that you dismiss anything that doesn't match your version of "reality".

That's largely ignoring what I've described, though, and taking it as some other issue.

This isn't some "After School Special" where I'm really handsome and everyone sees it but me. A lot of the time I'm perfectly okay with how I look, on such occasions as the speed dating I actually felt good, so this idea that it's just negative thought processes holding me back is absolute nonsense. Even if I had not a negative thought process in my body, people online would still "swipe left" en mass based on the photos of me. I can certainly see how the "Power Of Belief" may be useful in certain scenarios, but it's still not been explained to me how it would help in the issue I've described.

[tofler]

You're completely missing the point with all this.

[spoonyspoon]

You're completely missing the point with all this.

Well, I've described to you a physical problem, and so far the response has been "...but if you think happy thoughts it will go away!" and now you're telling me I'M missing the point? As I keep asking; explain to me how it's my thought process is the problem (you know, instead of the problem I'm actually describing), rather than telling me I'm just not believing enough.