Dear Adri,

This may be a strange question, but I’m not quite sure where and how to ask. I feel that if I mention this to my guy friends, they’ll think I’m weird, and I don’t have any girl friends. I’m almost thirty and my girlfriend is almost thirty-four, which she maintains is a huge difference. Lately, I’ve gained weight and so has she, we’ve both been happy and plump and good, joking about how we literally decided to grow fat together. But, soon after talking about wedding plans, my girlfriend has started freaking out about it, all the time. She’ll mention how fat she is at the most awkward of moments (during sex and in front of my family). And then she’ll mention how fat I am. I don’t really care at all. I love her as she is. I want to marry her. But she doesn’t want to get married because she’s afraid of being fat in the wedding pictures. I try to tell her she’s beautiful, but she always says that it’s because I’m fat that I think fat is pretty. How do I make this not matter anymore? She’s been trying to lose weight for a year, not successfully. She’s thinking about surgery, telling me I should do it with her, and I’m afraid to tell her that her obsession is now hurting our relationship. I keep saying, you need to relax. She doesn’t have that many girlfriends, and all her guy friends think she’s great, but she ignores them because “they’re dudes.” I can’t even get her to go see a therapist. She won’t talk to anyone else about it. And now she’s just giving me the silent treatment. So how do I make my girlfriend understand that 1) I am fine being a chubs 2) I am fine with her being a chubs and 3) that being chubs is not the worst thing in the world.

-Mr. Chubs

This is a dificult question for me to answer. In fact, I’ve been sitting on this for a couple of weeks now, trying to figure out how to best articulate my thoughts on the matter, but I’m still not sure. I want to say that the weight doesn’t matter, that it shouldn’t matter, and that your girlfriend is crazy. But the truth is, it does and she’s not.

I once got dumped for being fat. True story. A long-time love told me he was no longer attracted to me, because I’d put on some weight. Well, what kind of relationship could two people have when one was no longer attracted to the other? I hated him. I hated him so much for making me feel inadequate and freakish. And I argued with myself about it, I still do. Went through cycles of feeling disgusting and huge. Stopped looking at myself in the mirror — it’s amazing how one can get used to only looking at their face and ignoring the rest of the body. I justified that I hadn’t really gained that much weight, citing my now tighter (“but still fitting!”) clothes as a product of age and not of laziness. I told myself that I’d only gained about five pounds a year, but I kept ignoring the fact that after eight years, that added up to quite a sum. I would tell myself that I still played racquetball, and that I only got winded climbing up the stairs at school, because, hey, those stairs are steep! And I told myself that I was pretty. That I wasn’t ugly. But did I believe it? No. Not really.

Why would I? Hanging in my closet were old shirts that now looked comically tiny when I wormed my way in, old pants that couldn’t fit over my legs, and tiny dresses that fit more like tight rubber than loose fabric. It wasn’t a lie — the weight was there. I could feel it when I walked, I felt it when I sat down and my little belly poofed out instead of wrinkling in. And I started buying larger clothes — slowly at first. I wasn’t quite ready to admit that I wasn’t a size 7 juniors anymore. I was a size 12 lady. But I thought this a temporary admission, I mean I had to wear something. I did my best to make myself seem small, my wardrobe got darker and my clothes baggier. Forty pounds are not easy to hide. And at 5’2″, we’re not talking a shapely padding. We’re talking full on chubs.

Now, I know I’m still not huge-huge at all. I’m still less than average. But I’m a lot  more than me, the me I used to be. And even though I haven’t been me since early college, that’s the me I imagine. That the me I want to see in the mirror. Not pin-thin, but without the extra ounces of glycerol obscuring what had once been (dare I say it) the hotness of my youth. Then again, we all gain weight. No one looks like they did when they were eighteen, except hollywood starlets who can afford personal trainers and freaky anorexics who hate themselves and food. I decided it was okay to hate yourself if you still loved food. So I learned to be all right with the gain. I was, after all, still the same person.

