Each morning most of you wake up with the daunting task of facing the day ahead. Whether you are hung over, or just waking up to another day, you need to pull yourself together and look half presentable. You know the drill… brush out your hair, wash the dead rat smell out of your mouth, put your face on and aim to look at least a 5 out of 10.
If you’re anything like me, I don’t wake up at my most glamorous. My hair is super disheveled, I sleep in the unsexiest large tee I can find, with a bleaching tray in my mouth and, if I’m feeling a little spirited, sometimes an eye mask.
To add insult to injury, for the past seven years of my life, I have had to wake up to this.
Meet my husband, Oliver. (far left)
When I first met Oliver, my strategy was to play it cool, but instead my hand-eye-brain coordination all shut down and I turned into a goofy teenage fan in front of Justin Bieber. Well, it wasn’t that bad, but I was mesmerized to say the least. He had this effortless prince charming glow that really smacked you in the face.
As soon as I popped my cartoon eyes back into my head and actually created a legitimate conversation with him, I realized that he was as down to earth and engaging as anyone I had met. We hit it off from day one.
Fast tracking a few years forward, Oliver and I have have been together for almost eight years and are married with a kid (our dog Brooklyn). I’m not trying to fish for compliments, but over the years I’ve come to realize that I am dating someone who will always be prettier than me. I have experienced looking at a perfect face and body day in and day out, and it certainly has its perks (pardon the pun), but it also has its pitfalls.
I have decided to explore this topic, so here is an awesome life lesson with Chloe Sexton, who has also hidden behind the glow of a series of good looking male model counterparts.
5 Things I’ve Learned From Dating Really Really Good-looking Guys
By Chloe Sexton
I was born into a family of ridiculously good-looking men.
Whenever my friends come to my house for the first time and see an old photograph of my dad as a young man, they’ll fawn over the photo and ask which actor it is. My older brother’s nickname is “Handsome Jack” and whenever my girlfriends would come to my house after school they’d always find an excuse to go and hang out with him. I saw first-hand from an early age the power of an attractive man.
Unfortunately, I was born possibly the plainest-looking child ever, and grew into an ordinary-looking young woman; however, that’s never stopped me from dating men who could play the lead in a CW show. The great Courtney Love once said, “You don’t have to be beautiful to fuck whoever you want,” and it’s true. Once I learned that, I stopped believing that I had to look like Scarlett Johannson to date guys who looked like Ryan Reynolds.
I am not a shallow person. I’m not going to go out with someone just because they’re really good looking, and not all of the guys I’ve gone out with have been. I’m always going to expect the men I date to be kind, funny, generous and intelligent, but really good looks are the cherry on top of the cake.
However, going out with a really good looking man isn’t the same as going out with a normal one, and there’s stuff you need to know before embarking on your poster boy escapades.
1. People will make sure you know how lucky you are.
You know when you wear a dress that’s too small for you, and you walk around all day paranoid that it’s going to rip, or that someone’s going to shout at you to put some trousers on? Going out with a really good looking guy is a lot like that.
Even the people closest to you, who usually tell you what an amazing and beautiful girl you are, will frequently remind you just how lucky you are to go out with someone so handsome.
Upon dating my first really hot guy, a friend took me aside and told me to make sure to hang on to him at all costs. As an awkward 17-year-old, I agreed with her, until I thought the conversation over later and realized what she meant: Whatever magic you’re working on this guy will wear off soon, and he’ll realize how out of your league he is.
No matter how kind or thoughtful you are, or how many books you’ve read, or how amazing your personality is, according to society, if a guy is better looking than you, he automatically holds the aces, and you’ll forever be in his debt. And it won’t just be your friends who tell you how lucky you are, you’ll do it to yourself, too.
I once agonized for weeks about breaking up with a guy because every time I’d think of doing it, I’d stop myself because he was so beautiful and I thought I’d never find anyone half as handsome as him. But you know what? I’m a bomb-ass bitch, and I deserve more than a guy who cheats on his girlfriend, no matter how many girls want to write poems about his face.
2. Really good looking guys are public property.
Openly admitting you want to have sex with your friend’s boyfriend is not OK, unless he’s really good looking. Get used to people telling you how good your beau looks in his new profile pic, or how they secretly perv over him at the gym. Total strangers will think it’s perfectly fine to ask if your boyfriend looks as good naked as he does clothed, as if for some reason, daring to walk around with a beautiful face leaves you open to public commentary.
You’ll come under scrutiny too -– people will wonder what’s so amazing about you that you managed to land a boy whose looks are so superior to yours. I’ll hold my hands up and admit that I’ve looked at celebrities and their average-looking partners and told myself that they must be rich, or really funny, or be filthy in bed. It wasn’t until I was one of those girlfriends people questioned that I realized it’s not OK to assume that a person had to be exceptional in some other way to be able to live up to a gorgeous other half.
A relationship is not a see-saw whereby the less attractive partner has to make-up for it by being exemplary in some other field to be equally balanced.
3. Really good looking guys don’t know they’re really good looking.
OK, so some do, and are total dicks about it, but the majority don’t. I once went out with a guy who was the closest thing to a living, breathing Adonis statue you can imagine. Women would literally turn their heads and gasp as he walked down the street. The first night I met him I asked what it was like to be told how beautiful you are everyday of your life and he looked confused.
At first I thought he was trying to play it cool and be all humble about it, but he’d honestly never been told how handsome he is. People either (wrongly) assumed that he was a douche and didn’t need to be reminded in case his head exploded, or thought that he got told so regularly that it would be like asking him if he had the time.
Handsome men aren’t approached by women half as often as average-looking ones, because everyone assumes that they aren’t pretty enough for them and that they’ll be rejected. They often thereby have no idea how good looking they are. They’re usually completely oblivious to the doors their looks open, and presume that everybody gets free coffee from Starbucks. I’ve never gotten free coffee in my life and believe me, I’ve tried.
4. People think really good looking guys are either dumb or self-obsessed.
From an early age, we’re bombarded with the message that if you’re given good looks, you’re deprived in some other department. One of the most common stereotypes about good looking people is that they’re handed life on a plate, and so don’t develop a personality, or that they don’t ever have to think for themselves and therefore have problems in the brain department. NOT TRUE.
In fact, it probably works the other way around, because the person in question constantly has to work harder than most to prove they aren’t just a pretty face and be taken seriously. One of the most frequent things you’re asked when dating a really good looking guy is “Is he actually nice?”
People will often assume that the guy is vain or self-obsessed, when they couldn’t be further from the truth with any of the men I’ve dated.
5. Really good looking guys aren’t Gods.
They’re actually as human as you or I. It’s sometimes hard to believe that really good looking guys are made from the same stuff as us regular people, but beyond their faces, they don’t have any other magical powers.
I’m a proud and self-confessed creep, and there’s nothing I love more than watching people sleep. When you’re in bed with a really good looking guy, and he’s lying there next to you, you start to feel sick and nervous and start panicking that he’s going to wake up and demand to know what a girl like you is doing in his bed and why you’re staring at him. But then he’ll snore, or mumble something incoherent and you realize that he’s a mere mortal too.
Once you realize this, you can act like a living, breathing person in front of them and stop brushing your hair again.
Beautiful people are held up in the media as demi-Gods, but in real life, somebody’s looks do not make them worth any more than any other person.
As the popular saying goes, even the Queen shits.
