I have seen this too - a lot of women chop off their hair once they hit a certain age, or when they get divorced - and often the post-menopausal butch look is a strong stylistic break from how the woman dressed earlier in life.

I think it is a reaction to menopause and/or an emotionally distant marriage... either a declaration of independence, or an internalization of society's prejudice for youth.

Did you see this in France? My guess is no - there a woman can have feminine allure at any age without being ridiculed.

I don't know anybody like this.

Mrs D is still cute, and gets hit on at work by guys young enough to be her son. She's got that Asian woman good-looking-until-they-hit-eighty thing going. By then I'll probably be blind, so it still won't matter. She might go as far as the mailbox in a house dress, but not without makeup. She dresses up to go grocery shopping.

My son-in-law's parents are fairly well-to-do, and his mom looks good and dresses well.

I can't think of any of my cousins, spouses, or neighbors who fit that description. None of them dress in sweatsuits unless they are jogging or going to the gym.

I suspect people who let themselves go may actually be depressed. I'm not a doctor. I don't know if LW is a bitter, jealous, divorced shrew who should be minding her own business either.

I don't know if LW is a bitter, jealous, divorced shrew who should be minding her own business either.

Yes, I thought this email sounded a mite bitchy.

I work in Boulder, CO where there are many women who don't wear makeup, have practical hair, and dress like they're about to scale a mountain. However, because they do think scaling a mountain is a nice afternoon workout, they are usually in outstanding shape and health. Many of the men here prefer a woman who is prepared to go ice climbing on the drop of a hat, rather than one who will worry that the helmet will mess up her blow-out.

Mind you, this is not a normal town.

Yes, I thought this email sounded a mite bitchy.

Yes, it is bitchy, but sometimes we're bitchy. I just had a similar conversation with some friends because we know quite a few very cute successful men who have either ugly wives and girlfriends or fat ones. There seems to be a disconnect in the match-up. The fat ones were always chunky too and yes, the ugly ones maybe cleaned up a little better but were still ugly. The worst example of it is a couple I know where the wife is not only hideously ugly, and I mean hideous, but she is one of the nastiest people you'll ever meet. She married the doctor she always wanted and he happens to be one of the nicest most easy-going people you'll ever meet. So go figure. Thanks for letting me get the cattiness out today.

Ben-David said: "I have seen this too - a lot of women chop off their hair once they hit a certain age..."

There's a lot to this statement, actually. There's may be a regional/generational thing there; as I have several (older) coworkers who state quite firmly that "no woman older than 40 should have long hair". Apparently, to them, long hair looks silly on an older woman; like she's trying too hard to be a young, hip thing. Mind you, I live in the South, so it may not be the same for you Cali types.

And I remember a WHILE back in Dear Annie or somesuch, a woman wrote in complaining her husband wanted her to keep her hair long and it was just too much hassle for her. A month or so later, there was a large reaction from other women with a similar thing. They didn't like having long hair to take care, so they chopped it off. After seeing babies and toddlers grab giant chunks of hair while Mommy's holding them, I can kinda understand.

Still, I was telling my husband the other day that comic books have taught me a lot about what men find sexy. There's very, very few female characters with short hair. Rarely is hair much shorter than shoulder length. Also, I notice most female charactes have full lips, but not Angelina Jolie style pillow lips; which makes me believe that particular fetish is more a female construct. Just an interesting observation.

A few years ago in Slate magazine there was a column about this common scenario in New York. Women not understanding why successful, good looking men have average to below average looking wives. The author of the article called it the zero sum world of dating. Many of these women know they are not as good looking as other women so when they land a decent looking successful guy they hold on to him. Attractive women know they have many options so they can be picky about their mates. Move forward a few years and they then wonder why women not nearly as attractive as themselves landed these good looking successful men.

Women in their 40s and 50s often find their hair changes. A lot of the older women I know who cut their hair short did so because it got thin, and keeping it short makes it easier to disguise the thinness and/or bald spots. I'm 32 and my hair is thinner now than it was when I was 20. I still keep it long, but that could change if it thinned excessively.

