Forsaking all others (well-dressed, sexy, confident women)

I’ve been with K, my present girlfriend, for nine years now. For a large number of them, I’ve been dissatisfied with how she looks, initially secretly and lately not so secretly, to the point where it’s become a regular cause for frustration on my part and feelings of inadequacy on hers.

It’s just so unnecessary. Why can’t she do something about it? A stand-off has developed with me failing to live up to being “the man of her dreams,” who loves her affectionately and gently whatever she looks like and her failing to look as if she gives a damn about herself – and about the chances of me being excited to sleep next to her every night for the rest of my life.

She seems to have missed out on the female wiring that triggers most women to want to look good every day. Instead, she insists that things like shopping and going to work aren’t important enough to care. They represent 90% of someone’s time.

The more I think about it, I realise that I have only three real choices:

1. accept it and find a way to move on, trying to convince myself that love really does conquer all, accepting that she’s right: I should love her whatever she looks like;
2. become one of those creepy, oppressive men who tell their other halves how to dress (which is disastrous for all concerned);
3. or split up with her, something which seems excessive when the biggest issues for me are purely cosmetic.

I’ve tried everything in between. Talking hasn’t worked. There’s nothing else I can say. It’s very straightforward, it has been an issue for years and nothing has changed.

It’s not just her. There are two sides to this story. I’m totally dissatisfied with myself and how I look too. I shave every day, shower, stay clean and fresh, but I’m overweight and don’t dress the way I’d like at all, except perhaps for work, which is easy. But I feel stuck in a rut with K, unable to motivate myself to do anything about it.

When I commit to losing weight for the sake of my own health, rather than support me, she arrives with bars of chocolate and cake and God knows what else, subconsciously (surely not consciously?) designed to frustrate my efforts and keep me in the health hell that we share. Accompanied by comments like, “I suppose this means I have to diet too?”, it doesn’t take a brain-surgeon to work out what’s going on.

But I’m finished with it. I don’t know what the long term answer is, but I need options. I need to drop the weight and take care of myself. To hell with her reaction. And to be straight about it, if I need any motivation beyond living a decade longer and happier, it’s to have more than one choice about whom I spend it with. I want to be attractive, fit and healthy. I want to be able to choose, rather than settle for less, whether that choice is to be with K or someone else.

[Via http://femdomreality.wordpress.com]