My Husband Was a Different Man Before He Got “Fit.” I Miss It.

 

Dear How to Do It,

I’m a late-30s woman who has been married to a man for three years. In the last six months, he’s taken a turn to try and get healthier: working out a lot more, taking up running and biking, even signing up for a half-marathon. He was never out of shape, but he was nerdy and a little doughy before, and now he’s becoming something of an athlete. He has changed his diet, stopped almost all of his drinking, and started a more vigorous sleep regimen.

I have never been less attracted to him. I liked his softness. I liked him being carefree. I’m not athletic, and I liked feeling lazy around him. Now all of that is gone. I don’t know why this has changed anything (we’ve seen each other with explosive diarrhea!), but now when he initiates sex I have to work myself up to it and force myself to get into the mood, whereas before I was able to slip into it easily.

The biggest problem is that I think it’s mostly physical for me. His attitude toward me hasn’t changed; he’s unrelentingly positive and devoted toward me, hasn’t said a single negative thing about my appearance, hasn’t made any judgments regarding fitness toward me, and wants to be a generous and giving lover. He has definitely noticed I’m cooler toward him lately, but has taken it in stride and been supportive, but I haven’t opened up to him about how this has turned me off and don’t know what to say to him that wouldn’t hurt his feelings.

—Looking for a Doughboy

Rich Juzwiak: So this is a reversal of a somewhat unfortunately classic story. Oftentimes when we hear this, we’re hearing from a man who says, “My partner gained weight, and now I’m not into my wife/girlfriend because she weighs too much.” This is kind of the opposite of that.

Jessica Stoya: It is a double reverse. I’m always aware of the looming question: Is this letter genuine? And I suspect other people who are not me might wonder whether this is genuine, but I 100 percent believe it, and it gets me in my heart because I personally do not like athletic men.

Rich: Wow.

Jessica: I have made the best of relationships with athletic men whose personalities I happened to be attracted to. But the little bit of squish is beneficial from a practical angle. I’m sharp and bony in a few areas. And when you have two people who are mostly hard, sharp, and bony, it’s a lot harder to get comfortable together in a snuggle configuration or a penetrative sex configuration. You’re like, “Man, his hip bones are banging into my butt bones. OK, let’s try a different position. No—more bones on bone.” And also, this is where half of the double reverse becomes actually pretty stereotypically gendered.

There is, and this is by no means everyone, a significantly present and persistent expectation that it is not manly to put so much effort into one’s appearance, whatever form that takes, whether it’s muscle building or skincare. There’s a point for, I guess, women who would not be categorized as high maintenance. They don’t really categorize women as low maintenance much, but man, this guy spends twice as much time as I do just working toward looking good, or just getting ready to leave the home. Oof. I see why male comedians in the ‘90s complained about the stereotype of a high-maintenance woman. It is frustrating. You’re like, “I’m dressed. Nope. Going to be another half an hour. OK.” And then the fact that there’s some padding when someone is less athletic. There’s a buffer. If the winter is cold, he will be warm.

Rich: Right. Well, you mentioned overriding your physical taste when you like someone on the inside. And I think that that is generally the way forward here. I understand that the writer is having issues and things aren’t quite as well lubed as they had been before. But she writes, “Now when he initiates sex I have to work myself up to it and force myself to get into the mood, whereas before I was able to slip into it easily.” I don’t necessarily recommend forcing anything, but putting in this effort to overcome this is at least a good immediate plan, I think.

Jessica: So I know the writer says she thinks it’s mostly physical for her, but she specifically mentions having liked him being carefree in a way that suggests that that’s not so much the case anymore. I’m curious what the part where she says she liked feeling lazy around him is about? How much of that is the guilt of sitting around while someone else is productive and coming from inside her, and how much of that is, I don’t know, maybe he has a schedule to keep to with all of the exercising and the vigorous sleep regimen that means she’s not spending as much time with him.

Rich: Well, there’s also this effect of feeling judged by other people’s choices. Sometimes when someone doesn’t necessarily engage in exercise to any great degree, when they come up against someone who does, they immediately compare themselves and then feel inadequate, and then feel like that person must be judging them, I think as a kind of defense mechanism.

There’s also a dynamic that happens, in my experience, and I wrote about this, when I tell people that I don’t drink, which is I don’t walk into a room saying that, but sometimes I’ll be at a party holding a cup of water, and I’m clearly not on any other kind of hard drug that would make not drinking something I had to do. People would be like, “Oh, why aren’t you drinking?” And I’ll say, “Well, I don’t drink.” And they’ll be like, “Well, I only drink a little bit.” More than half the time, people immediately come back with a qualification on their drinking. But I truly don’t care. I hang out with people who drink all the time. I go to bars. It doesn’t affect me. I like weed. I always have. It’s what I do.

Jessica: We’ve been at parties where I am tanked and ready to try poppers for science, and you just have your water. You’re chilling with your water, and there is no air of judgment.

Rich: Exactly. And yet people feel the need to fill the space and be like, “This is what I’m like.” So I wonder, to your greater point, if that’s happening here. There is the physical change, yes, but there’s also the fact that they once shared this lifestyle. I totally get that. I once talked to a guy I was considering dating, and he told me that he doesn’t like movies, and I was just like, “This isn’t going to work. I need to have somebody who will watch stuff with me.” So to feel like now you’re on separate paths because you’re not doing the stuff you used to do together, i.e., lay around, that can feel alienating.

