Me and my OH have been together just under 3 yrs but in the past 12months our sex life has hit the floor!! Granted she has gained a little weight since we've been together. She was a size 12 with 36B bust but has gone up to a size 16 with 38D bust. She says sex is lacking due to her confidence due to weight, I think she looks amazing, I complement her all the time, ive tried buying her sexy lingerie to boost her confidence but I can't do right for doing wrong. Any tips/advice?
If her weight is bothering her, and she's fine communicating that with you, maybe the best way is to work ok your fitness and diet together? Go swimming, start cooking healthily together to split the burden, avoid buying snacks for either on you etc. Having a fitness buddy is a real help when it comes to getting your motivation up to get going and I always find once I've started again a week or two I start feeling much better in myself.
We both joined the gym in September, I do most of the cooking anyway, she is wanting to lose weight so im giving her motivation to do it
TBH I think your half way there in boosting her confidence by complimenting her .
Perhaps you need to tackle it from another angle. Put romance back into your relationship . OK I am perhaps old fashioned in this regard but take her out to dinner and treat her like a lady . Buy her some flowers and make her feel special . If she has had a sh*t day at work listen to her and perhaps offer her a massage to relax her. Cuddle her a little more and have an old fashioned snog on the settee. Just try and forget about sex for a while and concentrate on all these options .Another words pamper her.
If there are no other undrerlying issues then sex will follow at some stage but just be patient.
Keep up the good work. Your cooking so enduring a healthy diet and you've both joined a gym. All you can do is wait I'm sure when she loses a little and starts to feel confident again the sex will return. Your comunicating, so it's likely to be just a waiting game I'm afraid.
mysteron wrote:
TBH I think your half way there in boosting her confidence by complimenting her .
Perhaps you need to tackle it from another angle. Put romance back into your relationship . OK I am perhaps old fashioned in this regard but take her out to dinner and treat her like a lady . Buy her some flowers and make her feel special . If she has had a sh*t day at work listen to her and perhaps offer her a massage to relax her. Cuddle her a little more and have an old fashioned snog on the settee. Just try and forget about sex for a while and concentrate on all these options .Another words pamper her.
If there are no other undrerlying issues then sex will follow at some stage but just be patient.
This...I.met my partner and I was a size 14/16 now a 18/20 and I went though a time where I felt I was too fat and ugly and I really went of sex for ages...my partner kept telling me I was beautiful..I didn't believe him...but then we started going at least once a month..he surprises me with flowers and gifts and notes sometimes ( still needs to do this more hehe) and slowly our sex life got better..add in lingerie from lovehoney that fits well and enhances the positives and I feel sexier than what I did when I was smaller..but don't stop he stills takes me out even though our sex life is back xxx
as above, by keeping supportive, and by saying "i think you look great, but if you want to lose weight then we'll do this together" you're doing what you need and over time I'm sure things will get better - it won't happen overnight though.
Also as mysteron says, setting the mood by making the romance the priority can mean that sex happens more naturally and without the hangups. The expectation of sex can be very off putting if you're already worrying about it.
mysteron wrote:
TBH I think your half way there in boosting her confidence by complimenting her .
Perhaps you need to tackle it from another angle. Put romance back into your relationship . OK I am perhaps old fashioned in this regard but take her out to dinner and treat her like a lady . Buy her some flowers and make her feel special . If she has had a sh*t day at work listen to her and perhaps offer her a massage to relax her. Cuddle her a little more and have an old fashioned snog on the settee. Just try and forget about sex for a while and concentrate on all these options .Another words pamper her.
If there are no other undrerlying issues then sex will follow at some stage but just be patient.
Mysteron, the perfect husband!
Definatley romaning her will help her no end to feel wonderful. Send some flowers to her work place, leave an outfit on the bed with instructions and tell her to be ready at such and such time as you're going out, surprise her and take her away for the weekend. Leave notes in her coat and jacket pockets. I know exactly how your partner feels here, and the more you can show her that you love her, the more she'll good in herself, trust me.