Also, menopause can really change some women's appearance.

Ultimately, I suspect these women were attractive before they got married and either through choice or circumstance are less so now, but there must be something else about them that keeps their husbands with them. Maybe they're animals in bed. Or maybe their husbands really dig the body types they have.

I think that part of it is that anymore there are no provisions for the attractive older woman. Once you hit that certain age the whole emphasis seems to be on holding onto that "I'm still twenty" look for as long as possible. So the choice is to look ridiculous or to give up. Now it's obviously a false choice as you can be fabulous in a differant way than when you were 20. Madame Judi Dench does not wear the same fashions that Scarlett Johnanson does, but she still looks fabulous.

But there's probably a much simpler explanation for the butch hair cuts. If your hair starts thinning it's actually easier to hide that and style it with shorter hair. Unfortunately unless your stylist knows what she's doing it's very easy to end up with a butch cut or a rather unflattering one. And unless you take the time to style it at home then even the best short haircut will look masculine.

I don't know anyone who fits into this category. All of my aunts/uncles and coupled friends are in the same relative physical shape, level of attractiveness and attention to dress/personal maintenance. Even my coworkers' spouses are on the same level - no major discrepancies.

This doesn't mean everyone I know is hot, it just means that their faces and personalities are pretty much on par with one another and weight is gained/lost together aside from pregnancy.

Elaborating on cornerdemon's post, particularly the bit about potential regional and/or generational differences...

I grew up in the South. I'm 31 and I have hair down to my waist that I take very good care of, and generally put up during the day. My southern belle grandmother is horrified. She's had helmet hair for my entire life. She has plenty of hair, too, it's not thin or anything else, despite the fact that she's now in her eighties. But she goes to the hair salon once a week to have it "set", and once a month to have it cut and dyed blonde. Why blonde? But she and her friends all do it, and it looks like crap on most of them.

Anyway, for multiple reasons, I'm glad we live a couple of thousand miles away from one another - but I still hear about my hair every once in awhile, and whether I've finally "grown up" and started wearing high waisted slacks, calf-length skirts, and blouses out of 1954.

I don't get the complaint that long hair is too hard to care for. Putting it in a ponytail or a bun is the easiest thing in the world. Far easier than having to blow it out and style it every day. I didn't even own my own hair dryer until a few months ago.

I live in the northeast, and the old lady hair is the same here. I love walking into the local salon on a Saturday morning. It's like a factory. All the same hairstyle.

I think it's more of a frumpy thing than a long/short thing. Some of the older executives at my company have wives like this.

Some theories:

The women were attractive when they were younger, maybe because you don't have to do much to yourself to look good at 25.

The women locked it down with these guys before they were super-successful.

The men are still fond of them because they see them the way they /used/ to look.

The men stay out of loyalty/commitment but are no longer turned on.

These wives are doing things in bed that their husbands can't get just anywhere.

These guys are just great guys who stayed in love with great women, short-circuiting any hard-wiring that would make them seek hotter mates.

I'll add that "trading in" your spouse is not a cheap or easy thing to do for most people.

I find most women I know w/ short hair chopped it off when they had kids b/c it's so much easier to get ready in the AM.

Monica - Long hair might be easily thrown into a bun (like mine was this morning when I had to shovel out the car at 5:15 AM. Gotta love 8 inches of snow during the night) but that doesn't mean it looks good. I look admittedly haggard today. The endless snow storms are killing my soul.

Looks are not everything. Maybe these are loyal people with values, who don't just dump the person they've built a life with b/c she has a lousy haircut.

Twice in high school and once in college, I found out my appearance was the subject of a conversation like the OP due to a so-called disconnect in my matchup at the time. Each time was a different group of women and a different guy that was supposedly too good for me. I've never minded my unremarkable looks, but being talked about this way by women who acted nice to my face was still hurtful. Conversations with "some friends" have a way of spreading around. Act accordingly.

