Feeling Smeagoly

The truth is that the sexy me as been feeling trapped and stifled inside all the fat I'm carrying on my body right now.  My clothes don't fit, and I've been feeling uncomfortable in my body.  Standing in front of a mirror has been miserable.  And once again I'm faced with the reality of how much I depend on the men in my life to help me feel validated and sexy.  Fortunately, I've had a lot of affectionate men over the years that have been willing to accommodate that need.  I get my fair share of compliments and expressed desire directed toward me that it keeps me afloat when my inner Golem attacks.  But I have a tendency to want it from one particular man (needing it from my husband is a given) and that currently would be LWINMLT.

I have a fond memory of a lover who always dated big women.  I paled in comparison to most of the women he was attracted to.  Talk about carrying lots of extra fat around on their bodies, they had it going on.  What I really loved about being in bed with him was the way he viewed and touched my body, especially my belly.  He would grab a hold of my tummy fat and I could sense the extreme pleasure and satisfaction it gave him.  This man was young, smart, talented, and handsome with a firm sexy body so that made it all the better.

Sex with my husband is like that.  He has always been loving and accepting of my body along with being verbally validating.  I was comfortable in my body with him from the get go because he made it so obvious how attracted he was to me.  Of course, I was quite thin and feeling very sexy in my body when we got together so his validations just added to my already positive body image.

Within my eight year relationship with the father of my youngest child, I never received any sort of  positive verbal validation or proclamations of love.  But I knew he was highly attracted to me sexually and he wanted a lot of sex.  He said that I was the only woman he had very been with that wanted as much sex as he did and he did proclaim his love for that!  Our sex life was great and it kept me in that relationship longer than I should have otherwise stayed.  Finally, when I was in the process of leaving him, he started offering verbal confirmations about how much he loved me and loved my body.  Too little too late.

As I write here now I'm reminded of how private and protective I felt about my relationship with LWINMLT when we first became lovers and it's really the reason I stopped posting on this blog. Of course I've written some about our relationship but not a lot.  There is more I could say along the lines of my body image and  having him as a lover but I find now that I'm still feeling private and protective of that intimate dynamic.  I realize there are things I should disclose to him personally.

Bottom line is of course, I'm so much more than my body.  So much more than my sexuality.  So much more than who is loving or not loving me.  I know this.  That said though, my love relationships, my sexual partners, and my body image, are all tied up in whatever it is I'm doing here in this life.  I feel most comfortable in a thin body.  I feel more at home, attractive, creative, in touch with my true essence, when I'm not carrying around extra weight.  And I feel so much freer.  And of course, even if I am carrying around extra weight, when I'm feeling good about myself and my life, when I'm managing my stress level, staying balanced and in the flow, and connected and happy in my relationships with those I love most, then I'm more able to stay in touch with these feel good parts of myself, regardless.  And I'm not even hitting on the other aspects of getting older that have nothing to do with being fat or thin.  Getting old is not for sissies, I've been struggling here and it's like LWINMLT pushed me over into the abyss.

I know that a big piece of what's going on for me right now is my age old abandonment issue with my father who left before I was born. I identified with being broken and worthless for a good portion of my life, all based on the fact that I wasn't worth it for him to hang around.  I have healed so much of this woundedness on my own over the years, and also within my relationship with my husband.  But I find that I'm still bringing men into my life to help me dig up more of the pain, to be worked through on an ever deepening level.  I feel very abandoned by LWINMLT.  Not totally abandoned.  He is still in my life.  But the way he chose to deal with this issue of falling out of sexual attraction with me really hurts.  I am just so sad.  A let's put sex on the back burner until we figure this out approach, would have felt a lot more reasonable to me.  You know, a temporary sexual hiatus while we assess what's going on and see how things evolve.  I still would  have cried and felt like shit but it would have been a much better route for me. I want to talk more about his insights (or lack of) as to why he isn't sexually attracted to me, if there is a why to get to the bottom of.  I'm left wondering how deeply this goes.   Is he repulsed by the sight of me?  Does touching me disgust him?  I don't really think this is the case but that's where my pain body takes me.  I do want to know just exactly how long has this been going on.  I've worked with lots of couples and I know there are a variety of reasons why this happens in a relationship.  Sometimes it's lasting but more often it's not.  I had my, I'm fat and therefore not sexually attractive button pushed but that may not be his reason.  Maybe it's my wrinkles, my stretch marks, my age, my smell...all of the above, none of the above.  I didn't ask him because I was so overcome with emotion that I couldn't bear to hear more details that might push me over the edge at that point.  We were in a public place.  I wanted his story, his truth of the moment, but dealing with something like this takes more than one setting, public or private.  Maybe he doesn't know the reason, as it is often hidden from the conscious mind.  There are many components to sexual attraction and sometimes it's just not there with another and there is no need to bother with the reason.  I'm sexually attracted to very few people.  But the fact that he was attracted to me and now isn't, speaks to something that has come up within our relationship.  And relationships change.  There are no real binding contracts, even in a marriage.  People get divorced all the time.  And we aren't married.  But we are going on 3 years together and I want more than this.  I want better than what I was offered.  I think I deserve better

I feel like I've been thrown out with the trash.  Or maybe it's more like I've been set out on the curb for a thrift store pick up.  "Surely someone else will be able to use her.  She's not all that bad."  I know that's not really fair.  Or real.  But it's the way I feel right now.