Last night my (29f) boyfriend (29m) shared that he feels less attracted to me than he used to, partly due to newly living together where he naturally sees me in more sweats/pajamas, partly due to my remote job that I dress comfortably for, and partly due to feelings of complacency in our relationship.
This obviously crushed me and made me feel ugly and unwanted by the person who is supposed to make me feel beautiful. I told him that I am always attracted to him because I love him so much, so to me this means that we must love each other differently. He said that’s not a fair assumption to make and that it’s more about effort for him than anything else. He iterated that on an emotional and intellectual level, he loved me more than ever and just felt physically different due to the complacency we were experiencing as two people who now live together and don’t go out much.
As we continued the conversation, he shared that since this was his longest relationship (1.5 years) he was struggling with the transition from a more fun, lustful love to the comfortable, less shiny love that comes with long-term dating. I can empathize with that as I feel that way myself sometimes and wonder if he just chose extremely poor words when he chose to share this with me.
On one hand, I always want us to feel comfortable sharing how we are feeling with each other and appreciate him sharing as this is clearly important to him and how he feels attraction. On the other, I now find myself over-analysing what every past comment about my appearance really meant and am worried for how it will effect the atmosphere of our relationship.
We discussed openly that a comment like this could lead to a really unhealthy body image issue for me if we aren’t careful and he promised to make an effort to make me feel beautiful even when I am not dressed up. I also told him that if he wants me to dress up for him, he needs to be more intentional about creating opportunities to dress up (as I mentioned, I work remotely and already told him that a day-to-day change from me will not be happening – my comfort at work comes first) and to be more vocal about his expectations by saying something like “wear that dress I love” or “let’s look cute and go out together tonight”.
Despite these communications, today I just feel hurt and felt a new pressure in the morning to look nice when I normally wouldn’t have. His comment is already effecting my feelings towards myself and him.
Does anyone have advice on how to move forward? Is there something more we both could be doing? Does a comment like this ever really go away once it’s said out loud? Help!
TL;DR my boyfriend asked for more physical effort from me to look nice for him as he is feeling complacent and it’s now effecting my image of myself and our relationship.
7 comments
You deserve to be with someone who finds you attractive and beautiful no matter what you’re wearing.
I personally would not be able to stay with someone who doesn’t find me attractive when I’m wearing loungewear. I work from home so I’m always wearing PJ pants and a Tshirt. Whenever we are home after work or on weekends, I’m wearing a Tshirt and PJ pants/shorts.
That being said, it’s possible that your boyfriend just needs something new and exciting to feel those sparks again. It may not be that he isn’t attracted to you, but that you have been having less sex, or he wants to be more adventurous during sex, or he wants to go on dates to relight the flame. It may be a case of poor wording/communication.
It’s up to you on whether you want to continue with this relationship. If you think it’s a case of needing to do something different or get out of the house or whatever, give it a try!
This is confusing to me. I think there is something that was not discussed OP. Because clothing is just one small thing that attracts someone. Hell most people don’t care what their S/O is wearing as long as they take if off for sex (with exceptions of course). You may be more relaxed and in loungewear, but that doesn’t stop him from imagining you out of said clothing.
How long have you been living together?
The reason I ask is because I don’t think it has to do with clothing. It might just be that when you two weren’t living together, every time you spent the night at his place (or vise versa) there was some sexy time. Now that laying in the same bed every night, that percentage of sexy time *feels* less. Personally, I don’t like being rejected by my S/O when I’m wanting sex, but trying to be respectful there were times I withdraw, both to try and be respectful to her, and to protect myself.
The other things I can offer are this: Always shut the door when using the restroom. Lady bits to me are supposed to be sexy and bathroom stuff ain’t sexy. He should do the same. Don’t shower together all the time, but when you do make it special and a bit intimate – doesn’t have to be sex, but it can be sexy.
If he likes some sexy talk, let him know that the loungewear may be on, but nothing else is on underneath – Stuff like that to let him know what you’re thinking.