Insufficient Poison wrote:

"I'll add that "trading in" your spouse is not a cheap or easy thing to do for most people."

That's what I was thinking, too. Divorce is very expensive for a successful guy.

My wife is 55, has wicked hot flashes. She wears her hair long partly so that she can wear a ponytail at work so the hair isn't on her neck when she has a hot flash.

kishke wrote:

"Maybe these are loyal people with values, who don't just dump the person they've built a life with b/c she has a lousy haircut."

The love and loyalty works both ways. My wife says that if you let yourself go, you are showing a lack of respect to your partner and your relationship.

Then there are all the "Real Housewife" types, who spend hours every day on their appearance. But they're bitches.

Looking frumpy when you age seems absolutely the norm for women the world over. Men don't have to do anything to stay handsome, women have to work at beauty: a woman who does the same amount of work as a man (short hair, no make-up, comfortable clothes) is considered ugly, not beautiful.

Don't most marriages get boring and sexless when people age? Or maybe I missed the latest stats. Men get boring and sexless too, and tend to favour staying with their comfortable, familiar, nice but non-sexy wives and nice homes and all the trappings, anyway.

On the other hand, it makes my hair stand on end when people think being good in bed is the same thing as looking hot (especially when they think "hot" means blonde with plastic boobs and botox). I find the American definition of good looking, for women, very conservative and boring and frankly, often, anti-sexy. Allure is, of course, much deeper than appearance. I have some very sexy women friends who look quite androgynous but men capable of seeing past the bra size really appreciated their qualities.

I think there is a sweet spot in the economic spectrum for staying married regardless of what your spouse may be or not be, People who have nothing can get a divorce and move on for the most trivial of reasons. People with a lotta, lotta money can do the same thing. But there is a range where both people are professionals, white collar and usually college educated, that each life style would take a tremendous hit if their assets were not together. These people have more reason than the other two groups to stay married. I think if you looked at the family situation of these men with the unattractive wives, that you would find that if there is a deficiency in the marriage, men will try to find something on the outside of the marriage that fills their needs without emptying the mutual bank account. They are sensible that way. "the Man who married his mistress creates a vacancy in the position" maybe Oscar Wilde, maybe somebody else. :-)

The hair thing is complicated. There is a cultural norm that long hair is for girls and very young women, but it's not just that. Ben-David mentioned menopause, and here's a secret...women's hair does thin, at menopause and before that. If your hair is long it looks like stringy garbage when that starts to happen. Women who have thyroid conditions (I've got one) also experience weird hair changes; the texture can change, it can get brittle and even change color...not mild changes like, blonde to dark or dark to gray, but like a perfectly nice natural auburn can get streaks of Bozo-the-Clown-orange in the most random spots. So, you dye it. Long hair is hard and expensive to dye, and long hair that is brittle or has that straw-like texture looks terrible, and it's utterly impossible to keep the ends from splitting. And when is a woman most likely to develop hypothyroidism? Right after giving birth.

It is difficult to have long hair with little kids, if you can't just wear a ponytail all the time. I work, and have kids. I can't wear a ponytail to work; it's not professional. I have long hair, now that I've got my thyroid under control and my hair looks nice again...but when my kids were toddlers I couldn't have done it. It does take quite a while to straighten my hair or set it in purposeful-looking waves (it's naturally poodle curly). Even when I wear a ponytail on a day off, if I'm leaving the house, I straighten at least part of it so that I don't have a "halo" of little curls sproinging up off the crown of my head in an hour.

Also, you asked if the women were attractive at first...well, maybe they were, and maybe the men weren't. Men often improve with age, especially the nerds. Women can stay attractive, if we are diligent, but we don't improve the way men often do. Boo, biology!

Some ladies can rock the short hair, some can't. I think LW is on to something though - every woman I see driving a Jaguar is fugly. I mean, the face is just not attractive no matter how you dress it up.

