I (24F) am overweight. Going by BMI, borderline obese. I’ve lost 40lbs since my highest weight and now I have a lot of loose skin, mostly on my breasts. My body is flabby, loose, and riddled with stretch marks. My bra/back fat is out of control. Disgusting double chin. I have absolutely nothing going for me physically aside from my fucking eyebrows. I’ve hated my body ever since I was 8 and kids bullied me for being chubby (looking back at pictures, I wasn’t even a fat kid– they were just assholes). I can’t seem to undo the damage that’s been done.
My boyfriend (27m) and I have been together for going on 5 years in November. He has always tried to boost my confidence by calling me sexy and beautiful, and he wants to appreciate me and my body by eating me out and giving me massages and things like that.
But I feel that the longer we’re together, I get more and more scared of him touching me or even looking at me without a shirt and pants. I feel guilty that he has to touch someone who looks like me, and I feel even worse that we were eachothers firsts for everything and he could’ve EASILY ended up with someone way hotter. I can’t begin to express the shame I feel that I haven’t gotten to my goal weight after all this time. I shouldn’t have stolen his early/mid 20s by looking like this.
I can’t have sex unless I’m drunk now, but after my therapist and I started working to fix my alcoholism, we don’t have sex at all and he’s clearly suffering. He worries that he’s not attractive enough to me and I can tell he feels hopeless about our sex life. But I’m so turned off by myself that I can’t get wet when I’m sober. Not even slightly. And every lube under the sun burns my vagina and subsequently my urethra no matter how “pure” the formula is. My hatred for how I look outweighs how fucking hot he is to me and I don’t know how to fix it. The thought of having sober sex makes me want to throw up because of how cripplingly anxious it makes me.
I feel like it’s only a matter of time before he finally sees myself how I see myself and before he leaves me because of our dead bedroom. I’m terrified and so sad that he’s spent so long supporting me and lifting me up and still can’t seem to fix how I see myself.
Therapy isn’t working even after 6 long, difficult months. I can’t drink. I don’t know what to do.
4 comments
Operation to remove Loose skin. Getting some muscles might help but depends how bad it is. But Loose more before operation so you dont have to go again.
Look I’ve been the guy in this situation before and I’ll be honest with you — getting rejected over and over really sucks and eventually my attraction withered away, because I was never being reciprocated.
You could lose a ton of weight or whatever and I bet it wouldn’t make a difference, because you’ve got body image issues and you hate yourself. He will never see you as fat or unattractive, but getting rejected over and over is going to take a toll on his self esteem.
Get off of instagram and social media. Stop obsessing over whether or not your boyfriend could be with girls who are “hotter” than you, stop comparing yourself to others. He thinks you’re hot and he wants you. You should work on your weight — for your own health, not for him, because he likes you as you are.
Finally– this is gonna be an unpopular opinion but I think the therapy is no longer a useful deployment of time or money if you feel likes its not helping you. You need to give yourself some hope. Things like flabby skin are temporary conditions resulting from weight loss and can be surgically addressed, for example. Think about solutions, not problems.
I dont have any real advice but your story is really touching.
Hope it’s gonne be ok for you.
Edit: Take this one if you like;
When I think about life in general I see that nothing is temporary, and it’s great that way. Your relationship is not gonna be forever. There are millions of reasons it may end.
But what you can do is enjoy it as much as you can now. I know you may not be in the best mood to do that. That is not a problem because consider that it is a success even if you can enjoy it at say 10%.
What I would do for example is once or twice a week idk try to setup a good environment for sex. (Sorry I have no great word for it). What I mean is on one day, say Friday night, clean your room, put new sheet on, take a great bath, buy some wine, some lingerie, put on some make up, put on some great dress, eat some great food and so on… I think you see where I’m going. Both of you should do it and PUT THE EFFORT.
– If you try this give us some update on how it went.
Going back to the temporary thing: We know we are going to die tommorow, for sure, but we can be happy today.
This idea really helped me in my life. Hope it may help you too.
Love yourself first.