Size is weighing on our sex life
Robyn Salisbury explores a relationship dilemma.
I don’t love this time of year with all its articles about ‘‘sexy summer bodies’’. I’m a good size 20 now and it’s not just on the beach that I feel awkward but in the bedroom as well. My husband and I have been together 10 years and we always had a pretty good sex life, but with each of my three pregnancies I’ve gained more weight and I don’t think he’s attracted to me now.
He says it’s not my size – he’s just worn out by work and the kids – but he looks the other way when I’m naked and has started criticising what I eat and just being colder. I could count the number of times we had sex in 2017.
My GP suggested I’m an emotional eater, and I’m working on changing my habits, but this rejection isn’t helping. I feel like, with three kids under seven, I can’t afford to leave him, and I also can’t find the time to even go for a walk. I’m in a trap.
Daily rejection is indeed destructive, it can really grind you down, but sadly you cannot make your husband change – only he can do that.
There is definitely no such thing as too fat for sex or too fat to be loved so I want to focus this response on how YOU are treating you. As you improve that you will feel more on top of life, you’ll know you deserve better and be able to have some choices about how you live and love and with whom.
Try to differentiate between the signs in your body of physical hunger versus emotional or beckoning hunger.
I’d encourage you each time the idea of food enters your mind when you know you’re not physically hungry to get out of the kitchen/bakery/supermarket, take just two minutes to check in with yourself and find the word to name exactly what you are feeling underneath the urge to eat.
Basically your choices will be variations of sad, glad, mad or scared. Maybe add in bored and tired.
Acknowledge it and ask yourself if you are willing to be with that feeling – actually make space for it and gently support yourself rather than squash emotional wisdom down under another packet of biscuits.
You may find Geneen Roth’s Feeding the Hungry Heart a helpful guide.
Don’t fall into the trap of those magazine messages of ‘‘only slim is acceptable’’, your task is to accept you as you are now and learn to take very good care of you.
Three kids under seven will, for sure, generate a heavy workload and lots of mothers abuse food as their only form of ‘‘self-care’’.
Leave the worn out disinterested hubby at home with the kids and go for a walk or to the gym or something that appeals to you a couple of nights a week. Preferably with a friend or to a gym class especially for mums or people struggling with weight so you don’t have to motivate yourself in isolation.
It will feel really hard the first few times but then you’ll get hooked because you will catch the buzz. Inhabiting and accepting your body is the best way to reclaim confidence and radiate vitality.
If by chance hubby finds you appealing then, it’ll be an opportunity for a heart to heart where you let him know how hurtful he’s been and how clearly he has some emotional work to do for himself while you consider your options.
❚ Robyn Salisbury is a clinical psychologist; MrsSalisbury@sextherapy. co. nz.