When I suggested that my boyfriend eat less junk food or get back to the gym, he told me it felt like I was policing him. I meant to address something that was affecting my desire. What reached him was a complaint about his body.
I’m 50, and he’s about my age. We’ve been together for two years, and there is a lot about this relationship that works. We’re compatible in plenty of ways, including sexually. That matters here, because I’m not describing a man I’ve stopped wanting in every sense, or a relationship I’m looking for an excuse to leave.
Since we got together, he’s developed a bit of a belly. I find it a turnoff. It’s an uncomfortable thing to admit about someone I want to be with, especially when the rest of the relationship is good. I wish I could make that reaction disappear simply by recognizing one physical change beside everything I like about him. So far, recognizing that hasn’t changed my physical response.
His sex drive is strong. Ordinarily, I’d have no difficulty keeping up with it. The problem isn’t that we’ve always wanted different amounts of sex, or that I’m indifferent to sex itself. Something about how I respond to him has changed, and I’m struggling with the gap between knowing we’re sexually compatible and feeling put off by this particular change.
My suggestions about food and exercise were an attempt to do something about it. But once he said he felt policed, I could see the problem with approaching it that way. I was talking about what he ate and whether he went to the gym while the thing I was actually struggling with was sexual attraction. Those subjects overlap for me right now, but they aren’t the same conversation. He gets to have a body without every choice becoming something I assess.
When I first asked for other people’s perspectives, some of the advice was to leave him if what I wanted was a fit man. That answer missed something essential. I don’t want to replace him with someone who meets a physical requirement. I want the man I’m with. There’s no relief in being offered a different partner as the solution to a difficulty involving this one.
I’m interested in a man’s perspective because I know what this feels like from my side, but I don’t want to assume I understand his. I have his description of feeling policed. I don’t know how to bring up the attraction underneath those suggestions without making him feel that I’m watching his body for improvements.
And I don’t have a neat answer about myself, either. I can’t honestly promise that deciding to stop caring about his belly will make me stop noticing it. I also don’t want every attempt to explain my difficulty to become another request for him to change. That leaves a conversation I haven’t figured out how to have, with someone I still want in my life and in my bed.
If there were a pill that made his belly attractive to me, I’d take it. That’s how much I’d rather change this reaction than change the man.
