For my fellow adult braces wearers - why did you wait to get braces? What ultimately made you decide to go through with it?

I know we have a lot of people who come to this sub as adults, and who are still deciding if they want to go through with getting braces. I thought this thread might help them not wait to get started :)

Was it that your family couldn't afford it growing up? Or you couldn't afford them as an adult? Or that you already had braces and relapsed? Or some other reason? What was the point that you thought "okay, I can't wait any longer?"
My experience is that I relapsed from not wearing my retainer BUT I also had bad orthodontic care the first time around. The doctor never fixed my bite to begin with. What finally pushed me to move forward with it was that I was having terrible pain in my teeth for years (I even cracked a tooth). I thought it was just TMJ related. I finally saw a new dentist who told me that it was my bite and that I need to go see an orthodontist. Without him, I likely would have continued to live in pain. I didn't like how my teeth had shifted visually, but it was the pain that got me to do it.