Every pair of glasses holds its entire weight — frame, lenses, hardware, all of it — on exactly three points of contact: the bridge of your nose and the top of each ear. Nothing else touches your face. Set even one of those three points wrong and you feel it fast (often before lunch) — a groove behind your ear, a pinch at your nose, a frame that slides down before you've finished your coffee. 

Most of that is fixable in about five minutes, no optician required. Here's what a correct fit feels like, why your current pair might be hurting you, how to fix glasses that hurt behind your ears or pinch your nose, and exactly when to hand the job to a pro instead.

Opticians name a handful of specific parts on a frame: the bridge, the temples that run back to your ears, the nose pads, and the hinges that let the temples fold. [1] Each one does a distinct job in how the glasses sit. A frame that fits doesn't announce itself. It doesn't slide when you look down, and it doesn't leave a red line across your nose (even after 8 hours at your desk). Your eyebrows sit just above the top rim, not peeking through the lens. 

Most fit complaints trace back to one of five mismatches. The symptom tells you which one you have:

Once you match your symptom to a row, the fix is almost always a temple adjustment or a nose pad adjustment. Which one you can do yourself depends on what your frame is made of.

Each of the three contact points should carry a light, even share of the frame's weight. Trouble starts when the frame's proportions don't match your face. One point ends up doing most of the work. One especially common mismatch: a standard bridge on a low nose bridge and high cheekbones. The frame's front rides low. The temples splay outward to compensate. The extra pressure lands squarely behind your ears, and that's behind most of the soreness wearers notice at that spot. 

Foster Grant designs an entire line, Low Bridge Fit, around exactly that mismatch. The Cerritos and Rowland reading glasses use a flattened frame front paired with pre-set adjustable nose pads. They're built specifically to stop the slipping, digging, and pinching that a standard bridge causes on a low nose bridge and high cheekbones. It's a real frame-geometry fix, not a padding trick. 

There's a quieter second cause: a brand-new frame hasn't settled in yet. Acetate needs a little heat and time to mold to your face. Metal wire arms are stiffer at first and loosen slightly with wear. Give a new pair a week before you start bending anything. 

Acetate is a thermoplastic. It's the material behind classic tortoiseshell and solid-color frames, including Foster Grant's Boston reading glasses. That's the useful part: acetate softens with gentle heat and holds whatever shape you set once it cools. That's what makes a home adjustment possible. 

1. Run hot tap water into a bowl or mug — warm enough to feel through a towel, not scalding — and test it against your wrist first. Once it's safe to touch, dip just the tip of one temple, the curved part behind your ear, for about 30 seconds. Keep the lenses clear of the water. 
2. Support the temple at its natural bend with one hand. With the other, push the warmed tip down to tighten it behind the ear, or straighten it to loosen. 
3. Set the frame flat to cool for a minute before trying it on. Acetate holds its new shape cold, so there's no rush. 
4. Repeat on the other side. Check in a mirror that both temples curve at the same point and angle. 

If the pinch is at your nose, most plastic frames — Foster Grant's Election sunglasses among them — mold the nose pads into the bridge itself. There's no separate, bendable piece to work with. That one calls for an optician's pliers, not a kitchen sink; most shops reshape it in under a minute. Browse Foster Grant sunglasses if you'd rather start with a frame that has adjustable pads built in. 

Metal frames skip the hot-water step entirely — heat won't reshape them the way it softens acetate. Foster Grant's Ti-Tech Gunmetal style, and the fine wire fronts on the Cerritos and Rowland readers, have separate nose pads you can reposition by hand, plus temple arms with enough natural give to bend cold. 

1. Hold the bridge of the frame steady with one hand, temples facing you. 
2. Pinch one nose pad between your thumb and index finger. If the glasses slide down or sit too low, tilt the pad's top edge in toward your nose with a small squeeze. If they sit too high or pinch, tilt the top edge out, away from the lens. 
3. Match the same move on the other side. Try the glasses on before you adjust further; small moves add up fast on metal. 
4. For the temples, bend gently near the natural bend point: down to tighten behind the ear, up to loosen. Stop the moment you feel real resistance. 

Some frames, like Rowland's slim metal-wire front, are stiffer than a standard hinge and less forgiving to bend by hand. If yours won't hold a new shape after a couple of careful tries, stop here and read the next section. 

If you've ever bent a hinge too far and felt it give more than you meant it to, you already know some frames don't want your hands on them. A spring-hinge design, like the one on Foster Grant's Raynor readers, already flexes further than a standard hinge on its own. Forcing an extra bend on top of that spring risks cracking the hinge instead of fixing your fit. A loose screw or a temple that's come apart at the joint needs a small screwdriver and a steady hand, not a rebuild while you're still wearing the glasses. And a thin or semi-rimless edge is one firm push from a repair bill. 

The trade-off is small. An optician's shop keeps frame-warming tools and fitting pliers built for exactly this (the same hot-water trick, done right). Most will adjust a pair, even one they didn't sell, free or for a few dollars, in under five minutes. If your first attempt at home doesn't finish the job, that's the next stop, not a sign you did something wrong. 

A frame that needs the hot-water trick every few months has a proportions problem, not a technique problem. Foster Grant's Low Bridge Fit styles start with a flattened bridge and pre-set adjustable nose pads, sized for a low nose bridge and high cheekbones. That's the exact combination behind most of the slipping and pinching in the first place. 

The same logic carries into sunglasses. San Jose pairs a bridgeless metal frame with adjustable nose pads. The polarized Cole sunglasses add them to a thin, sleek build most people wear for 8 hours at a stretch. Explore polarized sunglasses built with that kind of adjustability in mind, or check the men's reading glasses lineup, Boston's acetate-and-metal build included, for the same starting point on the reading side. 

None of this means every sore spot is your frame's fault — a five-minute adjustment settles most of them. But a pair that keeps drifting out of shape, month after month, is telling you something about its proportions, not your technique. Run through the fit checklist, try the fix that matches your frame's material, and give a professional the jobs that call for real tools. When a pair keeps fighting you after all that, look for one engineered around a low bridge and adjustable nose pads from the start. Browse Foster Grant reading glasses built with that fit already worked out.

[1] American Academy of Ophthalmology — eyeglasses are built from distinct, named parts (bridge, temples, nose pads, hinges), each of which affects how a pair fits.