I'm 35 and most of my dating app pics are from about a year or two ago, but I feel like I've lost approximately 30-40% of my hair since then in terms of receding hairline and thinning. Is this the type of thing women notice? I have a huge fear of misrepresenting myself on dating sites, and not sure whether I need to pause until I get a bunch of more recent pictures.
So I have had a pretty rotten streak with dating this year - nothing BAD has happened, just a pattern of meeting people, having a perfectly pleasant (or even good!) time, sometimes even having a lot in common and sharing a lot of laughs - and then not getting a call back/getting a polite "not interested". It's probably been about 10-15 dates so far this year since trying to get back on the dating horse. None of them successful.
I am assuming this is appearance related for a few reasons - one is that this level of unsuccess didn't used to happen a year or two ago in my thicker hair days. And I am ruling things out like bad hygiene or the potential that I behave objectionably or have poor social skills - like, I have female friends/female coworker friends, they like me, and many like me enough and think highly enough of me to have tried to set me up in the past...I mention this not to try and flatter myself but to hopefully provide some evidence that I'm not an outright troll or anything. Said female friends have also helped me pick out my dating app pictures, though again, this was about 1-2 years ago. I get a fair amount of matches and dates - as I did back then - so I assume the *pictures* are good.
But I have this resounding fear of my dates seeing my app pics and then meeting me, only to be disappointed that I don't look as good as my pictures. As mentioned, my hair has thinned out/receded significantly. I mean, I HAVE hair, I probably don't give the first impression of a straight up balding guy, and when I asked a professional at a salon the other week if I should just buzz it they said "not yet!". But if you sit up close to me, yeah, you might notice that my forehead is a lot bigger, my widows peak a lot widowy-er, my bald spot a little balder, everything a little more thin all around. I keep my hair fairly short, but if there's so much as a pleasant spring breeze then it's game over - everything whips around and my hair turns pretty stringy and crazy, easily flattening it or creating weird parting in weird places where you can see through to my scalp or up my fivehead. Ugh, this happened on a date the other night where we ended up sitting outside - I'm sure my hair looked terrible and a stark contrast to my app pics - "good pictures" aka pictures where my hair looks "good" aka my hair is sitting in a clean and controlled way and evening out my hairline.
I'm not sure what to do! I don't have any decent dating-app appropriate pics of me from 2023 yet - should I put a pause on dating apps and matching with anyone until I can update? I don't even know what an update would really look like - a close up and high enough res pic of my face to the extent that you can see that yes, my hair is thin? Pics of me where you can see my forehead/"fivehead" exposed a little more? Pics of me on a windy day? Or should I not be worried about this at all, perhaps the single daters of metafilter think I'm blowing things out of proportion. Balding sucks in a way that I know can distort our view of ourselves as much as any other bodily insecurity, but I really don't know to what extent I'm overthinking it - the pics are a year or two old, not 10 years old.
I'd say Will Arnett is probably my hair twin - imagine matching with this vs. meeting this (ignore the douchey face, obviously!) - though I think I have a little more hair than he does there, hopefully you get the idea. |
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