My Boyfriend Wants Me To Lose Weight
July 22, 2010 by admin
Filed under Dating Tips For Women
What do you do when your boyfriend tells you ‘lose weight’? How do you react when your boyfriend wants you to lose weight and is being direct about it? Here is an email I received from a subscriber:
Hi Elaine,
My boyfriend told me lose weight. I feel very hurt and don’t know how to react. The problem is that he is a good guy and he tells me he doesn’t want to hurt me, but I can tell that since I started gaining weight in the past six months he is not as attracted to me as much anymore. He tells me I am wonderful and beautiful, and he really wants to be in a relationship with me but he feels that me gaining weight has taken a toll on our relationship.
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He is a photographer and he photographs models for magazines. He says that physical beauty if important to him because he is very visual and even though he knows it’s shallow he can’t help it because this is what he is attracted to.
But I still feel very hurt and rejected. I don’t want to break up with him because we have a good loving relationship, but I don’t know what to tell him, and how to respond. I am not fat but not model-skinny either.
I don’t know how to react to this. He feels guilty for telling me this but he says that it’s better to be honest and not hide how he feels about this because we have open communication. One part of me is glad he is open with me because it would be much worse if he didn’t tell me how he feels about this issue and instead started cheating with someone skinnier.
What should I do? I want to know if there is anyone else who has experienced this problem with a boyfriend or a husband, and how they solved this.
Thanks
Maria
Hi Maria,
How do YOU feel about your weight? Do YOU want to lose weight? This is what it really comes down to. Listen, if you are happy with your appearance you should not alter who you are and what makes you happy. However, you need to ask yourself if this is the kind of sacrifice you are willing to make for your boyfriend to be happy, and how this will reflect on your relationship. There is a bigger issue behind the question of losing weight; your boyfriend may feel that you don’t respect him and his wishes, and that you are not willing to do your part in a relationship to make it work.
Do you feel that your boyfriend’s request is unreasonable? Or do you feel that you NEED to lose weight?
One of the reasons men drift away from a relationship is the loss of physical attraction. As I explain in my book Guide To Commitment, physical attraction and chemistry is a paramount ingredient of a healthy relationship. It is not the only thing that needs to be present in a relationship, but one of them; a very important one. You need to decide how YOU can balance being who you are and pleasing your boyfriend. If being yourself is incompatible with being in a relationship you should decide what’s more important to you – your authenticity or your relationship. That’s a decision YOU need to make.
Elaine
Has your boyfriend even said he wants you to lose weight? Has the man you date ever hinted that you should lose weight? What did you do? How did you react? Leave your comment below! Like this post? Share it on Facebook!
You can read my personal weight loss story and check out my video in which I talk about how I personally lost weight on This Page!
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Have to admit I have not read the full story – mainly Elaine’s reaction. I have had a overweight boyfriend, and would have loved him to be some slimmer, to be more attracted. In the end though, I would marry him, love him for life, and so on, even if he had not lost weight. I was very hesitant to tell him, but I felt I had to as the attraction might be lost otherwise, or the honesty. At the same time, I was actually aware that it was probably mostly my own insecurity and/or other sex issues, as honestly, when you can look into two beautiful pairs of eyes and a radiant smile, have all the love you wish for as well as lots of fun – weight does not, should not, matter. Hope this helps.
Hi,
It is terribly painful to have your man not attracted to you anymore, or have the attraction you need from a man coming very ‘conditional’
In my opinion, if you love your boyfriend and want to lose weight for yourself and think you can do this – go for it and have his support with you, until, when you feel better and look better, the celebration of mutual attraction will be a ‘prize’.
If you speak openly and tell him you need his love and friendship and support in becoming that attractive woman you were when you met and think constructively together, and that you accept his being attracted only to certain type of appearance – maybe this could work.
There can be a problem if his standarts are completely out of touch with reality – for example, when you get older and so on.
The alternative is to break up and find a man who is attracted to you even when you gain weight.
I call this ‘sexual compatibility’.
That is unless your boyfriend is willing to try and change his sexual attitudes – but it is possible that he just can’t.
sometimes looking good is not purely for ourselves.. if we love the other person, we also take his comments and feelings into consideration.. if losing weight is a request to him and sounds reasonable to you and it is something we can try and do about it, why not just show him your effort in losing weight?
his request has to be realistic though… if you are not model skinny and never can be one and he expect you to be one, it is just too hard work and painful to stay with someone who constantly criticise you and make you feel demoralised… dump him… … he could be in love with the idea of love and in the first place, how can he ever feel completely satisfied with you if his dream girl is a model skinny figure and he hasnt grown out of his boy dream?
if you try and show him you respect his wishes and do something about it and it doesnt make you drop weight to his ideal, at least he knows you bother to do something about it and he could be pleased with your trial… if you insist to stay the way you are thinking and refuse to do anything even though the truth is you have indeed put on some weight, it just show you didnt care about your own body and have give up hope and give way to the negative circumstances…
afterall, if you manage to lose weight and the relationship still breaks up one day, you still walk off with a confidence body and held your head high and not blame it to the fact that he dumped you beause you are fat and feel even more depressed and sorry about yourself…
looking good on your body is always a win win situation, isnt it, if not for him, but for yourself..
