Okay. My deep thoughts (for this evening) were brought on by a huge meltdown tonight. Not just a little tear here and there but by a massive, swollen, snotty, sobbing breakdown. My husband and I are in couples therapy, mostly because it is hard to live with someone with an eating disorder and I am working on changing my life and I would like him to come along for the ride. We have been working on communication but there are a ton of things to work on within that topic. One of them is having sex. Not the actual act of sex but getting to the point of doing the deed, the horizontal mambo, making love, making whoopie, bangin' it out, taking one for the team, fucking, humping, bumping... you get it.
Keep reading, I promise I will get to the point.
We have an issue with the frequency with which we have sex (I am not going to say how little or how much we have sex because some may disagree that it is a problem) and that both of us want to have sex more often. Tonight we were discussing the topic and even pondering having sex and I had a major breakthrough, which caused a meltdown. My husband commented that he feels that he has to be the one to initiate sex and we threw it around for a while and I started having some strong feelings about why I didn't initiate sex and why I was uncomfortable with initiation. I started to think that he was full of shit and that I do initiate sex- but then I realized that the typical initiation is full of joking and silliness (I am all for funny time but not all the time) and me saying what I think he wants to hear. I started explaining this to him and suddenly I burst out with, "I DON'T HAVE THE CONFIDENCE TO INITIATE SEX WITH YOU!"
CUE: MELTDOWN...
So, all of my fear, anxiety, loathing, insecurities and hate towards my body came flooding up to the surface and I realized that I am afraid to initiate sex. I am terrified of trying to be sexy or trying to "turn on" my husband with a serious attempt at intimacy and love making; not because I lack skills or experience (hmm...) but because I feel like someone at my weight doesn't have the right to feel sexy. I also have the fear of using my body to make someone sexually excited- that no one would be if I did.
This is the thing- my husband enjoys my body and sex with me. I also feel like once things begin I am less anxious and can enjoy myself. It is really just about the period of possible rejection that really makes me fearful. I know in the rational part of my head that all of these beliefs about my body are untrue BUT it is hard for me not to transfer them and assume that my husband feels the same way.
Anyway. That was pretty personal but I think it relates to both men and women. I have heard fat men talk of it too. I know this is part of healing and accepting and loving my body at any weight. I have a long way to go. I am relieved that I got in touch with these feelings because now my husband and I won't go around in circles, trying to figure out some of our sex issues and we can work on it from a different angle.
It is pretty sad because I think that part of my issue is internalizing how the media has portrayed it as comical and gross for a fat woman to be in lingerie and being sexy. I can flash back to movies and TV that has portrayed the main character as being stuck in a terrible situation with a big, fat women in lingerie and it being traumatizing. Obviously it goes further than that with me but living in our times certainly does not help the situation and instead perpetuates it.
Sharing it with you guys makes me feel like it is not such a big, lonely, pink elephant in the living room. I have so much more to work on than just numbers on the scale...