I suspect that the really wealthy guys that want families are taking that old song to heart:

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife.

A lot of women of that age have suffered from cancer, and that changes your hair forever. In some cases, it doesn't grow back at all.

I'm more confused by the men I know in their 30s and 40s who married nagging, angry, selfish bitches...

I am fifty-five. I have three sisters and five sisters-in-law. Of the nine of us, only two still have long hair. Me, and my oldest sister.

My hair has thinned and gotten finer, but it was very thick to begin with and as a friend put it when I whined about it--"Oh, you mean now it's like the rest of us have, then." Translation: Quit complaining, bitch.

Anyway...I feel compassion and empathy for the women the LW is sneering at. If they are anything like me, then physical pain has probably been what has driven them to the shapeless clothing, and a combination of lost glory and joint pain has brought on the chopped-off hair.

I'm not at that point yet, but every morning my back reminds me of my youthful carelessness and sometimes makes dressing a real chore. Just as pain in my shoulder sometimes makes combing out my hair seem like more trouble than it's worth.

Combine that with the mood-swings of menopause, and it makes morning a real joy some days.

She says these women are ugly, and wear no make-up or jewelry. I wonder what she looks like without the paint job and the bling, and what she'll look like when she's fifty or sixty. I'm sorry she and some others are so confused about why a man would stay with someone so beastly.

The man knows why.

A woman who makes a guy feel like more of a man, that's who men stay with. The rest are pussy treats. Tempted super-hotties sometimes don't don't make a full meal.

I'm more confused by the men I know in their 30s and 40s who married nagging, angry, selfish bitches...

Good point.

The look that she's describing is common among some of my parents friends. It's popular among crunchy liberal boomer women. I think that it's actually an older style that they've been wearing since the 70's or 80's, but it doesn't usually look good on older women. They really do look like men.

The simple answer is that these women didn't always look that way. Everyones fixated on their hair length, but ignoring the rest of her description, which is that they don't wear makeup and dress like men. I don't think that their hair is the relevant issue. This isn't about balding cancer patients, it's about women who deliberately make themselves ugly.

Well, anyone who's been following the other thread about the husband who's wife doesn't turn him on knows that I think that women (and men) should try to look attractive for their partners.

However, there is a lot to be said for loyalty to one's spouse despite everything. So thier wives aren't what we in society define as attractive. So what? It's not our relationship so why do we care what she looks like? It's very likely that these women were once very lovely and age, or life, has just gotten in the way. Or it's simply that there's something about these women that their husbands love and they likely see thier wives in a completely different way than everyone else. Isn't that why they say love is blind?
I am more concerned about the people who spend more time wondering about other peoples relationships then working on thier own.

Oh, I think this is simpler than people are making it...
It's called inertia. If you have been with someone for a long time, and you have grown together and taken on the world together...

you also wear together.

a lot of times successful guys also work a lot... and there is some give and take between who is at home when you get there, and what you bring home. And if neither of you are the way you were when you met, well you wore together.

that there is a tendency for an outsider to not see the same thing as a lover is normal, because that outsider doesn't know much about little interactions between you.

I can tell you my ex chopped her hair very soon after we were married, and I got in hella trouble for mentioning her hair when it was longer.

However, I would have stayed forever if she had been nice to me at all, even when she gained 100#. This is part of the nature of love. But when a person is unrelentingly nasty to you, PLUS they don't look anything like the person you originally fell for... eventually it gets harder to stay.

I think the answer is that these guys don't have REASONS to go, even though their partner of many years no longer bothers with her looks. If she give them a reason to go, they do.

I would suspect it works that way for women too.

I guess this didn't post last night...

another thing that I have seen happen (well, based on photos) is that a lot of smart guys are really dorky and/or geeky and socially awkward when young and become more polished later on. If they couples have been married a long time I could easily see that accounting for the difference in the couple's appearances.