Would you like to lose your weight?
Tell your boyfriend to take a hike. There are way too many overweight women no where near ready to enter any beauty contest who are either dating or married to great, nice, respectable and even very handsome men who absolutely love them for who and what they are. The underlying notion to his request is either he’s truly not happy with himself and putting the blame of that responsibility on someone else (you) and/or will have something else to gripe and complain about even if you did lose weight. Tell him to love you “As-Is” or move the heck on and this is not coming from someone with a weight problem.
I think it is good that he was honest with her, about his feelings. Now she needs to decide if she wants to do this or not. She says she is not fat.
One thing I have encountered alot, men can be overweight,(sometimes to the extreme) but they seem to think that they are still *Hot*. I have known guys 50 + pounds overweight, who will not date a woman unless she is slim and trim.
When my “boyfriend” (and I use the term lightly) told me it looks like I’ve gained a few pounds and wanted to know if I was depressed, I told him to go fu** himself and that although I know I needed to lose a few pounds (and by that I mean 5-7 lbs at most) I was generally happy with the way I looked. Keep in mind I’m 5’3″ and a size 4, and am still a size 4; and think I look pretty damn good for a 44 yo woman who most people think is still in the mid-30′s. He will pinch my sides or touch my stomach and make comments such as “I want my old girl back”. All I’m thinking is “are you kidding me?” … But it gets better…if he sees me reaching for food to nibble on such as cheese, he will grab it out of my hands. Actually while I’m typing this, I’m realizing what a major ass he is. I love how when (insecure) men meet a confident, vibrant woman they will stop at nothing at trying to knock her down.
I will let me know that I’m going to lose a lot of weight … about 175 lbs to be exact.
Maria,
As Elaine has stated, being your authentic self is very important. If U want to lose the weight & would have done on your own, go girl. Otherwise, your boyfriend may consider himself honest for voicing his concerns to you; however he is also somewhat superficial. Modelling is a very superficial field as we all know. The photos are of anorexic looking females & the photos are touched up. We would never recognize the woman if we ran into her on the street.
My concern from personal experience is, how would he react if you had a major illness & became disabled??? If U came home to tell him you had breast cancer, would that be a turnoff to him? Read Betty Rollins book, First You Cry. She thought she had a great marriage until she got breast cancer & her husband could not look at her anymore, make love to her & left.
You don’t tell what weight you are dealing with, so we don’t know whether you are slim & have gained a few lbs or getting heavier as time goes on which is a concern for him. He may be concerned about your health too?? Only you can ask him that.
Best of luck.
My now ex-husband, at year 3 of our 11 year marriage told me that he was afraid that if I got fat, he’d cheat on me. I was 24 and had gained weight since we’d gotten married – I had ballooned to 200 pounds (due to birth control and cessation of all the athletic activities I did when I was single).
At the time, I told him that I couldn’t lose weight for him, and I wouldn’t do it for him. When I was ready, I would lose the weight because I wanted to. When I graduated college (about 6 months later), I started seeing a dietician and working out. Over the next year and a half, I lost 60 pounds.
I also told him that the only person who could choose whether to remain faithful or cheat was him – it had nothing to do with my weight. What I didn’t realize (until years later when I was going to counseling for my divorce), is that the reason I found myself hiding food from him was the same reason he would tell me I was lazy in order to get me to clean the house: He was controlling and emotionally abusive.
All in all, I lost the weight for me, and learned how to eat in the process. I learned how important nutrition is and have continued to make eating right and exercise a part of my lifestyle. And I’m much happier without him in my life.
Point being made………if you marry someone you dont in turn divorce them because they’ve gained or loss weight because it no longer coincides with your physical expectations of what they should look like to appease you. How vain and shallow can you get. If you cant indefinitely love someone “As-Is” then you should never go beyond girl/boyfriend mode. Marriage would be out of the question for those reasons.
I am in the exact same situation. I think we need to accept that men are socialised to focus on the physical. If he’s trying to express his needs rationally, then I think he’s doing his best. My personal choice is to lose weight to the extent that I move into the healthy weight range for my height, accoridng to my BMI. It’s not sensible to be underweight for any man, but it isn’t good for my health or wellbeing to be overweight, so I am prepared to give it a good shot. Good luck Maria with whatever you decide.
Since I live near Kirksville Missouri and know some of the graduates of that medical school, I am very familiar with the theories. Actually, most of the Doctors of Osteopathy that I know are not much different than an MD. Some use that carnial massage and some have totally scrapped it. Their approach is more wholistic, which it good. My husband has had ‘manipulations’ done by a local DO trained at Kirksville and it has helped his back, but did nothing for tinnitus. The doctor does a thorough exam including x-rays or CT scan before he does the technique. I have have been to both DOs and MDs myself, but will not let them touch my neck or head. I have sever arthritis in my neck and one false move would leave me paralyzed. A DO who is careful and well trained could possibly help you if your tinnitus had a stress or musle spasm etiology. All I say is go to a good cautious doctor- which is good advice anyway. Lynne