Lastly – Transitioning to living together and long term can be a bit of a change, but the biggest issue (as you’ve hinted at) is that you shouldn’t stop dating each other. Make efforts for dates. Both dress up some, get flowers for each other, send naughty texts during work. Deliver on the dirty promises made from those texts. If he is really into you looking professional (i.e. blazer or modest dress) then hell, ask if a day he is home, if you want to dress up for him that is work appropriate one day. I’m not saying every day or every week, but effort.
You don’t. When someone loses attraction that’s just how it is. I was 10 years younger and a lot more attractive than my ex, with a very good education where he had no education type of job. I went to work. I stayed the same weight and person.
When I moved in he still quickly lost attraction and our sex life died. He had a real problem with moving in with people. He was a serial long term dater, but it always ended at 3-4 years max… Because that was when he stopped valuing a partner + he really was not happy living with someone and having to consider anyone else (and I made it super easy for him, painted his house for him because it needed to be done, accepted that he didn’t want to eat dinner together, etc etc etc).
He doesn’t value you. It’s not your fault. You’re awsome, and you’ll see your worth again as soon as you’re out of there. I try to avoid recommending people break up, but this is one of those cases where there’s nothing to salvage. He is treating you like shit and then blaming it on you, trying to make you make all of the effort for his sake. Fuck that! I stayed with my fucking ex until he asked me to move out while not breaking up. He knew he’d never get someone as good as me again and tried to mistreat me. I mean I worked 70 km away and spent 2,5 hours a day in a car a day for this asshole……. Learn from me and leave before you look back and wonder what the heck did I think accepting all of that shit and not moving out until asked to do so😅 it’s damn hard but you can do it!!
Hey, I somewhat agree with some of these comments but also am totally in your headspace right now because I had an almost identical conversation with my boyfriend of 14 months a couple weeks ago. My reaction was different though, and our conversations have been pretty constructive and freeing, and things are looking up. Something about sharing intimacy related details online, even anonymously, feels wrong, so DM me if you want to chat.
In my situation, we hit a lull after we started to get really emotionally intimate past the honeymoon phase, and I got crazy cognitive dissonance surrounding how it seemed like he was turned off by my advances. I tried my best to not let it get to me because we were going up & up in connectedness, but you can only gaslight yourself until there’s one undeniable action/sexual rejection that makes you explode. I did and we had a long series of talks after I’d cooled down. He talked about how he’d never been in a relationship long enough to know what comes next, after the excitement of novelty wears off. We’re both psychology PhD students so, thankfully, we’re both authentically open-minded about the fact that satisfaction in long-term monogamy can be learned, so we ended up suggesting some concrete things to try and I feel the chemistry coming back.
My reaction has been very different from yours and I acknowledge that my bf and I likely had an advantage in communicating about it given our line of work. The calmness I feel after finally hearing him say what was bothering him makes me feel more separated from whatever dynamic was partially causing the “friendzone” process,” which has both freed my mind and created some space to build desire back up again.
IMO, moving in together really only works when there is an intent to move the relationship forward and moving in facilitates that.
Moving in “just cause” has a really dangerous tendency to make ill-matched people resigned to being stuck with each other.
For your boyfriend to think your relationship should stay the exact same after cohabitating makes me think he’s not mature enough for the next step, or that he never really was thinking of the next step.
Honestly he seems immature and inconsiderate. First of all, any adult who expects their partner to be all dressed up at home all the time has unrealistic expectations. And secondly, he couldn’t think through this problem himself first?? He couldn’t come up with the idea of suggesting you dress up for date night by himself?? He must not be much of a critical thinker.
He needs to learn to think before he talks.
I think you guys are out of the honeymoon phase, and now are starting to realize the meat and potatoes of a relationship. If you guys are early in the relationship this is great because at least you found out now rather than later when you are deeper in the relationship and even before kids which complicate matters worse. Time to have the talk and really start thinking about short term future and if there is really even a future here. Consider yourself lucky that this came out now cause it’s way simpler to just break it off, hurt a bit, and find someone who will appreciate you for you (yes even without the hot clothes and makeup).