The Looksmaxxer’s Wound: If you hate how you look, there’s usually an underlying attachment of your worth and lovability to your appearance. Beneath that is the belief that you must look a certain way to be loved, accompanied by an overwhelming pressure to improve yourself and a compulsive need for external validation, often through women who make you feel desirable. This can manifest as a pendulation between pride, arrogance, and an almost manic drive toward vain self-improvement (mogging), followed by utter defeat and inadequacy when the desired level of attractiveness or validation is not attained (getting mogged). Underneath this pendulum is often the shame of feeling fundamentally unworthy of love. And beneath the shame, you may find the sadness and grief of a young boy who never felt unconditionally loved by his parents, and who learned that love was something to be earned through what he did, achieved, or possessed. This can be part mother wound and part father wound. Perhaps the mother left the child without an inherent sense of lovability, while the father left him without an inherent sense of adequacy. He learned that both love and respect had to be earned by superiority. The original childhood pain may have had nothing to do with physical appearance. But later experiences of bullying, rejection, or societal conditioning may have attached themselves to an already wounded sense of innate worth and masculinity.