There also seems to be a tendency for a lot of women who stop trying to be attractive or something. Funny, while I was typing the first part here there was segment on the TV that had three college Profs - I heard the names and figured there was 2 ladies and 1 guy...when I looked up it was all older people, and it was not immediately obvious until I noticed one was balding on top.

If the couples have met more recently, they probably met at work. I have seen a lot of women who think of themselves as smart who also seem to not want to be physically attractive - they want to be liked for their mind. I can see that happening too.

No No No Amy... people write to you to ask your opinion on their relationships. That's a horse of a different color. When you ask about it, you have to accept that people are gonna have opinions, ya know...
Plus, you are a columnist so it's only natural that you are gonna have some opinions on this shit...seeing as it's sorta your job.

I was refering to the women who sit around and bitch about being single, and then spend the next sentence criticizing a man for staying with an 'ugly' girl...

No deep shit for you.

My first thought, I confess, was, "Does he have to put a bag over her head when they have sex, or do they just not have sex at all?"

How superficial do you have to be to even ask such a question?

SwissArmyD makes an excellent comment; I think he may have it nailed.

Tiby said: "Everyones fixated on their hair length, but ignoring the rest of her description, which is that they don't wear makeup and dress like men."

I fixated on hair because its my big vanity and it seems like the easiest thing to keep up with to keep yourself pretty and feminine-looking. I dislike make-up intensely for the way it feels on my face. I'll wear it only for special occassions out, or to help me keep from fixating on a spot. Jewelry? I love jewelry. I think its awesome. I break/lose more jewelry at the drop of a hat, however. My solution has been to wear a few special pieces regularly (usually those that have withstood all the hell I put them through) and keep the rest for evenings out. With the exception of gifts my mom bought me, it's all costume stuff, so I don't get broken-hearted when it inevitably gets lost.
Dressing like a man... that's a hard one to cover. I see so few women who really actually do dress like men, so I reserve judgment because I have a feeling the LW and I have different opinions on what that constitutes.

But I have a feeling SwissAD nailed it: "I think the answer is that these guys don't have REASONS to go, even though their partner of many years no longer bothers with her looks. If she give them a reason to go, they do."

Dare I name it, could it be love? DH has a bit of a gut now. I"m not leaving him. There is more to sharing one's life than being with the hottest person you can get. With 4 little kids, and him working, he can do the family thing or the gym thing, not both. I'm happy with the choice he's made.

The best I ever looked was with super-short pixie hair. I can't pull that look off now though :( so I am growing it longish-maybe shoulder blades? I can't imagine my decision to chop it or grow it being the reason DH stays or goes, adn itf it were-good riddance to him. I wear little make-up, I never did and austin is rather like boulder that way. I dress in tight jeans and whatever top I pull out. The tight jeans on my still-nice tush make it clear I'm no man, I think. Dh seems to agree.

I"m thinking about going in for Botox. I've heard starting before you have canyons is better-that way you never GET canyons. Make-up caked in wrinkles just looks awful, so that may be one reason these women don't wear it.

for some couples I have thought that the man married to the butch woman was closeted and gay and maybe even enjoyed his wife's masculine appearance.

But imagine if you are in a coupe and neither one of you are really interested in having sex anymore but just doing stuff together and you have a smart wife who isn't very girly. Sounds like a good deal to me. I agree with Amy's evolutionary inspired explanations about how attractiveness is important for women to maintain. However I have met some men who have a deficit in the attractiveness perception module and date women much less attractive than themselves. Like any form of perception or motivation there is going to be a spectrum. If 1% of the population is purportedly asexual then you have to think there are some other tail-of-the-distribution things going on that defy ordinary explanations.

I have a sort of explanation.
I had a wonderful time with a man, he was warm, funny, attentive, just an all around great guy. He had the most amazing blue eyes, but he was... not ugly, but not stellar, either.
As I got to know him, a funny thing happened. He got more attractive. His inner goodness showed thru, and the outer stuff, while still only meh, seemed better. His personality and smiling all the time won me over, if it hadn't been for the fact that he had to stay in Cali for his daughter, and I was stuck on the east coast for my job, it may have gone somewhere really nice.

