Tw: mentioning of ED.
Me (19F) and my boyfriend (19M) are together for 8 months now. We are really good comunicating our problems so we never had any mayor fights. He was in a really toxic and controlling relationship with his ex for like 4 or 5 years so when we first started talking he was like really controled (ex. He told me where he was at every second of every day, he replied way to fast so i wouldnt get mad, etc) and once that he realized it was behaviour of his toxic relationship he kinda stopped.
My problem is that im really really insecure about myself. I struggle with self image to the point of having an ED. Sometimes i see people online and i cant help myself, i just compare our bodies on instict.
The problem began like 4 months into the relationship when i would get this really weird recommendations of who to follow on instagram, like pages of japanese models and people that uploaded pictures of cute tiny clothes on them. And when i opened the profile i saw that my boyfriend followed them, my heart skipped a beat. I felt terrible, and to myself i thought, ok, maybe he followed them before we started dating, so i slightly mentioned it to him and he said something like oh yeah i like those pages, and i told him that it makes me insecure, but that ofc i dont want to make him unfollow them or something just because it made me feel that way, so he shrugged as in a ‘then why did you brought it up’ way and we stopped talking about it.
Later i find myself obsessing about who my bf is following, i see all those girls in underwear and feel sick to my stomach. Dont get me wrong, i love and trust my bf so much, and ofc i get it that he could find someone else attractive, thats not my problem, the thing i have its that if he walked by a girl that he finds attractive, it would be fine, it happens to me also, but following a really big amount of those accounts its what gets me really weird and insecure. And i seriously don’t want to be controlling like his ex, (who i compare myself even with the little information i have on her) i dont want to be telling him to unfollow all those pages bc it makes me feel insecure, and i seriously dont know what to do, because i feel really really bad every time i remember this, or get another sugestion on who to follow, i just keep loking all those pictures and thinking that my bf its enjoying them, and i would never be that skinny or that hot.
Should i tell him? I really dont want him to feel controled or resent me bc he likes those pages and has to unfollow them for me 🙁
2 comments
The primary topic here is your ED. If you didn’t have the problems with self image to the point that you have an ED then this wouldn’t even be a conversation because you would feel secure that your boyfriend likes you. Focus on solving this problem first and foremost.
In the mean time though, I think you make a mistake about your boyfriend’s feeling. You assume that he wants to be as skinny as the people he looks at online. That’s likely not true. Very few people have a very specific type of person they are attracted to. Most people can be attracted to people of different shapes and sizes. So while you work on your self-esteem and ED with a therapist keep in mind that your boyfriend finding someone else attractive doesn’t make you any less attractive.
He should just unfollow them if he cares about you, it’s not gonna kill him if he doesn’t follow models on instagram, he can just watch porn instead.