Worried You’re Too Fat For Your Partner? (I Get It) Here’s What To Do

Last week I asked you if you had any questions for me or topics you wanted me to talk about, and I received so many beautiful requests, thank you! I love knowing what you need, and I am here for you. I’m going to try to get through most of them over the next few months. If you have something you want to learn more about, you can just let me know.

The question that hit me like a ton of bricks was, “How can I feel like I’m good enough for my partner despite my weight?”

I have worried about this since the moment I met Jonathan (and every guy before him) and this is something almost all of my clients struggled with, so we talk about it A LOT.

I am happy to report that after years of worrying I wasn’t good enough for Jonathan because of my weight, I no longer feel this way. I have a deep knowing that he is the luckiest man on earth to be with me AND I am also not at my ideal weight right now.

I spent so long thinking I needed to look a certain way in order for our relationship to feel amazing, and now, here I am in a relationship that has never been better in a body that has never been worse, so I know without a doubt that the two are not related. Let me walk you through a few truths on the matter…

1. The reason we are programmed to think we are not worthy of our partners because of our weight is that we have attached so many character flaws to our physical state. Subconsciously we believe that if we are overweight we are also lazy, unsexy, stressed out, grumpy, frumpy, masculine, volatile, flat, etc, etc. Now, you may be that way, but that has nothing to do with your weight. Those character traits come from not nurturing the parts of us we want to exude, usually, because we are putting so much energy into trying to lose weight whilst ignoring becoming the person we long to become. Take some time to identify what characteristics you are associating with being overweight and then get real with yourself. Are you actually that way? If so, do you long to be different? How can you put attention to those qualities directly instead of solely focusing on your weight?

2. So here’s the deal, not only is it not true that you are unworthy because of your weight, but it’s also not true that you are unworthy because of how you are acting, what is true is that you feel unworthy of your partner has nothing to do with them at all! You feeling unworthy of them just means that you don’t like yourself, or that you are not living up to your potential. It is so easy to project how we are feeling about ourselves onto our partners and blame it on our weight but when we peel back the layers, it just means we aren’t completely in love with ourselves.  Let me give you an example. Since having Annabelle I have not felt sexy at all. At first, I went into this whole thing about how because I had gained weight since having Annabelle that Jonathan didn’t think I was sexy. Then I remembered that sexiness comes from within not from how I look so I judged myself for not cultivating my sexiness for my relationship. AND THEN I asked myself if I longed to feel sexier for me. Nope. Here’s the reality, that part of me will come back, and I nurture it a little bit more every day, but I am letting myself sink into this postpartum phase and give it the space it deserves (a blog post for another time). All of this is to say, when you follow the thread back to yourself, you may find you have total acceptance for that part of you, especially when you know there will be a time and place to cultivate it in the future.

3. This is the most important one: you are not your body. You have a body, you are not a body. Your partner married a whole, dynamic, multilayered, complicated woman! Saying you are not worthy of your partner because of your weight is like saying you aren’t worthy of your partner because of your shoe size, your hair color, or your ethnicity. I can’t believe my husband married me, I have size 9 feet! Can you imagine? This is the thing I keep coming back to in my relationship right now. I am still me, even if my tummy is stretched out and my cheeks are chubbier.  I am still fun, loving, interesting, and smart, and I don’t let my weight dim those things (this is key).

It is a terrible feeling to believe we are not worthy of our partners and it is even harder to not truly love ourselves. The best first step is to separate how we look from the way exist in the world and then we can do the work to accept the way we are and grow in certain areas if we choose to. What I have seen with myself and the many women I’ve worked with in Holy Woman is that when we are taking care of the human/soul part of us, which will allow us to feel unconditional love in our relationship, it is so much easier to take care of our bodies and move towards feeling physically strong and energized, but then that’s just icing on the cake!

Being a woman isn’t always easy, and we need each other to move through some of these difficult topics. If you know someone who is struggling with this or who may find this helpful, I hope you’ll send them this article. Why stay on the surface when we can get deep and real with each other?

If you know it’s time for your husband to do some inner work, encourage him to check out my husband’s Men’s Work program. Jonathan is the only board-certified integrative Urologist in the country and he believes that inner work can heal men’s bodies. He’s brilliant, and he has helped hundreds of men deal with their own shit so they can show up in their full power.

In the comments, I would love to know if you’ve experienced this feeling before. Now that you have some insight, what do you think it’s actually about?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Love,

Sarah