Yes, you do see it in France. I know several French women who chopped their hair short once they got older.

Lots of women do it around the time they have kids. Now that I have a baby and a waist-long mop, I understand why. But I'm not cutting my long, shiny, brown hippy hair for anything!

Oh, also... I think that the people who are old now have short hair because that's what was fashionable when they were young. If you look at a yearbook from the 50s, all the girls have hair no longer than their chins, -maybe- a few have it to their shoulders, and its set with curlers and lots of hairspray.

And think of Audrey Hepburn and the gamine look. I think that's what was hip back then so they like it now. Maybe we will see lots of geriatrics with pink and green mohawks, or long straight blow-outs, when we get old...

And as for the long hair=childish thing, isn't that what buns and updos are for? Those work on young and old women alike.

In anycase, short hair became fashionable in the 20s, and then started going out again in the late 60s and 70s. But there was a whole chunk of time where long hair wasn't the thing at all.

Another factor is, often wealthy people don't like to look like they are trying too hard. It's a sort of puritanical thing, especially amongst the old-money set. For men, too. There are regional differences as well.

It's a variant on getting fat. "I've got a ring on it, I no longer have to take the trouble to look sexy." Chopped off hair is comfortable and convenient, and to hell looking sexy. I mean, its not as if they're going to have to have sex any more. They're married.

TFB may be onto something. Smart men often experience a dramatic change in their status as they get older. They go from being unattractive to women, to highly desireable. So if they marry before this occurs, it's usually to a smart but unattractive woman. Also intellectual women seem to take a strange pride in being ugly, and resent the idea that they should make any effort to be attractive to men.

My husband's first wife was like this. By the time they were in their forties she looked like she could have been old enough to be his mother, though he's older than she is. He's very candid about the fact that her appearance, and bad attitude, were major factors in the dissolution of their marriage.

I think we circle around to this a lot in threads like this...

how you choose to appear is affected by your inner being. If you could give a damn about your partner, it shows. If you had long hair and dressed nicely and such when you were courting, and then the minute you were married, all that went away? That shows what you think of your partner.

On the dressing like a guy thing? I followed two different women into the office this morning. One is trim looking and in her 60's with waist length silvery blond hair. Fitted pants, short coat, and low heels. Both she and her husband are gems, and have been married closing on 40 years. The other person I followed in was wearing what look like docker pants, and a blueish sweater, short hair and such. It was only after she turned a corner that I figured out it was a woman. THAT is dressing like a guy. When you can't tell the difference from behind.

I think everyone's getting too hung up on the hair thing. It's not like long hair automatically equals hot, short hair automatically equals ugly. I think many women actually have the opposite problem of keeping their hair too long because they think it makes them look younger/thinner/prettier, when really it doesn't. Almost every episode of "What Not To Wear" that I've seen involves the stylist cutting several inches off the woman's hair, and it is always an improvement.

Like others suggested, I'm guessing the discrepancies here were much smaller when the couples got married. Husband improves with age, wife goes downhill but by that point they have a house, kids, and 25 years of marriage together and aren't going to divorce just because the wife has ugly hair.

There is no correlation between physical attractiveness and longevity of a marriage. I repeat, there is no correlation.

A marriage stands or falls based upon the effort both people put into it. Shared values and history built up over time mean far more than just physical attraction. Obviously at some level, you must still be attracted your partner. That is determined by the two parties jointly. But someone from the outside looking at only the physical attractiveness of the parties is focusing on the most superficial element of a successful marriage and is never in a position to understand what they have been through and shared together. Ask Elin Nordegren and Tiger Woods how important physical attractiveness is to a marriage. Knowing your partner will stand by you and show respect for you through thick and thin counts far more than keeping up your looks.

"I'm more confused by the men I know in their 30s and 40s who married nagging, angry, selfish bitches..."

Cluster B's can be very charming when you first meet them.

