What would you do if an overweight relative kept breaking your furniture?

[AlittleBitOfApple]

My partner has a very overweight family member, I am not being mean. I would say they are most definitely in excess of 20+stone, potentially over 25. This is the second time they have broken a piece of furniture.
The furniture is brand new and we paid for insurance on it which doesn't have an excess and unlimited claims for 5 years. So at least it won't cost us anything to get it fixed.
I am going to have call the furniture company on Monday and ask them to come out and look at our sofa because its clearly broken. You can feel it when you sit on it/its creaking and its the bit they always sit on when they come to visit. Its a 2k sofa so not a cheap one.
It makes me feel uncomfortable having them in my house because I am worried about things getting damaged. How on earth do you broach with someone that they are breaking your things with their weight? They are very defensive about it and I know if we said something it would affect the relationship my DP has with them. Equally I think they would try and deny it and say their sofa is fine etc. Both times it has happened we didn't notice until after they had gone. For example with the sofa, we don't often sit on the bit that I today have noticed is broken, however it is where they sit when ever they come over.

It's just a really awkward situation.

Read the words in my post carefully. One can be overweight and still able to live a normal life and be fit and healthy.

You must be fucking perfect just like every other fat shamer on here.

Do you point out to overweight people you know the "cons" of their weight?

Nobody is "healthy" at 25 stone. You can kid yourself all you like, but it simply isn't true.

I always found the stomach a good place to balance the cake in the few short minutes before eating.

This you? Are you judging Tess Holliday by any chance? Or is calling someone obese is the exclusive preserve of those size 22 and over?

Ykn · 01/08/2023 15:14
@Artyfart I am inclined to agree with you. On a recent holiday to the Canaries, most of the very overweight (and in many cases, sunburnt) people were British, and I hate to say it, but mainly women.
Ykn · 22/05/2023 22:58

DH and I were having a similar conversation only the other day. We were talking about being bigger people. I am size 20-22, he is also large (but losing) and back in say as recently as 15 years ago, to be that size was not as acceptable as it is today.

People are definitely getting bigger, more clothing shops are catering for plus sizes above size 24, unhealthy food is cheaper to buy and often easier to prepare and eat than healthier choices.

Plus size models normalising obesity - e.g. Tess Holliday - have also made it ok to be big.

As an overweight person I try not to judge others on their appearance - what's inside is more important - but yes, people are getting bigger.

How very sad and petty of you to have gone through and published some of the poster's old posts.

I too am so fucking sick of people judging others on their size and believing that because they are slim, they are better than others.

Are you a professional caker, or just a keen amateur? You show great promise.

😂

You must be fucking perfect

Well . . . one doesn't like to boast . . .

If you don't like threads of this nature, why not just scroll on by?

No-one is being named or shamed. I am an overweight person myself and frequently remind myself of the "cons" of excess weight - not least that my knees buckle under me. If I didn't remind myself, I could eat myself into morbid obesity very easily.

The pearl clutching and hyperbole is strong with this one...

We live in a time where if you're not so obese that you break furniture, that you must be "perfect". What a joke.

And no one must ever point out that simply and factually your weight broke their sofa, (twice!) because it's "fat shaming". It's not. It's not opinion. It's not name-calling. But what a cowardly thing to wail at people to close them down rather than be accountable for the issue eh.

What is so funny?

This forum is the perfect place to discuss this. It's anonymous and a great place to get different ideas.

I'm over weight by 3 or 4 stone.

If I broke someone sofa how could I be offended?

I'm over weight and my weight did this.

If it was that simple we would all be very slim. Some people have EDs which makes it very difficult.

This is a very tricky situation. Now that you have read all the comments what options are you considering OP? Forgive me if you have already said (I have not rtft).

Where is the judgement in pointing out that an obese person has broken your sofa?

There is no judgement, no one is assuming they are better humans than others just for avoiding obesity.

Would you think it was a non issue if someone came into your home and broke £2k worth of furniture? Would you really be able to not notice the reason your furniture was broken, even when it was blatantly obvious?

😂

And LOL at the person saying anyone commenting on peoples size will be cancelled in the years to come, if anything it will be more talked about as they begin to need more and more care from the NHS especially at a time when there is an aging population crisis coming

Good point Alaska - over-eating may become as unacceptable as smoking.

Then it might spur them to give those obese people who need it more effective treatment (psychological and dietetic) for a condition which at the moment is sorely neglected.

@Ramalangadingdong something will need to be done people certainly won’t be getting cancelled for speaking out about it 😂

Funnily enough, I saw a clip of the Peter and Abby Crouch podcast on Instagram the other day talking about Peter breaking sofas because he slams his body down when he sits. Just shows that the way people use furniture also makes a difference. Peter Crouch is skinny and tall -but the way he uses the sofa makes the difference. This is why and how some obese people don't break furniture and some do (for those saying 'well I'm 20 plus stone and have never').
I don't think there is anything wrong with the OP stating factually that someone's weight has caused damage. She's not saying the person is an arsehole or unwelcome. My lovely friend couldn't ride my horse because she is too heavy- I'm not judging her personality or saying she is ugly or incapable or lesser -it was a fact she was just too heavy. Same as the bodybuilders I go to the gym with.
She was asking how tactfully to deal with it. No names mentioned. That's fine.

Your post makes a strong case for the fact that the broken sofa may not
he due to the relative’s weight but to how they throw themself o on the sofa. Op should have a word with them about it.

Well, yes. Being significantly overweight is not a character flaw, per se, but it does mean there are things you can't, or shouldn't, do. Flolloping around like a humpback whale jumping out of the sea in mating season is one of them.

I worry about obesity as much as the next person and don’t feel that discussing obesity and the problems it causes constitutes ‘fat-shaming’.

But using terms like ‘flolloping’ and ‘whale’ just makes you sound like a Katie Hopkins type.

I recently borrowed an audiobook from the library (a murder mystery). The author clearly had a huge problem with fat people as one of the central characters was obese and there were constant references to the character ‘gobbling’ food and ‘guzzling’ drinks and flolloping and galumphing about. I listened to the first chapter and then returned it. Such descriptions say a lot more about the describer than the person being described and talking about obese people in those terms does absolutely nothing to address the problem.

I am not and have never been fat, but I do find such language tiresome.

In the future, perhaps fat hatred will be as unacceptable as racism, anti Semitism and homophobia.

Please explain the hatred in the situation someone is so fat, or lumping down on a sofa, that they break it. Then another one. And expecting them to be accountable for costing someone £4000 of damage.

Being accountable for breaking someone else's furniture, twice (so it's not coincidence) should entitle the person who broke it to claim "hatred" because it's their weight, or the manner in which they are lumping down onto it that caused the damage?