"Look at you. What do you have to be depressed about?" I've heard that more than once when trying to get help, from various professionals. One of the last psychiatrists I saw said, "Why you're a handsome devil". Lots of women have used me as a rebound or just for fun when all I wanted was more than anything was a stable, long term committed relationship. Unfortunately that is something that has eluded me my entire life. Nice girls always assumed I was a player and would shy away when nothing could be further from the truth. Both ends of the looks spectrum can be painfully lonely and problematic.
Not exclusive to attractive people, I have had my own depression and woes dismissed and trivialized constantly, and it certainly was not because I was too good looking.
Being used?
Also very common for average and unattractive looking people, in about every way you could possibly imagine.
I can tell you right now, that your handsome appearance is not why you're not getting into a stable, long-term relationship.
NO. Both ends of the looks spectrum are NOT comparable, nor are they equally "painfully lonely or problematic", even average looking people would kill to be in your position-appearance wise.
(Attractive people always have the option of downplaying their looks, not to mention.)
The opening post is also regarding the fact that being unlucky with your looks affects far more than the endeavor of a romantic relationship.
If you try to make out all your issues to be a result of a privilege, then I can honestly understand why others would be befuddled by that.
If you have unrelated issues that you suffer from and they STILL try to deny them by bringing up your appearance, then yes, that is a problem, and they should not be doing that.
But your comment makes it sound as if your issues are
due to your good looks, which is, as someone else pointed out, incredibly insulting (and myopic to believe).
If you're attractive, any accident, disease or simply passage of time can very easily ruin your looks so that's one thing to be anxious about (especially if your job is heavily tied to appearance), and when people treat you better, it's either because they want something from or only see you as an object to satisfy their desires (especially if you're a woman), and then even if you accomplish something you and others around you will doubt it's only because of looks
I understand that you're tying to be appreciative of both sides here, but it only hurts those suffering from the titular issue.
None of this is exclusive to good looking people. We all age. The unattractive become even less attractive, disease and accidents can and have done the same-to anyone.
All things leave us or depreciate with the passage of time, but those who start off on a better foot or can sow their lives among fertilized soil will reap the benefits even in their elderly years.
Unattractive people are used all the time, for various reasons, and they are expected to be glad for it, to be glad that someone even found any use out of them at all.
As for accomplishing something..well, looks really do open doors and allow for opportunities and progression that would not be had otherwise.
Would you rather have the door slammed shut in your face and never get anywhere at all (without absolutely killing yourself overcompensating to catch up)?
Is it always "only" looks that got a person where they are? No.
But it's almost always a factor, even in areas of life you wouldn't normally think so.
And on the flip side, even the unattractive people who manage to get ahead in life will still constantly have their appearance dogged on and thrown in their face, even more so because they may be in the public eye.
Just look at all the female politicians (and male ones quite frankly) who have their appearance picked apart and have their stances discarded in favor of rating their faces and bodies below a certain threshold.
If attractive people have such a problem with this then they can easily destroy their appearance (whereas the reverse is notoriously difficult).
These pitfalls you are finding with being attractive are nitpicks, which can be had with ANY good thing in this life.
They are not disadvantages.
Example (back to the possible loss of looks):
If a healthy/able bodied person loses their arm are we supposed to feel worse for them because the burn victim who also lost their arm was already out for the count?
(That makes no sense at all.)
Should we also feel more for the billionaire who lost their fortune than the impoverished who never had so much as hot running water in their life?
Do you see what I'm saying?
I truly just want people to understand how backwards this line of thinking is.
Well if you makes you feel any better I went through adulthood conventionally attractive. Didn't matter though, I was still a failure in every way. ADHD makes me a little odd and sure, i probably got treated better than ugly people at times but really, people just wanted to bang me. You never know who's sincere to you when they're nice to you (hint: most are not). And that got old. I also still hated myself and never saw myself as attractive. A lot of attractive people never believe it about themselves.
Also, even the most attractive people get older and ugly. Women over 30, especially 40, are considered useless to society and most men our age won't give us a second look. Society applauds youth, especially in women. So having looks is only a temporary privilege.
This isn't going to make anyone genuinely suffering this issue feel any better, because they
know better.
(See all of my above replies^)
Everything is temporary.
This does not mean that privileges don't have an insane amount of value and stock, because they absolutely do, and to minimize them is appalling and extremely detrimental to those who suffer without them.
Ugly people don't know sincerity any more than attractive people do, nobody even wants to get to know an ugly person, many who cling to their sides are not doing so because they like or appreciate who the person is, but because it makes them feel better about themselves in comparison, they feel comfortable around those less fortunate in their looks, for all the wrong reasons.
Your failures were not
because of your privilege, that is the major difference between the point being made in this opening post versus the points people like you are attempting to make.
Is a roof over my head going to stop me from being suicidal? No.
But am I going to go into threads about homelessness and whine about how said roof "doesn't matter"?
Fuck no.
Just because you hated yourself and didn't see yourself as attractive (but somehow still know deep down that you are..?) does not mean you are anywhere near in the same category as those who are genuinely physically unattractive.
You still get all the external privileges and perks of being good looking whether you believe it or not, whether you want to recognize them or not, and even beyond that, you obviously had the truth looming in your mind, you were not in a hopeless, doubtless situation when looking into the mirror as truly ugly people are.
That is the frank reality. And you know it.
You've just never lived without.
As for the age thing, I'll grant you this..yes youth is a huge factor in how women (especially) are valued, but it all plays into the same topic, youth is looks, as long as you LOOK youthful, people don't care as much about the actual number (unless you're on the topic of one's "biological clock").
And even so, an older attractive woman (or man) is still better off than her (or his) unattractive counterparts in the same age range (or did you totally forget about them?), not to mention sometimes even youth cannot save you if you're 'ugly', I know of women who are overlooked for their prettier MOTHERS all the time. Explain that one.