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by Cathi Hanauer and Daniel Jones
What Should You Do When Your Husband Starts To Lose His Hair?
Q: My husband and I have been happily married for nine years, and I’m still very much in love with him. But lately, he’s started to lose his hair and to my dismay - I’ve become less attracted to him. How can I change how I feel? And should I talk to him about it?
Her Take: Definitely not. It’s one thing to tell your husband about something unappealing he can change (“Rat tails are sort of over, hon”), but the bald thing is for good. Plus, reverse the situation. How would you feel if he confessed it’s a problem for him that your laugh lines are spreading, or that your breasts aren’t as perky as they used to be? One of the most challenging things about marriage is the need to stay hot for the same person, exclusively, for many decades. (Of course, it’s also what gives marriage its trademark security; therein lies the paradox.) As you age, you may both have to be more generous and creative to keep the attraction going. Every week or year won’t be the same; married sex lives wax and wane. But if you love each other and he’s worth it—and it sounds like he is— you’ll figure out what works and do it.
His Take: I hate to break it to you, but the aging process isn’t always hot. All you can reasonably expect is that your husband does the best he can with what he’s got, by staying in prime physical shape and otherwise trying to look good. Then you need to deal with your diminishing attraction by whatever means necessary—couples therapy, weekends away, porn? As far as talking about it, my question is: to what end? So that he’ll agree to get a hair weave? Or is this just a case of using honesty to make him feel terrible about something he can’t control? Here’s an idea: go ahead and tell him his baldness is turning you off. Then say, “Now you tell me what turns you off about my aging body.” If you think such a conversation will lead to marital and sexual bliss, then by all means, have it.
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1 JBL55 // May 30, 2008 at 11:38 am
Well, darn. I clicked on this piece which was labeled “How To See Bald As Beautiful” in the hope that I might get some tips on how to encourage my husband to stop with the comb-over and accept his beautiful head.
He really looks wonderful when his hair is natural, but my thinking that and telling him so doesn’t work. He says it’s okay for me to like it, but he doesn’t like his baldness and he’ll continue to do the comb-over until he changes his attitude. We’ve been married nearly twenty years and at this point my hopes aren’t real high.
He has been doing it since his twenties, so when I fell for him ten years later my eyes were wide open. I guess I thought he’d become more comfortable over time, but he hasn’t. When I lost my own yard-long hair two years ago to chemotherapy, I hoped he might do the “solidarity in baldness” thing and cut off the comb-over, but he didn’t.
To me, comb-overs scream,”I’m delusional!” and at best make the men who employ them look vain and foolish, regardless of how very un-vain or un-foolish they may be in every other area of their lives.
Ideas? Anyone?
2 A.J. // Jan 6, 2008 at 4:56 pm
excellent advice both, though my own p.o.v. might be the exception. I’m a male, and probably more self-conscious about appearance than most. But along the lines of Daniel’s comment that: “All you can reasonably expect is that your husband does the best he can with what he’s got, by staying in prime physical shape and otherwise trying to look good.” I would like to know if my partner had some objection to how I was coming across. As long as it’s coming from a place of love (and hopefully with a good amount of tact and timing) I wouldn’t mind her suggesting something like hair implants, esp. if she thought I was the type of person who’d consider it.
Again, it would come down to timing - maybe if we were both cuddling or blissfully relaxed; or maybe when there’d be an ad on the TV or Magazine - that could be a good time as well.
It’s tricky, and probably not for everybody - but I’d want to know (especially since I’d probably be sensitive enough to pick up that there was something slightly turning her off).