I Left My Soulmate Over His Looks
Beauty Wasn’t In The Eye of The Beholder
I spent a good chunk of my 20s and early 30s emotionally torn in half over a deep, fundamental conflict regarding the man I loved. The conflict between my emotional love for this man and my physical indifference towards him was essentially the catalyst of all my mistakes during the most tumultuous years of my life.
I met my eventual ex husband, X, at a party. It happened during a very lonely, difficult time in my life. I was working and living far away from my friends and family and it felt like no one in the world cared about me, and my life was going nowhere. I was raging drunk. It was dark and we danced together, laughing. He seemed attractive enough at the time.
We went outside and he immediately introduced me to his friends. It was nice to have someone show me off, even if I had just met him. He was kind and fun to be around, and I gave him my number.
We arranged a date a couple days later. When I saw him again, sober, I was immediately turned off by his appearance. I had been bracing myself for the possibility that I wouldn’t like him once the beer googles were off, and my fears were confirmed. He was definitely much less attractive in the daylight.
But he was well dressed and he smelled good and he was nice to me and I decided to give him a chance, having nothing better to do. It went well enough and we scheduled another date.
As we spent more time together, I started to realize that he was actually a really interesting person, and he seemed just as interested in me. I started to lose track of time when we were together, and just relax in a way I hadn’t before. Our relationship was so easy. I had never felt so completely myself with a man before. The first night I slept with him, I was astonished by the feeling of warmth and comfort that swept over me as we fell asleep together.
I felt loved by him in a way I had never felt before. Safe. Being with him was like a relief. I could feel myself physically relax when he came into the room.
We were so compatible. We would laugh together all the time. He was so easygoing and kind. He wasn’t cheap but he wasn’t a spend thrift. He worked hard. He comforted me when I was sad. He was truly one of the kindest, best men I had ever met. He was fun but not outrageous. He was into fitness but not obsessed.
We never fought, not because we held our issues inside, but because we were just so damn compatible.
Except for one issue. The issue of my increasingly apparent ambivalence.
Here’s the thing.
I was not aware until some time into our relationship that X was actually an undocumented immigrant. Almost a year after we met, he was caught by the authorities and scheduled to be deported. He appealed the decision, and we had a couple months to address the situation.
The immigration lawyer we hired told us that our best bet was to marry as soon as possible, to secure a spousal visa so that X would never have to leave the country at all.
I loved X. I had never felt so comfortable with a man in my life. I could be completely myself. Even better, he was honest and forthright and committed.
But I couldn’t bring myself to marry him. The thought left a cold pit of fear in my stomach. I knew he wasn’t enough. Frankly, I suspect that if he had been younger and looked different, I would have married him in an instant. We had already lived together and we had been together for a year.
I wish I could have waved a magic wand and just *not cared* about his appearance, because that’s what he deserved. Instead, I spent years denying how I really felt and torturing myself over my ambivalence.
I hate to list his physical shortcomings, because most of them were out of his control. I know for a fact that other people did find him attractive. He was 10 years older than me and those years had not been kind. In so many ways, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have been known to be attracted to unconventionally attractive men, but he was the wrong kind of unattractive for me.
That sinking feeling resurfaced more and more as time went on. I tried to ignore it and shamed myself for being so shallow. I tried to wrap myself up in the comfort of our love but the dissatisfaction would sneak out at unexpected times.
I know this must sound horribly vain. I am no supermodel myself. I fought for the relationship for years and it was sustained on the basis of our undeniable compatibility. But it was not enough. I had to force myself not to cringe at pictures of us together. And shaming myself for being “shallow”, and being dishonest with myself about my needs, only made the situation worse.
It didn’t help that people would snicker at me, occasionally, about the perceived difference in our attractiveness. I tried to down it out. It shouldn’t have mattered, and I think that if I had truly loved him and truly didn’t care, other peoples’ opinions wouldn’t have mattered. But they did, because it reflected my own insecurities on the matter.
Instead of facing the truth about the matter, I buried my true feelings and this led me to act in ways I came to deeply regret, including cheating on X with my ex-boyfriend. My ex was attractive to me in ways that X could never be.
I am not trying to excuse my behaviour. In fact, If I had read an article about a man using his wife’s appearance to excuse his cheating, I would be outraged.
But what I am trying to say is that pretending that physical attraction doesn’t matter can possibly result in much greater hardship down the road. This doesn’t mean you have to judge people on what society find attractive, but what is attractive to you. Often those things can differ quite a bit. Honesty is one of the most important pillars of a relationship, and part of that is being honest with yourself about if your partner is what you really, truly want and not shaming yourself for what you truly need.
