Oh my God.

I was just about to post a thread titled something like "I realize now that I have a 'baby face' and so many things suddenly make sense to me."

I was vacillating between posting it here, at /r/relationships, or somewhere else. I absentmindedly came to /r/offmychest and clicked "new" and this post is at the top.

I knew I looked young when I was an adolescent. I'd figured that I'd, you know, grown out of it. It's been years, maybe decades, since I even thought about this issue. I'm 38... so even if I look 10 years younger, that's still 28. Shouldn't be a problem, right?

Over the past few days, though, it's hit me. People can tell I'm 38. Hell, I probably look 45. But I look like a 45-year-old who looks like he's 12. Eventually, if I live to be really old, I'll just be an elderly man with a baby face.

I've gotten the "are your parents home?" question from Jehovah's Witnesses. I was glad to tell them "nope" and get rid of them, and at the time I remember being really proud that at the young age of 23 I had my own house. I just figured I looked 23 and my house looked too big and nice for a 23-year-old. More realistically, I now realize that the Jehovah's Witnesses just thought I was fucking 12.

And you're right about salesmen. I am, like, the only person in the world who's ever had to look around the showroom floor for someone to sell me a brand new car. It's pretty fucking surreal.

Having a baby face ruins life in many ways. Professionally, I always find myself in the position of wide-eyed, enthusiastic innocent. I started thinking about that about a year ago; why were my colleagues' and supervisors' expectations of me so low? Why was I getting pats on the back for intern-level work? It sounds good, I guess, but people probably look at me and figure I'm 10-15 years away from warranting any kind of promotion or authority.

With women, a baby face is the kiss of death. I read something the other day that basically admitted that, but then went on to posit that the baby face is actually an advantage in some situations, because it makes you look like a caring potential father and husband.

That makes sense. All my life I've realized (and even been told) that I'm the settling down type, not the one night stand type. And I hate that. When I found out my wife thought that, it basically ended our marriage. I don't want to be anyone's sweet little baby face to build white picket fences with. I want to split bitches like rails and then ride of into the sunset... you know, like guys people actually respect.

The good news is that, now that I know that I have the genetics of (at worst) a lifelong virgin, or (at best) an unexciting, cuckolded, hen-pecked husband, I am proud of myself for having escaped that fate somewhat. I'm not a virgin. I said "no" to the white picket fence thing once I realized what was up. I make a decent salary, even if people think I'm a noob.

The bad thing is that I'm not optimistic about the future. It's damned difficult getting laid like this. Hell, it's hard even just making platonic friends.

There are things plastic surgeons can do to help. I'm starting to look into that.