Messy Eyelash Problem/Question

Alright, so I'm 31 years old and am a little frightened to publicly ask this, but...

My entire adult life I've had eyelashes any woman would die for. They are long, thick and grow relatively fast. The trouble for me is that they are so long, and also very messy. They constantly poke and irritate my eyes. Not only do they poke and irritate the outside of my eyelid, they also tend to flop down into my eye (where it's wet, which then they stick there...) and cause even further irritation.

Because of this, I've developed a bad habit of picking at my eyelashes. Mostly I only do it when I'm bored at work, and I find I revert to picking at them which obviously makes the problem worse. Of coarse, because I tend to pull them out, they grow back and become even more scraggly.

Anyone else have this issue? Anyone have any solutions? I'm afraid to admit that I think raiding my girlfriend's eyelash makeup would probably solve my issue, but I don't know if my "manhood" would ever recover from it.

Haha, yea it's no joke. I guess the greater problem is more that because they are so long, they get scraggly and tangled up in the corners of my eyes, which causes irritation because they poke my eyelid in the corners of my eye. Because of that... I pick at them. And the more I pick at them, the worse it gets. And to top it off, the ones I work loose end up in my contacts.

Bottom line... I need to find a way to stop picking at them. (Obviously) So anything I do... trimming, girlie makeup or otherwise... would be 100% to facilitate not picking at them. I have tried trimming them several times, however that only seems to make it worse because it makes them feel even more prickly against my eyelids.

I halfway suspect that if used something (mascara, or even a curler) to keep them out of the way for a while long enough to get me to stop picking at them... the problem would go away. Since it seems to be that they irritate my eye a bit, so I pick them. Then they get more scraggly from the constant picking, so they get more annoying... etc. So if I could just get them to start growing normal again without me picking at them...

Obviously I already have ideas to answer my own question before posting this thread, however I'm more curious to hear if I'm just that "unique," or if it's a lesser common issue that others might have better advice than I can give myself.

You're probably right. I want to believe that I have abnormally long lashes, because I don't want to have to say "I have a psychological problem" with picking them. And also, just to note: I could care less how they look to be honest. It's simply that they feel scraggly and annoy my eyes, and then I pick at them.

... Now as to what came first, the chicken or the egg?


Although I will say that the problem for me is by far nothing debilitating or disruptive to my ability to go about my normal life: It just annoys the crap out of me some times. That said, I will admit that the above statement is probably 100% spot on. Reason? Days that I don't worry about them, they're not bothering me and... I'm not picking at them. Days that they are bothering me? Guess what... I've been picking them.

Solution? Admit to myself it's psychological and stop picking them.