Should your S.O./Spouse have a say so if they feel you are too thin or too large?

While we're on the subject of amazing love stories...

I've been staying out of this thread for a few days, trying to figure out why some of the attitudes in here bother me so much, and apparently bother others as well. I didn't really want to bump the thread again, but now that it has been bumped...

My feeling is that the reason that so many of us are bothered by such a hard line on this concept that a physical appearance can be such an important part of a relationship that it is worth ending things over... is that for many of us, who have been in committed relationships at healthy weights and unhealthy weights - and who now are making a commitment to become healthy again - this concept suggests that many of us would now be going through this process alone, because our partner would have ended things. At the end of the day, as we always tell people who complain on these forums about their spouse sabotaging them, it IS up to the individual to make the change, no one can do this for you. However, it certainly can help to have a supportive spouse - and if my husband (who has never been overweight, he's not particularly physically fit but he's not unfit either) decided to kick me to the curb because I didn't lose the pregnancy weight, or I kept gaining even after the kids had gotten older, then where would that put me? That is such an unfathomable thought for me, because my husband is so caring and understanding, but hypothetically, if he had said that I needed to lose the 30 lbs or he would be out the door, it wouldn't have been enough to motivate me to lose the weight I don't think. I wasn't ready to lose the weight when my youngest was 1. I wasn't even ready when he was 2. It wasn't till my own mom died that I decided it was time to stop pretending that weight gain is just what happens to all of us as we get older, and I couldn't do anything about it. If my husband had said, "I'm not attracted to you, lose the weight or I'm leaving", I don't think that would have resulted in me losing the weight to save my marriage. It would have made me an angry, bitter, overweight, divorced, single mother of two kids. But he's not like that. And when I did make up my mind to lose the weight, and have been working on it and maintaining the loss for a few years now - he was encouraging and supportive and complimentary and definitely frisky, but I never doubted the love he felt when I was overweight or now that I'm back to the lowest weight I've been since college.

And to think that there are people in this world, that would end things, over something like that, is I think why there have been such strong reactions in this thread. People change over time - they change in appearance, they change their hobbies, they change careers, they change many things. To expect that one thing must never change, no matter what circumstances life throws at you, and to have such an inflexible attitude about it - just isn't something that I can fathom as being a mature, realistic approach to life and to relationships.

Ok - back to movie quotes!

I don't see why considering another person shallow or self - absorbed, and determining that is a bad characteristic for a long term relationship, is bad and judgmental, but considering another person fat and lazy is just personal sexual preference that is above reproach.

We all have different values in life. We don't have to think all values are equal. We may have to live with our own choices in the context of our own values.

pinuplove wrote: »

heiliskrimsli wrote: »

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

^^That. That is why some of us are so flabbergasted that anyone would dump someone over what is not even a significant weight gain. Because we understand being in love with the person Not the package they come in.

Loving someone and being interested in being in a monogamous and sexual relationship with them are two very different things.

No matter how many fictional movies someone quotes, the reality is that you don't choose what physically turns you on or off, and nobody is required to be in a monogamous and sexual relationship with someone they are not sexually attracted to. That doesn't make them a bad person for leaving.

How did I know you'd come back and take a swing at the 'fictitious movie quotes'?

Maybe somebody should've quoted Fifty Shades of Bollocks Grey instead.