I feel like I’ve shared this before here, but I’m sure that post is years buried, so I’ll share again:
I have told one person, ever. I told my husband when we first started dating, and I told him for two reasons. The first was that he had braces at the time. We were not kids or teenagers, we were young adults but he’d had his since his late teens and had them for several years already when we met and started dating. He really hated them and was pretty self conscious about them. Not that braces were absolutely awful, just the fact that he still had them and nobody else our age really did. Adults with money, yes. Teens whose parents were paying, also yes. But none of our peers. So to him they were embarrassing, like a sign he was still a kid or something, and also the truth of why he still had them was because his parents had stopped paying the orthodontist, so he could neither proceed with treatment or get them taken off without someone paying what was still owed, which as a broke college student with a totally unstable/unsupportive home life, was entirely impossible. I didn’t know this about his braces for a long time, but it’s definitely part of why they were so embarrassing to him, since it’s not like they were doing anything. But I really felt like I HAD to tell him, since he would frequently apologize for them and complain about how self conscious he was.
The other reason I told him was that I’d really only just then discovered this was more than an intense interest, it was actually something sexual and attraction based, and I just felt SO WEIRD AND GROSS. I really wanted someone to tell me, hey, it’s ok, it’s not that weird, you are fine. Which… he sort of did tell me that. I made a really big deal of telling him and he was completely unfazed. Apparently in his mind some girls just like braces. There had been a girl before me who also liked them! I did not inquire as to just HOW MUCH she liked them, like was it a thing, or did she just think he was cute and therefor the braces were cute, or what, but it was completely no big deal to him. Even with how much he hated having them.
So then I married him.
And what I never came right out and said was that his braces were THE ONLY reason I ever gave dating him a try. I was young, or at least looking back it seems like I was so young, but at the time I felt old and weary of relationships. I had had SO MANY relationships completely fail, and I mean crash and burn horribly, with lasting fallout, that I had absolutely sworn off boyfriends and girlfriends. The problem was always me. It was always that that spark of physical attraction was just not sustainable. I can fall in love with someone, and love them deeply, but I guess I just am not intensely physically attracted to most humans. I do have a really intense interest in certain non-organic objects, though. Like braces, and other similar things. And even though of course I noticed he had braces (because literally NO ONE ELSE around us did, it was ONLY HIM) I still wouldn’t have considered dating him or anyone else. I was, in my mind, absolutely over it. But of course I would always talk to him if the opportunity came up, because I wanted to see his braces. I would, of course, also go out of my way to create said opportunities. So I could see his braces. They gave him a lisp and I was always trying to figure out what extra thing he had that caused it. …He also stutters. Not really badly, but enough that my little heart was absolutely head over heels. So he picked up on… something, I guess, and even though I wasn’t intentionally flirting, I guess that gave him the green light to flirt with ME. And of course I wasn’t about to be like “no I’m not interested” because I WAS interested.
And lo and behold, that intense physical spark that had always been missing? OH IT WAS NOT MISSING ANYMORE.
So, I am absolutely weird. But also we have been happily together for more than 20 years now. And it’s unlikely that I will ever tell anyone else about this, but more because I can’t imagine how it would come up. I’m a lot more comfortable just being very strange than I was back then, so I don’t feel the need to be so secretive, so probably if the opportunity arose I would share. I just don’t know how that would come about.
And obviously he does not have braces anymore, but he did have them for almost six years. Sometimes people post here wondering how they could extend their time in braces, and I will tell you, you can just stop going to the appointments. If you do that, and keep the braces on for a year or two extra, your teeth WILL NEVER MOVE BACK. Even if you don’t wear your retainers even once in your life.
…or at least that’s how it went for us. He got them taken off before a major life milestone, but before that… they were really just there for me. And I feel like I also shared this here once before, but I was very nervous that our entire relationship would implode after he got them off. It didn’t, but I was really worried there for a while, and he was a little bit too. That’s why he left them for so long to begin with.
