I would think that a blind man would have an easier time dating a woman that would otherwise be unattractive (bad skin, unappealing weight, superficial deformities) but then again, I guess a blind man could also be just as self-concious as a sighted man when it comes to how other people gauge how their date looks.
In that same reasoning, are there people that specifically date blind people so they won’t feel judged on their looks? Like burn victims, for example? I’m reminded of the comic book romance of Ben Grimm to a blind woman.
To the main question, my WAG of an answer is “much better ones”.
To the supplementary question, my second WAG is that I doubt a blind guy and a burns victim woman would be likely to form a relationship because of their conditions - I’m wagering if it happened at all, it would be despite their conditions, because I think that relationship would be the subject of knowing nods and derision.
Of course, I’ve used the internet acronym WAG twice here, so that points out that IANABG and IANABVW.
It’s possible that a blind person might prefer his/her partner to have very smooth skin, regular features, etc., due to the more pleasant feeling when touching the partner’s face.
Also, a lot of people thought of as “blind” do have some degree of vision, though it might be as limited as seeing light and dark. That guy with a cane and dark glasses might be able to see some details of faces at extremely close range.
A good friend of mine is a very bad burn victim that happened when she was quite young. She is married to an attractive, successful man, and has kids. She is well liked and respected. And no, he isn’t blind. Don’t be so quick to assume.
Oh, and she isn’t well endowed either, so cross that off the list.
I thought a partner would pick me for me; do people really think about others’ opinion when choosing a partner? Please tell me that’s a minor consideration.
When I was in high school, a guy who was blind was very interested in dating me. Even though he was an awesome person, smart, multi-sport athlete, ultimately I never liked him as more than a friend. We did go out a couple of times. I asked him essentially the question in the OP one time. He said my voice sounded nice and it didn’t seem like I was overweight. Apparently he could sense fatness somehow. Well, I do have a very nice speaking voice and wasn’t overweight, so his assessment was accurate. We never got to any kind of “groping” stage, so anything else he knew about my looks he would have had to ask someone who could see me. He hadn’t been blind all his life, so he’d have some concept of what haircolor or eyecolor represented, although they weren’t relevant to him at the time.
I wonder if as a teen, though, I wasn’t a little too vain to date him. Because, shallow as I was, I felt that guys wanting to date me validated my attractiveness. OTOH, there were enough differences in our backgrounds and interests that maybe we just didn’t click.
Woman engaged to/long time dating a completelely blind fella, here. Definitely, he prefers me (and women in general) to be in shape. In fact, he has a lot of derision for overweight women and to some extent, men. One consideration is the person being his guide/assistant - I guess he doesn’t want people to think he’s dating a fat gal. Shallow, I know. He’s also overly concerned with his own looks, in my opinion. But he’s one of the most interesting and intelligent people I’ve ever met and a hellva lotta fun.
There was an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm like this. A blind pianist thinks he’s going out with a model then dumps her when he finds out she’s ‘ugly.’ Oh well. More and more I see that being a minority or having a handicap doesn’t not automatically make one more open-minded or empathetic. Dave Chapelle’s black, blind KKK wizard may not have been that far off, either.
I think in the case of some (most?) blind people, they don’t want others to think their blindness was some factor in choosing a mate. Therefore if you saw an average looking man and woman, you probably wouldn’t think much of it. However if you saw a couple where one of them was MUCH less attractive than the other, its easier to imagine the better looking one sees something other than looks in the uglier one. If a bystander discovers the better looking person is blind, they’ll probably attribute the match to the fact that the guy is blind.
Standards aside, I kind of thought that at least being blind means you won’t have insecurities about how your SO looks (in regards to how you think other people might react to them. Not even necessarily their appearance- maybe they are a bad dresser or something)
I think a blind guy would have roughly the same taste in women as a drape guy or a shade guy. Really, why would you expect taste in women differ based on window coverings?
That’s interesting. I know people consider fatness unattractive in a visual way, but yeah, maybe it’s unattractive to touch too?? Or would this be him worrying about what others thought?
Maybe hearing people get out of breath from going up a flight of stairs? Or their thighs rubbing against each other when they walk? Maybe the volume of their footsteps when hitting hard surfaces sounds louder since they weigh more.
I got the sense he knew I wasn’t fat because of his own perceptions (sound, vibration??). As to why that was one of his criteria, I don’t know. He was very athletic, and a lot of people who put effort into their own fitness prefer to date people who are fit. Also, as a teenager he was certainly exposed to lots of other teens making fun of fat people (weren’t we all?) so I can imagine peer pressure was part of forming the idea that fat=bad in a girlfriend.
According to my brother Mark, this happened when he was at college. Mark knew a blind guy named Troy, who was happily dating a woman until somebody (I’ll call him Ed) asked him: “You know that chick is ugly, don’t you, Troy?” Soon after this revelation, Troy dumped his girlfriend. (And it wasn’t a case of Ed attempting to con Troy by stealing a babe from him – according to Mark, this woman was indeed one of the least attractive females on campus.)
Wow, never? I remember it mattering a lot to me in junior high and high school (during which time, perhaps not coincidentally, I really didn’t date much).
If a man suffered from asnomia (inability to smell) and fell in love with a beautiful woman who smelled bad, would he drop her if his buddies told him that she smelled bad?