I can't think of any examples of this in my life, but as a teenaged girl I always wondered why Vince Mcmahon was with Linda. But people always look at me weird when I say he's attractive.

Uh, no. This has nothing to do with hair, so get over it. Good looking guys stay with a not-so-good-looking woman because of two reasons: most guys hate change (that is why 70% of divorces are initiated by women), and an uglier woman knows her choices to score with a high-earner are limited, so she remains faithful.

Whereas your average good looking woman always has her eye out to trade up because she thinks she is attractive enough. For an example, look through a dating site sometime...the 45 year old women who still look hot, and are still in decent shape, only answer mail from the best looking men who make the most money...their profiles frequently say they are looking for men 10-15 years younger than them. Your average looking women do not have those restrictions on their profiles.

Little do these women know that the high wage earners won't go for them no matter how good-looking they are...every $250,000 of salary lowers the age of women "attracted" to him by 10 years.

An old saying: Never marry a pretty woman. Marry a plain woman and you get twice as much for half the effort.

one flows from the other LoneStarJeffe...

physical attractiveness is part of what made the marriage happen in the first place, so to say it's meaningless is bull. What IS meaningfull is that you are together for the inevitable aging that your body does.

Some people may really not care, maybe they never cared in the first place, but why would anyone make that assumption?

You watch the oldones still walking arm in arm after many long years of trials. There is a lot more to it than looks, but you can certainly see looks on the surface.

If longevity in marriage was easy to figure out, marriages would last better...

doing things that your partner likes... I'm guessin' that's a big one.

Still, I was telling my husband the other day that comic books have taught me a lot about what men find sexy.

I remember a comic as an early teen that was one of the "Tales From the Crypt" style comics.

The story line was this woman had heard of a "secret" tribe in the Amazon could make any woman the most beautiful women in the world. They show her hectoring her husband and shouting at the porters the whole trip. She gets to the village and demands they make her beautiful. She wakes up and finds her lips sewn together.

I always looked at it as the ironic to the "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" quote.

Two possible answers - -

Maybe, contrary to widespread female notions, not all men are dazzled stupid by hair and boobs, and they fall in love for a woman's other more complicated characteristics.

Or else maybe it's just frequent blowjobs.

I don't think it has much to do with aging. When I was in my 20's, most of my friends were married to women I didn't consider attractive at all. I've always assumed that tastes differ; once you get away from the starlets and beauty queens that everyone lusts after, one man's poison is another man's meat.

Or maybe. . . do you remember the old song which goes "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife"? Perhaps a lot of guys took that advice to heart.

You fuck the mind, too. I'm not saying looks are irrelevant, but if you're going to be spending forever with someone there has to be more going on. People aren't dollies and they don't want dollies for mates. BTW did anyone ever stop to think that these guys might like butch looking women? What man is going to believe a 100 lb chick in uniform when she comes into the bedroom and orders him to strip? A woman that can overpower a man in the sack is nothing to sneeze at...Amazonian fantasy fulfilled! Ding!

LW is a jealous bitch. That's the beginning and end of it.

I am 58 years old and have been married for 35 years. My husband gives me compliments on my looks all the time even though I am 50# heavier (and dieting as we speak) and wrinkled (20 years of cocoa butter tanning, it takes a lot to tan my fair skin) and looking in the mirror I am NOT impressed.
I finally realized that what he sees when he looks at me is the girl I was 35 years ago. We'll see some cute little 20 year old blonde and he'll say that's what my baby looked like when I married her. And I look at the knockout blonde and KNOW I never looked that good on my BEST day. So what's up with that? We have a whole life of loving and laughing and sharing together, and we are gorgeous to one another, no matter what the rest of the world sees when they look at us. Thank God. We may be one of the couples she's talking about because he's much better looking than I.

My wife might meet the LW's description. Here's the story. She's great in bed. She gives great head. Plus she is the most honest and fair minded woman I have ever known. Also, all cats are gray in the dark.