How do you deal with a self-conscious partner who is not a fan of you looking at her face and body?

27 comments

1. turn off lights, use night vision device and… splinter cell her?

   I don’t know where I’m going with this.

2. I’m that person and it’s hard. Lots of compliments help, and no sarcasm.

3. By not looking at her face and body.

4. My wife fits in this category, and I won’t say I’m right or wrong but I give her all the space she wants. I don’t bother complimenting her anymore because she won’t accept it. Last summer she caught me kinda staring at her in a tank top and short shorts. She asked me what I was doing and I said I’m trying to store this in my memory bank. She walked away and never wore that combo again 😢.

5. Look at her anyway and flood her with compliments and affirmations

6. Convince her to do therapy or, if she doesn’t want that, leave.

7. I don’t think I could be partners with somebody so insecure.

8. Convince her to do therapy? How else are you going to be attracted to your partner otherwise? She has to understand that you’re not doing it bc you think she’s weird, that tou actually like what you see.

9. I tell her that I’m not sure what she sees in the mirror, but I think she is sexy as hell. She usually replies that I’m only saying that because I’m her son.

10. You aren’t going to change this. She has to want to change this

11. She needs therapy. I would break up. Diminishing every compliment and arguing how ugly someone is can suck the energy out of most relationships.

12. Move on.

13. Wear sunglasses 😎

14. I’d recommend hypnotherapy, personally. It’s not my primary focus with clients, but it’s definitely a service I, as well as many others, offer.

    If you aren’t familiar with hypnosis/hypnotherapy, it can seem silly or like an option that’s off the table, but please let me assure you that it couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s simply a matter of working with the subconscious so it’ll help the conscious knock out the thing it’s been struggling with.

    I work with women who need help building up their confidence as well as their lives, and I leave them happier and (in their words, lol) hotter than when I found them, and you would be shocked at how little it takes. The problem is just that we’re all walking computers that are being accidentally bombarded and reprogrammed with the million toxic things we interact with every day.

    She’s a lot closer than you think to being able to change how she feels about herself, and I can say that confidently because we all are. The solutions are all right in front of us, often just needing some language tweeking in order to make it register.

    Do some reading on this as well as NLP and see what you think. Good luck to you both!

15. you dump her ass and you find someone who doesn’t suffer from self-esteem issues. I dated a woman when I was 18, she was 25 years old and despite being older and despite being hot, she had low self-esteem and she’d often complain about her body, which was bizarre considering it was a banging body, and it got to the point when I’d lose my boner with her because of her low self-esteem.

16. Do everything you can to make her feel attractive. Make sure she knows that you fucking love her face and body and would never think anything negative about them. Try that for a while.

    If it doesn’t help, I guess you move on because that shit will get old fast.

17. Years ago I went out with a girl who was almost a never-nude, she was so insecure about her body. She would only have sex with the lights off (pitch black room), and would always wear pjs and cover up as soon as we were done. I kept complimenting her, and making sure she knew how attractive I found her, and eventually she started walking around naked, and getting undressed in front of me. Which obviously I loved, and told her how much I liked seeing her like that.

    So I guess lots of reassurance and time

18. We’d have never made it past a few dates. Insecurity is pretty unattractive to me.

19. Have you ever seen A Ghost Story with Casey Affleck?

20. Honestly, with girls/women like this, it is a mental health issue. I have found good success using the body neutrality model. Acknowledge her body and praise it for how it works and functions. For most people with severe body issues, they’ve internalized outside messages to such an extreme that they are sensitive to any opinion about their body, even the good ones. So just be neutral. Engage her in this effort, too. Look up some stuff online regarding body neutrality to help ease her out of the sensitivity of her body being seen by others so she can focus on its function and how that function benefits her life, rather than the form of her body.

    Regina Spektor has a song with some fun lyrics promoting the function of a body over it’s form called Folding Chair –

    “I’ve got a perfect body
    But sometimes I forget
    I’ve got a perfect body
    ‘Cause my eyelashes catch my sweat”

    Also for clarity, I’m a woman. You will not defeat these issues, she has to have a mentality shift which can only come from her. *But* you can help her shift her mentality with support, evidence, and a new philosophy on how to view a body.

21. Break up maybe? What is the point if you can’t look at her?

22. I think a lot of us get this way. I’ve had a partner turn on the lights and go to town. You can’t complain if your knees are trembling.

23. Dump her.

24. Too much negativity (so far)!! Fuck the hell out of her! Tell her it was great, and she looks great. Compliment her often. Repeat the process frequently, and she will (likely) relax.

25. Find someone else

26. Leave.

27. Try to work on her confidence, build her up and make her believe in herself, ultimately she has to want to make the change first though otherwise you’re just wasting your time