Dating is hard enough, but it's even more of a challenge when you look different

Like many young women, Hannah Shewan Stevens and her friends often bemoan the state of modern romance. Anyone who has delved into the difficult world of online dating will, like them, have a horror story or two to share.

Dating today frequently starts with a snap judgment; a single photo that determines whether or not you’re worth getting to know better. Who needs that?

“Whenever I meet someone who has met their partner in real life rather than online, I’m like, ‘How? What magic did you do?’” says Hannah. “When I was 18 I met all the people I dated in bars, but now the only way you can meet someone romantically is through an app. And it just feels so much scarier that way, because it feels like you’ve got even more to hide.”

If her choice of words seems strange, that’s because Hannah would appear to be just like her friends. But the 24-year-old is actually one of 1.3 million people in the UK living with a visible difference, tens of thousands of whom have been helped by Changing Faces, one of the organisations supported in this year’s Telegraph Christmas Appeal. 

Changing Faces provides practical support for individuals living with disfigurements, through counselling and networks, and wants to change the way those with a visible difference are perceived generally.

When she was 14, Hannah started to notice a patchwork of marks on her skin. It took 18 months for doctors to realise that the marks were caused by an autoimmune disorder called scleroderma, which is caused by the immune system attacking the connective tissue under the skin and around internal organs and blood vessels. It’s left Hannah with a “constellation” of scars on her stomach.

Hannah’s teenage experience is depressingly common among those with visible differences. Nasty comments and bullying at school in her home town in Suffolk became a sad fact of life. While on holiday she was so horrified by the stares of strangers when she came out of the sea in her swimming costume that she refused to wear one in public again for eight years. 

Early encounters with boys, including one boyfriend who wouldn’t look at her marks, or talk about them, left her confidence and self-esteem severely dented.

“I wouldn’t take my clothes off in front of my boyfriends, I’d want the lights off – I just didn’t want to be looked at. I would put my hands over my stomach to cover up the marks. I was ashamed of how I looked,” she says. 

When she started dating online, Hannah struggled to know what to do. “Forty-five per cent of my body is scarred, but if you look at me you can’t tell,” she says. “How much should you reveal when you’re sharing something on a dating app? Do you put it all out there, or do you hold it back?”

Not everyone has that choice. For Hannah’s friend Katy Lewis, whom she met through Changing Faces, there’s no hiding her visible difference. The 34-year-old from Beckenham, south-east London, was born with a craniofacial condition called Goldenhar syndrome, which affects the appearance of her jaw and ear. She wears a prosthetic ear, and also has scoliosis, which affects her spine.  

Like 33 per cent of people surveyed by Changing Faces, Katy has used a dating app or website, and is one of almost half whose condition is visible in their profile photo. Of those, 90 per cent say they have received negative comments or feedback about their appearance.

Katy, however, who first tried online dating five years ago, describes her experiences with an eye roll. “I mostly got a lot of messages from men in their 60s messaging me and telling me I was beautiful.”

There was one (younger) guy whom she made a connection with and ended up meeting for a date.  “I like to be clear about my condition and put the ball in the guy’s court,” says Katy. “We exchanged emails and he said he was cool with my condition.” 

However, when they met in person, it was awkward. “He kept looking towards my ear,” says Katy. “I just tried to put it in the back of my mind.” Afterwards, she messaged him, willing to give it a second chance. When he never responded, Katy was left not knowing whether there was simply no spark, or her appearance had put him off.

“Ghosting” might be a typical part of modern dating, but when you have a visible difference, it can have a devastating effect. 

Katy hasn’t been on a date since – and she’s not alone. According to Changing Faces, six in ten people with disfigurements have avoided going on dates because of their appearance. Yet she would love to settle down and start a family like her friends.

“I’m the only one who hasn’t, and when we all meet up I can’t help but feel a bit like a third wheel. I’m so happy for them all, but at the same time I kind of wish I had that as well. You start thinking, ‘When will it be my turn?’”

However, volunteering at Changing Faces twice a week has radically boosted her confidence. She has stopped wearing a wig and now much braver about showing off her ear. “I feel excited about the future. If you’d spoken to me a year ago, the conversation would have been different. I’m trying to be content being single because I’m a big believer that if it’s meant to be, it will happen,” she smiles. 

