Because men don't express their emotions as overtly as women, I think sometimes women can believe or act as if men don't have them. If a man doesn't cry or complain, he must not have been hurt.

I don't know how common it is elsewhere, but at least in all the places I've lived in the midwest, it's really common for women to treat their men like dirt and yet expect to be treated like princesses. Women's bad behavior towards their significant others is accepted, but men are held to a higher standard.

I'm not saying this is true of OP, but it's so common in my experience that I do tend to assume it's the situation elsewhere. Where I live at least, it's far more acceptable for a woman to bash men (generally and individually) than it is for men to bash women. A woman can say all sorts of things about men and it's just "venting" but when a man says something even remotely unchivalrous it causes a giant uproar. Maybe that's not true everywhere, but that's my experience.

I've seen women say a long string of horrible things to their guy and then be outraged if he responded even slightly negatively. Telling everyone who will listen what a b****** he is for being less than Prince Charming, and mostly everyone agrees with her. Other women tell her to "dump him" even when they heard the far worse things she said to him.

Even when confronted I've had women friends say "that's different," implying that it is ok to say horrible things to men, but it's not ok for men to say anything even remotely rude to a woman.

And I guess that is a cultural stereotype - because we see it in movies and literature all of the time. The woman treats a man like dirt and she knows he's "the one" because he treats her like a queen anyway.

It may be the stereotype, but it's not the kind of man I want in real life. It's nice for fantasy, but in real life I don't want a doormat, I want an equal partner who isn't going to hold me to a different standard than he has for himself.

Tricon7:

Yeah, for a lot of men, it IS the fat that turns them off, but what's your point in saying so and how does it help Porthardygurl to think of it this way? We're not talking in a vacuum; we're responding to one person's post about how she felt in a very uncomfortable situation. If I spent all my time thinking about all the ways in which my body doesn't match up to a porn star's, I'd make my poor husband miserable: "Turn the lights off!" "Ugh, don't touch my belly, it's so wobbly!" "Don't hug me, my arm fat is noticeable when you do that!"

It's just...not constructive to think that way. I'm fortyish and still fat (although considerably lighter than I had been), but does that mean I should pillory myself for no longer meeting a standard that I last met in my early 20s or that I should don the Western equivalent of a burqa so I don't turn anyone off? I don't believe it does, nor do I believe PHG should continue to feel so bad about herself that she denies herself and her boyfriend intimacy.

That doesn't mean that someone who's fat should just not worry about losing weight. There are more reasons than I can count for wanting to be at an average/normal/healthier weight. Yeah, physical pulchritude is one of those reasons too. I'm just saying that a healthy love life isn't predicated solely on where your partner would rate you from 1 to 10.

I'm sorry if my original post wasn't clearer about this. I didn't mean that he should apologize for being honest. I meant that when you're honest with someone about something painful, it can remove some of the sting if you preface or follow it with an, "I'm sorry that this hurts you." I never meant to imply that it was a one-way street.

But to flip it around, what's the larger partner supposed to do--spend every day apologizing for eating off plan? In PHG's case, it's pretty clear she feels rotten about how she looks; she probably has become apologetic about it. I know that at my biggest, I felt that way--I actually remember thinking (but never saying), "Oh, my poor husband...he deserves better than this body of mine."

I probably don't need to tell you how such thinking affected our love life. No one's happy when one partner feels apologetic all the time. Whether that feeling arises from being fat or from having said something honest in too blunt a fashion, it's a killer to any kind of spark.

I think it's interesting that you mention having heard it a lot from "women" and that it's the "woman's downward spiral" and "women act like they're the only ones affected." If you look a few posts above your own, you'll see a post from a woman who is facing her own discomfort with her husband's weight. This isn't a gendered issue; I'm not sure why you have made it one. I certainly don't think it is.

A couple of reasons. One being that things can sound worse than they were once repeated in the way that a person took it. Once things get passed around a few times the entire tone can change.

The other being that the OP said in her first post that she had asked him last week whether or not her weight affected their sex life. After people commenting that she had asked his opinion and he was honest she changed that. In her follow-up post she said she had asked him that but it had been a few months ago. I actually brought that up to her in one of my earlier posts.

I'm not sure a lot of this is helpful for the OP. She's reached out for support about a particular issue, and now posters are arguing with each other about the details.

I'm going to go ahead and close this thread. Porthardygurl, if you are finding this helpful, please PM me and I will open it again.