tl/dr: Boyfriend isn’t that attracted to me physically. Need to figure out how to be ok with that or I shouldn’t take the next step (moving in together).
The details:
My boyfriend and I are getting ready to move in together after a year and a half of dating. I care about him very deeply. He’s kind, calm and nurturing and we share several interests that take up most of our free time. He is also unfailingly honest, which in general is a positive because it leads me to trust him completely. This rarely comes out in a hurtful way because while honest, he is also considerate enough to just be silent unless he has something nice to say, he’s not one of those people who says hurtful things freely under the guise of “just being honest.”
We’ve been having some deeper conversations about whether/why we feel confident that this is going to be right for us in the long-term before making the move to cohabitation. In the course of that, I raised the topic of attraction. He rarely compliments me and sometimes I wonder if he’s attracted to me physically or if he cares about me for other reasons and is somewhat holding his nose about my physical appearance. My worries are driven by some semi-founded insecurity on my part - I’m a little overweight (technically 2 pounds out of the healthy range, but 20-25 pounds over a range that I maintained in earlier years where I felt truly attractive). He said that he feels confident about our relationship because he loves me for reasons that aren’t fleeting - that I’m kind and nurturing and some other aspects of our personalities are really complimentary. He said he is “attracted enough” to me; that he knows that because he is quite attractive he could date a woman who’s more objectively attractive than me, but she probably wouldn’t have the other qualities I have that make us such a good fit and her attractiveness would fade over time anyway.
I appreciate his honesty but it also stings. I want my partner to think I’m beautiful. My previous long-term partners definitely did. To be honest, while many people find him quite attractive, he’s not really my typical type - I’ve usually dated the football-player physique and he is quite lean/not muscular - but over time as I got to know him I came to see him as beautiful because his outside holds his incredibly gentle and sweet inside. I wish he felt the same way towards me, but it doesn’t seem to work that way for him.
Realizing that this was bothering me, I’ve been making some slow and steady diet changes over the last few months and losing a bit of weight and also improving my fitness. However I feel like his mental comparison is between me and Instagram models/porn stars (he’s got a habit), and I’m just never going to objectively look like that.
Is it unreasonable for me to be bothered that he feels this way about how I look? Is it shallow and I just need to get over it? Maybe tons of people feel this way about their partners and he’s just being uniquely honest (I did ask directly, he wasn’t offering up this commentary out of the blue); in which case I feel like I should appreciate his honesty rather than punish him for it.
There are just so many social messages about a woman’s appearance being one of her most important qualities that even though looks aren’t my priority, this is really eating at me. Would love tips for changing my mindset, similar experiences and how you handled it, etc.
Submitted August 02, 2019 at 08:31AM by pamplemusique https://ift.tt/2KsTgIq
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