For Hannah, the turning point in her love life was when she stopped feeling like she had a secret to tell. “For a long time, I felt like I was obligated to tell people that I had scars, like I needed to tell them that I was damaged goods,” she says.

“Often the first thing dates knew about me was my illness and the scars. My whole identity was wrapped around them.” As a result, her relationships were often unhealthy, too. “I’d put up with treatment that wasn’t OK because I felt like I was lucky that someone was deigning to be with me, despite all my flaws.”

With help from Changing Faces, Hannah has learnt to appreciate her looks and taken part in body-positive campaigns. Three years ago, she met her partner, George, on Tinder. For the first month, they chatted online, and slowly she shared her story with him that way. It was the first time she had met someone who asked questions about her condition and seemed genuinely interested. “I’d never had that before and it made me feel so much more confident.”

Now the media producer doesn’t think twice about putting on a bikini, and has even modelled for the lingerie retail website Curvy Kate. “I love the texture of my skin now. I see it as a canvas. It’s a map of my life and reminds me about some of the hardest and best times in my life,” she says. 

George remains her constant cheerleader. “He has always been on my side. He’s helped me to see the beauty in my skin.” Her advice to others with visible differences is: “Just because you have a scar or physical difference, doesn’t mean you owe people your story. If someone likes you, they should like you for yourself.”

Jo Boateng knew exactly what she liked about her husband, Michael, when she first saw him on the dating website Plenty of Fish five years ago.

“He had the nicest smile and I thought he was really good looking,” says the 30-year-old primary school teacher. “And I liked the sound of him from his profile. He talked about his interest in psychology and I thought it was a bit deeper than your average profile.” Jo suggested they meet for a drink.

“I was very out there. I didn’t want to play games,” she recalls.  Michael was less certain. “I thought she seemed a bit too keen. I thought she might be a catfish or something,” the 30-year-old half-jokes. The couple laugh about their first date now, and Jo says if anyone had confidence issues it was her. “I’d just come out of a seven-year relationship and had no idea how to date,” she says. 

Yet Michael’s confidence has been hard won. When he was eight months old, he became trapped next to a hot water pipe and was burned down the side of his face. He went through many operations when he was young and when he was eight years old he was fitted with a prosthetic ear because the damage to his left ear was so severe. He credits sessions with Changing Faces when he was 11 years old for bringing him out of his shell.

“Until then, I’d held it all in, but for the first time I started to talk about the burns.” Yet, throughout his teens he never thought about having a girlfriend, assuming it was something that just wouldn’t happen for him. “I thought I’d grow up and grow old on my own,” says the engineer. 

It was moving to university in Liverpool to study psychology that changed things. “I packed my bag and got on the train. It was a completely new start and I had no expectations apart from the feeling that I was going to do this,” Michael recalls. Making friends with a group of young men who shared his passion for football helped to bring him out of his shell and his confidence, particularly with girls, grew from there. 

He still encountered the odd knock. There was one online date that stood him up. “Afterwards, she messaged me, saying ‘I couldn’t see in your pictures you had a scar. You should have told me,’” he recalls.   Jo, however, wasn’t at all fazed by his appearance.

If anything, she was simply curious; “I’m a bit nosy,” she admits. But she respected his privacy. “I assumed he would tell me in his own time.”

She had to wait five dates to hear his story.  Soon after, though, she was offering to paint his false ear. Michael’s old one had gone white and was in bad repair (he eventually crowdfunded the £2,000 for a new ear after the NHS refused to cover it). “I sat down and painted his ear and tried to match the colour. Now that’s love!”

And despite believing he’d never marry, Michael proposed on his birthday in July 2014 at the Shard in London. “I turned around and he was on one knee and there was a cake saying ‘Will you marry me?’,” recalls Jo. 

The married couple now have two children: Jacob, four, and Thea, two. Of having the wife and family he never expected to have, Michael says: “Maybe I was a bit cynical about marriage, but only because I never thought it could happen to me.”

He hopes his story will inspire others to put themselves out there and date. “I would say go for it, because even people who don’t have visible differences have crappy dates. You’re going to go through some bad apples, but eventually you’ll find love.”