Heroic Retreat

"His life was a heroic retreat."  

"What do you mean," I asked?  

"He was handsome when he was young and got a lot of attention for it.  He wasn't handsome, exactly, but there was something striking about him and it shaped his personality.  As he matured, women were drawn to him to an unusual degree.  He was masculine enough, but the attention he got was the kind a pretty girl would have, and in some psychological or spiritual way, I think it kind of feminized him.  He got used to all the attention. 

"He was good enough with it.  He never acted out about it, but he came to count on it, I think.  But like everything else, the physical attractiveness faded.  It was like Warren Beatty after he began to look like George Hamilton.  And that is when the retreat began.  He went out less often and avoided people more and more.  Now, you can hardly get him to go anywhere.  He is still a great guy to talk to, but he just wants to stay home most of the time.  He didn't make a big deal out of it, really.  He just disappeared."  

That's a good story, I thought, but it doesn't me what I want to know.  What happens to a person who has been attractive when the beauty is gone, when someone used to commanding attention when they enter a room starts to be ignored.  Surely you would wake up thinking things are like they were some days only to find that the counter person is not susceptible to what used to be your charm.  What happens then?  There is the internal correction, I guess, the shutting off of old feelings, the numbing of one part of the sensibilities and the attempt to cultivate another.  

Beauty lost.  It must be a terrible thing.