{"id":418,"date":"2016-01-22T07:10:57","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T08:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/albanialegal.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2025-02-25T16:31:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T16:31:55","slug":"are-looks-important-in-a-marriage-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/albanialegal.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/22\/are-looks-important-in-a-marriage-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Looks Important in a Marriage Decision?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Guy<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHi Celes, I\u2019ve read your soulmate series<\/a> on how you met your husband. Would you have married him if you weren\u2019t PHYSICALLY attracted to him? Personally I\u2019ve encountered good\/nice\/okay guys who have expressed their interest, but I rejected them as I was not physically attracted to them.<\/p>\n

My key question is, what if you only like someone\u2019s character but don\u2019t feel physical attraction towards him? Does marriage require physical attraction, or should looks be abandoned?\u201d \u2014 Rachel<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Have you ever thought if looks are important in a marriage decision? How highly should you value looks when choosing a life partner? Reader Rachel recently sent in this question and I thought to respond via a blog post.<\/p>\n

Marriage is a very personal decision. Some prefer partners who are very good looking, while some don\u2019t. Some like their partners to be fuller while some prefer their partners skinny. Add to the fact that beauty is subjective, it becomes impossible to give this question a definite\u00a0answer.<\/p>\n

But if you ask me, IMO, looks, in the grander scheme of things, should be a secondary criterion. That\u2019s because looks are temporary, while our mind and soul, these are forever.<\/p>\n

My Experience<\/h2>\n

By now most of you would know how I met my husband Ken; if not you can read my soulmate series<\/a> where I detail our journey from how we met to how I knew he is the one.<\/p>\n

So the first time I met him in school, I thought he was very good looking. Tall, well-built, and handsome, he was like a \u201cdream come true\u201d guy for me, though I was never looking for someone good looking. As a\u00a0girl who was very self-inferior then<\/a>, I didn\u2019t think much of myself to think that I could ever have \u201ca chance\u201d with someone with such good looks.<\/p>\n

When we reacquainted nine years later, he still looked good, albeit aged as he had been smoking and drinking so much in the years prior. He has since reversed the damages, looks-wise, after quitting smoking<\/a> and drinking. And then when it came to assessing our compatibility in other areas, he turned out to be\u00a0my\u00a0perfect match, so it became\u00a0a no brainer\u00a0that he is the one\u00a0for me.<\/p>\n

My Husband\u2019s Hair Loss<\/h3>\n

Now the thing is Ken suffers from severe hair loss. (I didn\u2019t talk about this\u00a0before as I didn\u2019t think it was my thing to say, but I\u2019ve checked with him and he says that I can write whatever I want.) Ken has premature\u00a0male-pattern hair loss<\/a>, a condition where men and\u00a0women lose hair at their temples and\/or the top of their scalps. The cause is unknown \u2014 funnily his dad is in his 60s and has tons of hair.<\/p>\n

In Singapore, hair loss is seen as grossly unattractive, shameful, and embarrassing<\/strong>. If you look at the older male celebrities in Singapore compared to the ones in Hollywood, you\u2019ll find that male celebrities in Hollywood have much higher hairlines (Leonardo Dicaprio, Nicholas Cage, Jude Law, Bill Murray) than the celebrities here. Here in Singapore, every male celebrity has lots of hair even in their 50s (Li Nanxing, Terence Cao, Thomas Ong, etc.), and their thick hair is more often than not from hair loss treatments rather than a natural thing. Many male celebrities here are also ambassadors of hair loss companies.<\/p>\n

Add to the fact that many hair loss treatment companies here spend tons of money blasting their ads and create a lot of shame and negativity around hair loss, it perpetuates the idea that hair loss is unacceptable, shameful, disgusting. Among the general public, people generally feel that if you are losing the hair you need to fix this ASAP, even if you have to spend tons of money.<\/p>\n

For Ken,\u00a0the problem wasn\u2019t just that he was losing hair but that he was losing it at a young age<\/strong>.\u00a0Male-pattern hair loss hits\u00a070% of men at some point in their lives, but for him, it started in\u00a0his mid-20s and got really bad in his late 20s. By the time he was 30,\u00a0he had lost over half the hair on his scalp<\/strong>. His hairline had a distinct \u201cM\u201d shape\u00a0and the rest of his hair was very thin.<\/p>\n

\"Male<\/p>\n

Male pattern hair loss scale. Ken\u2019s hairline in his late 20s was somewhere between Pattern #2 Class 5 and 6. (Image<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Losing\u00a0so much hair so quickly was naturally a saddening experience for him. This wasn\u2019t natural hair loss over decades, but rapid\u00a0hair loss in\u00a0a few years. It made him look much older, like a man in his late 40s, rather than 29-30 which was his real age\u00a0then.\u00a0While he tried to take\u00a0his hair loss\u00a0into stride initially, he eventually saw\u00a0a doctor who prescribed him medicine. This medicine seemed to work well as his hair started to grow back,\u00a0and\u00a0by the time we reacquainted (he was 31 while I was 28), he had regrown most of his hair.<\/p>\n

What If Ken\u00a0Was Balding When I Met Him?<\/h2>\n

Now the thing is, what if his hair never grew back? What if he was almost bald when we reacquainted? Would I have liked him? Would I have considered him romantically?\u00a0Would I\u00a0have married him,\u00a0to quote Rachel\u2019s question?<\/p>\n

First off, this is a strange question to consider as Ken is my husband and we\u2019ve been married for years now. I see him as a core part of my life just like PE is a core part of who I am, and it doesn\u2019t matter if he has a lot of hair, no hair, or if he had a totally different face \u2014 I\u2019d still marry him.<\/p>\n

But if I\u00a0am\u00a0to\u00a0imagine that I don\u2019t know any of this stuff, that I am my 28-year-old single self with no awareness of what we\u2019ve been through<\/span>, and that Ken and I are just meeting for the first time again after years<\/span>, then\u00a0I\u2019d say that I\u2019d be shocked initially.<\/p>\n