Tom Head

I wrote this on my Crouzon Syndrome group on Facebook, as part of a discussion on dating with facial differences:

When I say people are judging or rejecting me on grounds that I would not use to judge or reject other people, I am not making an unkind assessment of my looks. I am making an unkind assessment of their character. I am calling them shallow. I am calling them picky. I am calling them every name in the book. I am saying absolutely nothing—positive or negative—about myself. 

So I try to be careful about making that assessment of others. I have not always been in the past; I think I really did once (badly) hurt somebody I had dated by suggesting that she treated me differently than other men she’d dated because of my Crouzon Syndrome when, in retrospect, it probably wasn’t true. I was too wrapped up in my own insecurities to realize that I was contributing to hers. I’m glad she forgave me, and I’m glad I asked her to. What I did was cruel and wrong.

Nobody deserves to be treated badly because of their looks, but nobody should ever feel obligated to enter a relationship with somebody they’re not attracted to, either. Fortunately, we live in a world full of people with various physical deformities, often significantly more severe than ours, who are accompanied on their journeys by loving spouses who presumably were not drawn to them out of any kind of pity or sense of obligation. 

Human sexuality is very elastic. So I’m not worried about my face anymore. I _am_ worried that my insecurities about my face may lead me to assume that an ideal partner who is very interested in me isn’t, but everybody who has insecurities runs that risk, and everybody has insecurities.