Thank you V, I know you have much on your plate and that you have taken so much time to consider my issues, I feel truly valued and cared for. A lot of love and support has come my way in recent days. I am very humbled and grateful.
I have picked out a few of your comments that resonated for me.
Who wants a long term R with a partner with low self worth? Those who have low self worth themselves? Irrespective of their weight.
This ^^^^^^ is the very question I ask myself V and one of the reasons I struggle. I feel that my self worth is judge on my appearance and any man is looking at me and saying "huh she doesn't care about herself, why should I, oh and she has to be high maintenance, she's gotta have a lot of issues" .
That is why I think you reach points in your R after a period when your weight becomes an issue for you. Your perceived weighting value to your partner changes and you focus on your weight as the defining issue.
I would like to explore this idea some more. I am not quite sure what you might be getting at. My thinking has been that the as familiarity and safety increases, there is more demand for honesty and intimacy. I begin to feel seen and exposed. I think maybe (I really don't know) that I freak out that he is really going to see how unattractive on the inside I am, how messy, how crazy, how broken and as I create issues the avoid further intimacy being created, I feel more and more broken as they lose attraction. To get control back I focus on my outward appearance and weight.
I think I stop self care and grooming as means of pushing my lovely man away. So intimacy stops. A theory V.
Childhood and adult abuse will bring us low self worth, in which extra weight can hide us. Jellyb I have never been overweight until recently, now I am 20 lbs overweight, it feels like protection. It is my grey rock, it makes me think that WH will find me unattractive and will leave me alone. My psyche says 20 lbs is enough, when I am ready it will go.
20 lbs is damaging on a tiny frame like mine, energy and health reducing but not immobilising. 80, 90, 100, 150, 200, 250 lbs as extra weight is gradually more restrictive and life shortening. Would 20 lbs satisfy Jellyb? Can she settle for a lower value of extra weight to serve her protection.
This was my story for a long time V. Men have always scared me. Good and bad men. Bad men are easier for me to understand. I understand the need to protect myself from them. I feel comfortable feeling defended, I have great strategies in place to deal with men that are evasive, avoidant, unavailable, cruel.
I can understand why a bad man would be attracted to me. They have no integrity, they use and are selfish.
Good men freak me out. I can turn them into bad men very easily. I don't understand good men. I never know their agenda. I feel unprepared to deal with them. Are they being nice to me because they are genuinely interested in me and kind or is there something else they want that is going to eventually going to hurt me.
Being on the boards has given me a really good experience of men without having to take an emotional risk. I have let go of some long held beliefs, about men always feeling control, of men not considering woman and their positions. That men are kind and have extraordinarily developed emotional lives.
I am moving away from an emotional gender divide to a more holistic view of humanity and our collective struggle of relationships and emotional complexity.
This has been good learning and healing. But I have no practical knowledge of how this changes my engagement with men.
To ask ourselves for extreme self care is not, as it requires our best not the ideal.
This extreme self care V, I think is a vital piece of healing. I believe there is a direct link here to FOO issues. I don't know what it is, but my denial of self care, the unconscious neglect of self, I feel is cycling through of parental neglect. I don't feel entitled to care, don't know how to do it. A reabusing of sorts. I have such a strong desire to be cared for and protected by the men in my life and when natural distancing occurs or separation to engage in one's special interests and life, I feel neglected and stop self care. I talk about this behaviour as my "little girl" the desire to be cared for by partner and resentment is strong when I stop feeling cared for. Self responsibility and the ability to self soothe have all been behaviours I have been developing. There is a balance required between being little girl being cared for and asking for help (a recent 180).