As a bigger lady myself (who finds it very hard to lose weight due to having type 1 diabetes and pcos) I think joining the gym and encouragement is very good, but really do express that you find her increadibly sexy NOW. If shes feeling a lack of confidence she may not actually believe you when you say she's sexy (and encouraging her to go the gym is great, but be aware that she may see this as you trying to get her back to a more attractive shape).
I am confident in myself these days, after 16 years of being told that I'm beautiful by my husband (who has the total opposite physique to me! Fit, Lean and tall) it's only now that I feel ok with myself. We have a great sex life even though I'm not particularly happy with my body, I shrug that feeling off because both myself and him deserve to have great sex and you can't have great sex with body hang ups getting in the way. my husband also loves my curves, he loves to grab them and tells me that he wouldnt get as turned on anyway if I was lean and hard to the touch (we say we fancy each other precicely becuase we are total opposites). We do exercise and eat healthily but it is done for enjoyment and health, not because I need to change my looks.
all in all, I think you're doing great! Sit her down and express to her that you dont want her to feel bad. You think she's gorgeous now, and she doesnt need to change to be attractive to you. It will be hard for her to let go of this anxiety, but a fabulous partner goes a long way - trust me.
It sounds like you're doing everything right. Romancing her and all that would be lovely (as it would for any woman) but it sounds like you're pinning too much of the blame on yourself here. The fact of the matter is, from what you have said, you are already being as supportive and loving as you need to be to be a 'good' partner.
I think it's very important to realise that her low self esteem is NOT coming from you, and thus it is not your job to fix it, or rather you are not physically able to fix it; all you can do is support her, and you have been. So while trying harder would be great to make her feel even more special, don't run yourself into the ground trying harder and harder expecting a result because you can't make her feel good about herself, only she can do that. You're the supportive role, she is the one who must work on it (either through improving herself or impoving her perception of herself).
When she rejects your compliments, it isn't because they aren't good enough. When you try to tell her and show her how beautiful you think she is and she rejects it, that is not because you are not trying hard enough; it is because when someone has a very low self image and someone praises anything about them, it makes them uncomfortable because it is directly conflicts with their own beliefs. The automatic reaction is to shy away from the compliment, to believe it is a lie because it doesn't match up with what they themselves believe to be true, to deflect it. It really is important to understand this, because if you don't then either you'll keep trying more and more and feel like you're hitting your head against a brick wall or you'll feel the urge to give up and stop complimenting her at all (why bother if she just throws it back at you everytime logic).
It's still important to tell her that you do love her as she is now and that you don't feel she needs to change, but don't let that become an excuse for her not to change because she does need to, whether she changes by losing weight or changes by becoming genuinely okay with being the weight she is now (which is the better option honestly, but some women can't accept being a larger size than what they'd like). She needs to be the one to do something about her low body confidence as ultimately, while your compliments are still very important, they alone won't change the way she thinks about herself. She has to do that. In fact, giving more and more lavish compliments can actually have a negative effect in making the person feel they have to live up to a much higher standard or you'll cease caring for them at all. So keep the compliments genuine and don't think that more of them automatically equals getting it into her head that what you are saying is true.
I'd also make sure that while you're supporting her wth healthy eating and working out that you let her know the end goal is not that she'll have sex with you regularly or that she'll finally look attractive to you, it's that you want her to be happy with herself. Sometimes good support from a partner can be misinterpreted by the other and lead them to think along the lines of 'oh he did want me to change, he was lying when he said he found me attractive at x weight' or the ven more bitter 'oh he just wants me to lose weight because he thinks he'll get sex again'. Big old vicious cycle, eh? So just keep reminding her it's her happiness you want :)
TLDR keep on supporting her, don't think you can 'fix' her by trying harder and try not to be hurt when she doesn't seem to appreciate your compliments. She is the one who has to make the change and you can't force that or speed it up, you can simply go at her pace and continue supporting.