It started innocently enough, with my girlfriend and I having a conversation about how we felt about our respective bodies. We had been dating for a few months and were both very much in love. We had been talking about our insecurities and how we were trying to work on them.
That’s when she brought up the topic of her wanting me to have a 6-pack. She said something along the lines of,
“I just want you to have a 6-pack so you can look good for me.”
I was taken aback and a little angry. For one thing, I was never the kind of guy who was defined by how I looked. I was someone who was confident in his own skin and didn’t need to fit into a certain stereotype or ideal body shape.
Second, I felt like she was asking me to change my body to fit her ideals. It felt like she was trying to control me and monitor my body in a way that I wasn’t comfortable with.
That’s when I said, “Like that why don’t you have a 39J cup size?”
My girlfriend was immediately taken aback. It was obvious that she hadn’t expected me to say something like that.
But I was adamant. I wanted her to understand that what she was asking of me was unreasonable. I was also trying to make her understand that she shouldn’t be so focused on what her body looks like and that she should be comfortable in her own skin.
My girlfriend started to cry. She told me that she had always been insecure about her body and that she was trying to make her body look “perfect” to make up for it.
I told her it’s simply: “tit for tat”
I apologised for my comment and hugged her. I told her that she didn’t need to have a “perfect” body to be beautiful and that I loved her just the way she was.
We talked for hours about our insecurities and how we could work on them together. It was a difficult conversation but it was also incredibly important.