But I wanted my love to love me that way. I thought about my mother and her cancer. The way time and illness turned her body into a jigsaw puzzle, with light pink scars tracing what used to be young and silly and taught and something completely different. And I thought about age and life — how it changes you.  How the wear of skin and the layers of fat carry you — a visual reminder of who you are, and in my case, the many meals I’ve enjoyed. I used to laugh and say to myself, “well, at least I tasted every pound that went in.” And it was delicious. And I loved it. And I do still.

But I’m trying to change. I’m trying to get rid of all my dirty habits and avoid the quick solutions. My grandmother offered me liposuction, and I had to refuse. It is too much of a risk. And it never seems right. I have aunts of who have plasticked themselves shiny and new, but the packaging never looks good — the way anything repackaged and reconstructed appears. There’s something for doing it the old way. So I’m dieting. But not a quick, easy, fabulous diet. Just a slow, eating-better kinda diet. And I’m running. A couple of miles a day. It’s not coming off fast, and I’m certainly not running that fast, but I hope it will come off steadily as my pace increases with time.

I still find myself sabotaging the intention. Craving and giving into a cupcake or peanut butter covered whoppers (how sinful an invention!) or anything at Whataburger (I’m only in Texas for a little while!), but I understand that I do this to myself. So much in diet culture do we see ourselves as victims — and some of us are. Some folk are dealt a bad hand by genetics and socioeconomics, race and school lunches. But I wasn’t. I just got soft. And I want to change that. And not because some idiot boyfriend thinks I’m chubby. But because sometimes it takes an idiot boyfriend to realize that you’re letting yourself go for no reason other than complacency.

Look, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with your problem. What my weight issues have to do with your girlfriend and your wedding and how you feel about her. I guess that in order to talk about another person’s weight issues, I feel the need to tell you about my own as away of understanding the complexity of it all — how simple and yet unnecessarily complicated we make these things for ourselves. What it comes down to is this: maybe she’s finally ready to lose the weight. She finally had something important enough to warrant doing something the flab, and she wants to do it. It happens. Hell, every muscle in my body hurts right now, because I finally decided to do something. So give her time to get it done.

I asked my friends for advice with this one. And they all offered different responses. One said that she wouldn’t even know where to begin, she freaks out about ten pounds. Another pointed out that you should just love her the way she is.  Two didn’t even respond. I’ll post four of their responses at the end. Worth reading, methinks.

Don’t underestimate the importance of the wedding picture. If not, there wouldn’t be such a thing as Buff Brides. I spent hours of my childhood watching my parents’ wedding video and pouring over their wedding portrait, proud of how young and beautiful they were. How healthy and happy and full of hope. How perfect they both seemed. And my mother still freaks out about how crooked one of her teeth looks in the picture. And oh, she’ll bemoan, if I’d closed my mouth a little, the photograph would have been exactly right.

So Ms. Chubs wants to be perfect for her moment. Let her be. Give her the gift of your patience. You love her, you want to marry her? Then understand that this is something she wants. And yes, it’s an obsession. Eight years of weight gain cannot be undone in a week. I have no idea how long your girl’s been gaining weight, but if it’s a significant amount, it requires a whole lot of emotional and psychological support, and an obsessive amount of discipline. And it’s delicate and sensitive and not easy at all in the least. This will require more will power than she thinks she has. Than anyone thinks they have. Trust me; I know. It’s really easy to hate working out and eating less.  And half the time you want to give up and eat a freaking donut, because, whatever, that donut is really good and who likes running anyway, when it’s so hard because you’re carrying all this weight, and back when you were fit you were lighter and that was easier then and the donut is the easier thing now. But gosh darnedest, you ain’t gonna eat it. Because you’re stronger than fried dough.

