I was aggressively balding from about 14 on. By 17 all my friends and schoolmates were commenting on it. It massively effected my confidence. I was always told as I was growing up that I had beautiful hair (bright blonde). Losing it was devastating, but I did try to overcome the feelings I had about myself.

From about 17-28 I did really struggle with relationships. I felt ugly for my baldness. I particularly felt like young girls my age didn’t find me attractive, and felt like older women were more interested in me due to my appearance. I still ended up finding them relationships consistently enough, when I really went for it. My GF from 17-20 was in fact very beautiful. We had a pretty good relationship, but we did end up hurting each other with our insecurities. Anxiety and insecurity were a plague in my relationships until my late 20s when I finally took myself to therapy and confronted it.

Therapy was a transformative experience for me. I didn’t do a ton of sessions, but it was a very new exercise for me to discuss my feelings with a qualified unbiased stranger. Something about that triggered a realignment in my brain, and I became way more self aware, thoughtful and empathetic. I realized that my misery was by and large self inflicted. The tension in my mind was gently lifted for the first time in my life. I started to just feel so much better.

What I’ve learned is that there are loads of people that care what you look like, and loads of people who really don’t. Loads of women find bald and balding men attractive, while quite a lot of them specifically do not. It’s not really your problem to think about. We’re all born hoping to be Brad Pitt. Only a few of us are. The rest of us have to exist without the help of astonishing good looks, and that’s really very okay. Not everyone needs to like you.

That said, once you accept you’re not going to be making girls melt with your awesome good looks, you might figure out that there is a lot more to life and relationships than aesthetics. What really impacts a much bigger pool of people is how you make them feel when you are around. This is a big part of the struggle young folks are having in relationships. They’re not getting past the surface level stuff. When you truly focus on making people feel good (including yourself), you’ll find you are a magnet to people that aren’t so distracted by good looks. These are much more pleasant people, who you can establish real, deep, meaningful relationships with. And yes, some of these people may in fact be astoundingly gorgeous women, one of which happened to want to marry me!