Evening everyone. I’m after some help and advice. My Fiancé has recently started struggling with her body confidence.
Now me personally I love the way she looks and always have. Most importantly I always will. Do me love is more that just why a person looks like.
Rather selfishly I find that this is causing issues between us. I am constantly reminding her in one way or another of my love for her and my constant attraction to her. Comments like how beautiful she looks today or how nice her clothing suits her etc etc.
Having said that it seems like nothing I can do will change her mind set on how she feels about her body. After a chat about it she said that it’s something she’d struggled with in the past at a younger age before we were even dating.
We aim to go to the gym 3 times a week sometimes more but the last couple of weeks have lapsed due to colds etc. I believe it’s since this period she’s started to worry about he body more.
Has anyone had this problem in the past. I’m looking for more the point of view from the supportive partner but am happy to listen to all views/ideas.
Ask her how she wants you to support her. She might not want you to come up with a solution. She might just want you to listen and acknowledge her feelings.
You could tell her all day long that she’s beautiful to you but if she doesn’t feel it herself, you’re not going to change her mind.
Try a different tactic than going to the gym, she could see that as you wanting her to change her body. She doesn’t see herself how you see her.
Don’t look for logic, because when it comes to body confidence, logic doesn’t exist.
Yes! My OH is gorgeous and i have always punched above my weight with her, but her body confidence has always been low. I just keep reiterating that i love her as she is, and that i wish she could see herself through my eyes.
I think that’s all you can do really, just keep reassuring her.
Well done on being her support and please do so - as a woman we can loose confidence easily and a word or two out of place can go round in our heads a lot
Personally I want to look like I did when I was 18 - tight skin hand boobs that point up but it’s not going to happen
I get fantastic support off my husband and it’s appreciated
Take care
@Sensualcouple2016 I am lacking in body confidence at the moment and as @JoCat says it doesn’t matter how many times I hear there’s nothing wrong with my body, I can’t accept it. I feel like I resemble the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters and from the neck up Zelda from Terrahawks. Other times I’m ok with the way I look, but I’ve never really loved my body. It’s a lot better covered. Sure I’ve sent photos to LH on good days but deleted them all the other day as my confidence took a hit for no reason. I guess you just need to be patient with your OH and know that this phase will pass, but don’t be frustrated if it returns a few weeks/months/years down the line. Hope your OH is ok
Same here, hubby try’s to pay me compliments, no matter how much he tells me, I just don’t see what he does.
Be there, support her and never stop telling her, one day it will sink in xx
Has she been fine for a while and then suddenly gotten worse with it?
If she continues saying she’s not happy with herself it might be worth asking specifically what it is that’s bothering her about her body. Then you might have a better idea of how to target your encouragement, rather than blanket “you’re beautiful” statements (which definitely still have their place it’s just you can get specific)
Sounds like you are already doing what you can, but a turning point for me was when I was trapped in the self loathing spiral and one day my OH said to me “it hurts me that you don’t believe or trust me when I’m telling you these things” or words to that effect. Kind of opened my eyes as I didn’t realise I’d more or less been fobbing off his thoughts and opinions by continually obsessing with my body confidence. A harsh thing to face, but it settled me down a bit.
I don’t think I explained it properly. It’s not me asking her to go to the gym at all. She likes to go to the gym. And says it helps with her confidence
A walk would do for those times you can’t get to the gym. Still get the endorphins going and fresh air!
Might help her on those days a work out is too much
Mrs. Val is the same. Some days I am amazed at how ridiculously beautiful she is and why she still finds me attractive!
However, she does struggle with this too. She feels that lingerie I buy her is simply a costume that she needs to wear for sex for me. I tell her that she doesn’t need to wear any of it as I find her beautiful regardless, however, she wonders why I buy it for her then…
I don’t think in her mind she feels sexy in sexy lingerie. I encourage her to do it for herself and find ways to make herself feel attractive and confident. I sometimes am at a loss for words but struggle with this as well.
If I had a lingerie drawer full of stuff that I could wear under my clothes and no one would know or care, I think it would make me feel prettier and more desirable, like I am keeping a secret! But to her it is something I need her to put on to be attractive to me. Totally the wrong messaging. I feel for you as I am in the same boat a bit…maybe not as bad but Mrs. Val definitely lacks the attractiveness from within and doesn’t see herself in the same way as I do.
I have so much underwear, sexy stuff.
I to feel I wear it for others, to make me look attractive to them, as being me, isn’t enough.
My hubby doesn’t like sexy underwear, and prefers me naked, I am a girl who hides under a vest, so he can’t see my belly, I feel ashamed of my body, and no amount of telling me otherwise will I see it.
For me to feel attractive, I wear holding your belly in thongs, and a black bra, covered with a black vest, to smooth out all my lumps and bumps of child birth and years of an eating disorder. I feel better covered up.
I get that you buy it to make her feel good, he try’s to make me feel good too, just be there and love the skin in which she wears x
Like many other contributors have said, our experience is that the best thing is for you to be gently supportive, whilst not making a big ‘thing’ of it, as that could make things worse. You say you feel it’s causing issues between you now with your constant reminders of your love for her - ‘constant’ might be too much.
Mrs S’s body confidence was never strong but has got better over the last few years, to the point where she wanted to post some lingerie photos here. But I think her renewed confidence is driven by several things - less stress from a job she didn’t like following early retirement, a chance to get a little more exercise that just toned her body rather than radically changing it, eating better, and with less stress in her life generally having the head room to think ‘I like the way I am - f*ck Cosmo, Vogue and all the other magazines’ rather than trying to pursue the perfect body - whatever that is.
So patience, kind support when she needs it, and seeing if there are other stress-inducing issues that might be contributing to this could be the way forward. As someone else has said, don’t look for logic because body confidence is often not about logic - it’s a feeling/view of themselves that only that person has.
Is going to the gym something that you both enjoy / chose to do? Going to the gym can be a great mental health and confidence boost as well as being good for physical health but there can be some issues. If she’s just going because she was worried about her body shape in the beginning then she might feel like she has to keep going otherwise she won’t make any “improvements” and maybe then you won’t like her (not saying this is true, just what she might be thinking). The gym can become addictive and you can start to feel very insecure when you stop going. I found, when I stopped going, that I was convinced that I was going to get fat overnight! Possibly getting back into the gym routine, if you both enjoy it, is the way to go.
Just a thought on your constant reminders… Continue to remind her that you think she’s beautiful because it is probably helping more than you think. But, I wonder if you’ve looked into love languages? It might be that your words don’t mean as much to her as you think. My love languages are very different to my husbands and we have to think about this when we’re communicating. He used to tell me that he found my body beautiful but it meant nothing to me really. But I will always remember when he showed me what he loved about my body by kissing all the parts that he said he liked and i didn’t. There was something about the touch and the time that he had taken over it that changed things for me.