Jessica: It absolutely can. And it can make it much harder, especially when the change in paths means they have less time to spend connecting, to then adapt. It’s like, OK, I’m trying to get used to these physical changes that are in the opposite direction of my preference. And I’m trying to get used to—potentially, we’re speculating—ways that I’m feeling about myself, my own lifestyle, and the body that I am about to reveal in order to engage in sex.

It can make it harder to adjust to those shifts, find your groove again, and get past having to work yourself up to it. But the different paths thing strikes me as similar in a lot of ways to when one person changes jobs, and it’s a lot more demanding on the schedule because there’s an onboarding process, or it’s just a lot more demanding on the schedule because it’s better paid and that’s how life works. Or someone starts going back to school part-time, or for people in our line of work where it’s like, “Yeah, I had a lot of time for two months, and now I’ve got three big articles that are all due about the same time, and I’m going to need that for the next lean period.”

So you can, yes, address all of the physicality and emotions that might be happening around the different aspects of that and then contextualize it. Sometimes in a long-term committed relationship, things change for several years at a time, like when people have kids, for example. And think of how people navigate their shifting relationship.

Rich: The way that you overcome and get through all of this is by putting in effort. So it isn’t working as it used to when it was just kind of automatic or reflexive. Well, things change, and then you have to adapt as well, or then the relationship’s not for you. But just in the few words that we’re reading about this guy, he seems great. He seems able to take even a noticeable cooling from his partner in stride and respond kindly to it.

In the case that there’s a feeling of residual disappointment in yourself or that feeling of being judged that comes from feeling like you’re not doing this thing that is seen as healthy by so many people in our culture, maybe the answer is to start moving a little bit more. Maybe that would make you feel better and make you OK with this. I don’t know, but that could be what’s happening inside. Just make sure. If you’re fine with where you are, stay on the couch. I’m fine with that. I’m just saying if this is bringing up other issues that maybe you’re not fine with, check in with that feeling.

Jessica: Absolutely. I would also encourage her to let her husband know that there have been a lot of changes. She’s not sure what all she’s feeling and what might be stuff where it would be best for the two of them to work on compromises, but that’s where she’s at right now, and she’s working her way through it.

Don’t go to him and say the body lots of other people are really excited about, and you’ve worked so hard and are quite reasonably proud of, actually turns me off. Don’t do that. I’ve done that. I can tell you from experience, it is not helpful. It’s often just as crushing as when they have a body that’s not widely considered admirable, and you’re like, “I don’t like that.” (And now I’m bringing it up again in a public forum. If you’re reading, I’m sorry.) It might be that even if she’s perfectly happy with her lifestyle, body function, the way it feels, the way it looks, all that, maybe depending on how the husband does biking, going for a bike ride together would be actually the kind of quality time that you’re missing. Or he changed his diet; usually that means cooking at home is significant. Is cooking at home together fun?

For some people it’s not, but for lots of people it is. Could she look for ways to participate while staying within what she wants to be doing with herself in a way that is actually enjoyable for both of them? I wouldn’t try to tag along for a half-marathon.

Rich: No. No.

Jessica: You’re not chatting or having cozy time during a half-marathon, from what I understand.

Rich: Yeah, that’s not bonding, at least for most people. With the sexual aspect, it might require this kind of effort that she’s already putting in. I feel like she already has that part of it down. I know it’s not ideal, but she knows practically what she needs to do. As much as you can, you focus on the whole person he is. Your partner’s not just a body. You’re not just pleasing a body; you’re pleasing the person. So if you can stay mindful about that, it might make it easier to continue to engage with him sexually.

Also, keep in mind that this is going to keep happening. If you stay together, which is typically the goal when you’re married to someone, you’re going to see a lot of changes. So maybe this is actually good practice for what’s coming in 50 years from now when you both don’t look anything like you look today and you’re still together, hopefully, and maybe even still engaging sexually because a lot of people do well into old age. This is one that you either give up, or you suck it up and figure out a way.

Jessica: To put it in very objective and systematic terms: When you are looking at your partner as their physical self, the move is not so much to try to ignore the less appealing parts; that puts you in the don’t think about pink elephants position with an extra layer of awkwardness. You want to focus on the parts that are attractive to you. This happens naturally when we meet people for the first time who are attractive to you.

Most of us do not do a top-to-bottom full scan: “I like this, I don’t like this, I like this, I don’t like this.” Some people do. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here, though. But what just sort of occurs is, you’re like, “Oh, look at those eyes. When they’re talking, they do this great thing with their eyebrow.” So you’re just really naturally at the beginning focusing on the parts that are appealing. And unless there’s something like really bad breath or something that really sticks out, you’re not even noticing. Do that technically for a bit until it becomes a habit again.

Rich: If you like his penis, that in all likelihood hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s gotten bigger because there’s less fat disguising its full length. That’s something you could get into if you like that kind of thing.

Jessica: Yes, whatever the thing is. If there’s something about his chest hair that you’re fond of, great, run with it. Run your fingers through it in the appropriate direction.