So she wants you to do it with her… then do. Get on that treadmill and show her that love is not just words. Sometimes it’s actions. Don’t go under the knife, but give it the old college try. Like it means something. Like you’re tired of staring at the same number every time you step on the scale. Like you understand that she wants to be her best self on the day she marries you. And if she doesn’t make, love her just as much. And tell her it doesn’t matter. That she’s beautiful.

Other people have opinions too. And since I took so long to answer your question, I’ll post the responses I got whole. Four different girlfriends (ahem) weigh in on the matter (I love puns):

Lots of people I know, male and female both, have put on some pounds
after getting in a relationship. “Fat and happy” came from somewhere,
and it’s as common as the freshman 10 (or 15).

If the GF just wants to get back to where she was, help her. Eat well,
exercise, do shit around the house so she has time to get to the gym.
Losing weight isn’t about dieting, it’s about a consistently healthy
lifestyle; maybe yours together isn’t all that healthy right now.

Or… have you ever asked your significant other if they want a
massage not because you really want to give a massage but because your
shoulders are in knots & you’re dying for one? It’s a dumb, passive
away to try to get a massage, sure, but the idea is that if you put it
out there, maybe it’ll get turned around. Maybe the GF’s anxiety about
her weight is actually a kind of dissatisfaction with the BF’s weight
that she doesn’t want to articulate.

Or maybe she’s got some serious self-esteem stuff going on.

In any event, surgery is drastic, expensive and unhealthy except in
the rarest of cases. Unless the GF is morbidly obese, it’s not a real
option.

Another friend says

1) Mr. Chubs could get on an exercise regimen with Ms. Chubs. It could be one or more times a week when they break a sweat outside of the bedroom and then reward themselves for their efforts. One excursion might be a bike ride followed by a romantic picnic. It’s important to point out that as fun as being chubby may be, it’s bad for your health. And while it’s not good to obsess over it, it’s wise to eat and exercise so you can enjoy a long life together.

2) Go to couples therapy through the wedding day. Surgery is not an answer, as it is life-threatening and not worth even the cosmetic risks. Therapy is something religious leaders encourage anyway. It’s a way to be on the same page with your partner and think through love’s unforseen trials. Catholics do it, my Jewish friends are doing it. Regardless of your affiliation, all can agree that therapy is a good thing.

3) Pick a body part and fetish over it. Each time you get between the sheets choose a thigh, a love handle, an earlobe—and take your time loving it. Sex can be rushed through so often and this will be a chance for you both to celebrate each other’s fleshy shells. Pour some chocolate on it, talk dirty to it, dress it up in lace. There’s nothing like the ecstasy of affirmation.

Love each other. And no silent treatment! Never go to sleep upset at one another. Each day is a microcosm of a life o’ lovin’.

Number three…

I am probably the wrong person to respond to this guy because I obsess over ten pounds (and it sounds like she is worried about a few more pounds than that.)  However, I hope that someone responded that if she is concerned about his weight for vanity and not for health reasons, he should probably take that as a bad sign . . .

And last but not least…

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look your best, so maybe the guy should support his lady in her desire to lose some weight.  He can constantly affirm her beauty, no matter what her weight, but he can also acknowledge the legitimacy of her desire to look and feel good.  I wonder if perhaps she’s having such a tough time losing the weight because they have developed some unhealthy eating patterns together.  For him to really support her, it might mean cutting back on the desserts, eating out less, and keeping her motivated exercising by going jogging or biking with her from time to time.  But this doesn’t have to be a complete hardship…hiking to a beautiful scenic spot or getting creative cooking healthy meals together can be super fun and rewarding (and sexy…what else are you going to do while waiting for your vegetables to steam?).  She might also want to see a doctor too, though, just in case her weight gain stems from biological stuff like thyroid issues or food allergies.  But one suggestion is that they make a deal…she sets a reasonable goal of weight loss, and when she reaches that goal, they set the date for their marriage.

There you have it. Best of luck. I hope you figure it out, and I do hope you get married. Sounds like you love her. And that should be (I hope) enough to carry you through.