My Struggle With Body Dysmorphia As A Male

This is embarrassing to admit, but I know there are other men out there that feel the same way as me and hopefully they can find solace in relating to my story. For reference I am a straight male, 23 years old living in the US.

I have never liked the way I look, in fact I barely look at myself in the mirror anymore. I have added on a few pounds in the recent months after my heart surgery, but before this I have always been tall and skinny. My face has always just been a little bit too round, my eyes a bit too puffy and my jawline undefined. As a young kid, everything was fine, but as I found other men around me growing more defined features, it seemed like I was left in the dust. In high school I never had many girls who liked me besides a friend, and the ones who did, I wasn’t attracted to. Even if I was on the same level of attractiveness as the girls who liked me, I found myself wanting someone more attractive. I tried and tried to get over this obsession with beauty, but have found it extremely hard to.

Im not sure where my obsession with beauty developed, most likely from my mother who can be a very shallow person, but it was definitely reinforced by my own experiences in life. In life I never desired popularity, money or nice things, I just wanted to be beautiful and get attention from the opposite sex. It always felt like I had a hole, created by my own insecurities, that I was trying to fill. In high school I often found myself googling plastic surgery and looking at the various transformations that skilled doctors have created. To the point where I was able to convince my mother to pay for a rhinoplasty before I went to college. While it did make my overall profile better, it was just part of the problem and not much has changed. I remember that feeling of calm right before I went under the knife, thinking “maybe ill finally be beautiful after this”. I was definitely more confident about my appearance, but eventually that would disappear as I entered college.

When I went to college I was roomed with 2 other kids, 1 of whom was very attractive and got a lot of attention from females. While I would have to work an entire night and do everything correctly to even get noticed by a girl, he would say things like “your hair smells nice” and instantly get a girl. Deep down I became very jealous of him and after a few experiences with finding girls I really liked, only liking me as a friend because they weren’t attracted to me (other girl friends of mine told me this in a few of the cases after I hounded them for information), I found myself giving up completely. Im not the type of person to blame people for things they can’t control and I completely understood that I can’t change what they are attracted to, just like I can’t change what I’m attracted to, so I began to look at myself as the problem.

Suddenly I started saving my money for more expensive plastic surgery, dreaming one day I could afford it and everything would change. I no longer looked in the mirror because my face had begun to disgust me. I started weightlifting, but no matter how much bigger I got, I still looked awkward. Watching around me as everyone else was getting into relationships and finding people eventually put me off of women entirely. I stopped going out, socializing with girls or even caring about how I looked because I figured there wasn’t a chance anyway. At this time I got into bitcoin and it distracted me from most of my problems, but was really just an escape from reality.

However as I enter my last semester and realize that not much has changed I wonder what the future holds for me. I know women at an older age stop caring about looks as much and maybe I will too, but I now have a complex inside of me that if I had a beautiful girlfriend when I got older it would be because she was settling for me. I am making my post primarily because the house I am subletting in for my last semester has a lot of girls in it, some attractive and im finding myself feeling out of place. I can be outgoing funny and people like me but only as a friend.

I have struggled with body dysmorphia for my entire adult life and everything I have done, between therapy and trying to change my thinking has been unsuccessful. I feel like I am fighting a battle that is unwinnable and that it is easier to just not engage with any women at all. I know much of these feelings are what most people my age are feeling, but my extreme solutions to the problem go beyond what other men would do. My friends don’t think this way and can’t relate to how im feeling, but I also feel like I cant talk to them about it. People often think that the only men suffering from these problems are homosexuals, but im proof that straight men do as well. I don’t have a solution on how to get over body dysmorphia, but if you are a guy out there and feeling the same way as me, know you are not alone.

-Calaber24p