POPSUGAR

My Horrible Body Image Sabotaged Every Relationship Until I Did This

Feb 26 2016 - 1:15pm

Sometimes it's harder to love yourself than a partner, but it's an incredibly important element to being in a relationship. Our friends at Your Tango [1] are here to share one woman's journey to self-acceptance.

I was truly my own worst enemy.

For as long as I've dated, I've always been the relationship type [2]. I was never interested in one-night stands, friends with benefits [3], or anything casual.

My older sister met her now-husband of over 10 years during her sophomore year of college. When I started college, I was also on a mission to find my husband. I desperately wanted to find my soulmate.

My friends dated and began coupling off, but I didn't. I stressed about it so much that getting into a relationship became less about having a special connection with someone, and more about proving to myself and others that I was worthy of being with someone.

My desperation and lack of confidence must have shown. Because every single [4] guy I dated through my junior year of college may as well been the same person:

I couldn't figure out why this was happening. I was dating the same person over and over again, just in a different body. How was it that I had friends who seemed to always have boyfriends and I couldn't even manage one?

Finally, in my senior year, I got into the most amazing relationship.

We had been best friends [5] since our first semester of freshman year in college. He was smart, sweet, Jewish, and could make me laugh like nobody else could. He'd been my go-to person who comforted me after every heartache of my failed attempts at relationships [6] over the years.

Then at the end of our junior year, he confessed his love for me. That is a long story in itself, but let's just say after some back and forth, we started a very happy relationship. It was a beautiful love story [7].

We dated for about a year and were having an amazing relationship, but then I broke up with him. I broke up with him because he was skinnier than me. I thought I was too fat and he too skinny.

You see, the part of my story that I've left out so far is that since I was 12 years old, I thought I had five pounds to lose. I was never fat, but I thought if I just lost those last five pounds, then all my problems would be solved. I believed that without those pounds, I'd have no problem attracting guys and I'd be able to get into any relationship I wanted.

So in my dream relationship [8], I tried and tried and tried. But I couldn't get comfortable with him potentially seeing a roll in my belly or grabbing a love handle when he went to put his arm around me. I believed that intimacy was about being comfortable with another person, which required me to be skinny enough, or at least not care if he saw an imperfection in my body.

I actually remember gazing at him longingly, believing that if only he were a bit bigger, he truly would be my soulmate. So after a year of dating, I made up a bullsh*t excuse and broke up with him, even though what I had with him was exactly what I had been desperate for.

Fast forward five years.

I'm at a bar in Washington, DC, and I noticed my friend's cute friend. At this point, I had gone through a huge transformation. I had stopped counting calories and stopped going to the gym (the gym had always been another way for me to control my weight).

After a couple of hours of flirting, Stevie put his hand on my knee and he asked me how my skin was so soft. Without skipping a beat, I looked at him and said, "Kale."

We look back and laugh at that. Stevie thought I was crazy, but it was the first time in my life I was eating and moving my body to take care of myself. I was off the diet hamster wheel for good.

I wish I had known dating wasn't about playing games or being perfect. I would've saved myself so much heartache. Attracting the right person for you is about treating yourself the way you want to be treated.

For years, I didn't treat myself well [9], so I attracted all the wrong men for me, most of them jerks. During the years I didn't treat myself well, I was lucky to find someone who did. But because I wasn't treating myself well, I was never able to let him in in any real way.

Intimacy is just "In to Me I See." And since I couldn't bear to look at myself in the mirror, I certainly would've never been comfortable with any other man seeing me, too. It wasn't until I truly started to treat myself the way I wanted to be treated that I not only attracted the right man for me, but was able to let him in.

Almost three years later, Stevie and I are still together. I continue treat myself in ways that make me feel loved and happy. I take care of my body rather than torture myself with counting calories. I give myself rest and white space if that's what I need. And I've taken responsibility for my own happiness [10].

The funny thing is, once I stopped seeking those things from men, and instead brought them to the relationship, I received more love and happiness than I ever thought possible. I've never told Stevie what to do or how to behave to make me feel loved or happy. He knows how I want to be treated because he sees how I treat myself.

Check out more stories like this from YourTango: [11]


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https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/How-Body-Image-Affects-Relationships-40346800