To ask how you deal with your partner’s crushes?

[RubyTuesday10]

I know I’ll probably be seen as silly but I’ve always been very insecure about my looks after being teased at school a lot, even at the ripe old age of 46. My partner now and then will voice his appreciation of famous women and it utterly destroys me inside. I compare myself to whoever it is and beat myself up about how I’m not as attractive and feel like if he likes this woman, how can he possibly fancy me. He’s into health and nutrition and currently has a crush on this lady called Dr. Federica Amati and talks about how clever, beautiful she is, what a sexy voice she has etc. I cry about it in private because I feel like I’m always going to feel bad about how I look. He says it’s silly and he loves me as I am but I can’t explain it, it just really really hurts to think of him wanting another woman even on a fantasy level. How do other women deal with this mentality and not feel remotely bothered?

Just tell him to stop mentioning it as it makes you feel insecure?
Me and DH hardly ever mention our crushes although I'm aware there are a couple of actresses he fancies. This doesn't bother me as it's normal. I fancy a couple of actors. It's human nature!
I'd only feel insecure if he had a crush on a work colleague or something and it felt like a threat to our relationship.
There will always be gorgeous and glamorous celebrities that look better than us. Of course our partners will find them attractive. They don't need to keep banging on about it though.

people aren’t saying their partners don’t have celebrity crushes, they are saying their partners have the emotional intelligence not to tell them about them.

If he knows you don’t like hearing about it and continues to do so, he doesn’t care about your feelings and doesn’t mind hurting you

Sorry, I missed how rarely he says these things. Working on your self esteem would probably resolve this and may well improve your life in ways you don’t even realise are being affected by how harsh you are to yourself

Agree with PP the problem here is not your DH but how you feel about yourself. You need to get some counselling and work on your self-esteem. In the meantime, tell your DH how it makes you feel and ask him to keep his opinions on other women's attractiveness to himself as it upsets you to hear.

DH's long term mild crushes have always been on women who are not dissimilar to me on the outside - middle aged and sturdily built. I actually find it quite reassuring!

I know but no amount of therapy could possibly make me better looking or delude me into thinking I’m attractive.

You’re so lucky- this woman is totally stunning, he can’t possibly fancy me if he likes her. Just don’t understand how it could be possible. Don’t want to be intimate anymore now, it was difficult enough but now I’ll be wondering who he’s actually thinking about.

Don't you fancy any male celebrities or think any other man in the world is hot other than him? It's normal. He shouldn't tell you about it though, especially when he knows how insecure you are. Therapy would help you improve your self esteem

This is silly. Of course he can fancy you and fancy her! Attraction is complex and based on more than physical perfection. I fancy a young Marlon Brando and also my DH - who couldn't be more different to a young Marlon Brando!
You're not understanding how people can be
attracted to all sorts of people. You need to work on your self esteem. I'm a 50 year old woman who looks nothing like beautiful actresses and celebrities but I don't feel bad about myself. I know DH is attracted to me and it's not because I'm some great beauty. Its because of who I am, because he likes spending time with me and because of what we have together.

OP I strongly urge you to get some professional help, the way you talk about yourself is very sad and not normal.

Your DH fancying someone else is nothing to do with how attractive he does or doesn’t find you, nor does it “prove” anything about your attractiveness.

Beauty is subjective, just because you don’t believe yourself attractive he obviously does or he wouldn’t have married you. But this is what low self esteem does, it convinces you that people are lying or that they don’t actually think of you positively for some reason- it’s very easy for brains to do mental gymnastics to find “evidence” for the bad thoughts and to ignore all the positive evidence to the contrary.

As I mentioned before, I fancy Harry Styles. My DP does not look like Harry Styles, but I still fancy him. I am bisexual, so I also fancy Kylie Minogue, who looks nothing like my DP or Harry Styles. People can fancy different types of people!

When I'm deeply in love with somekne, I certainly don't have eyes for or thoughts about anyone else, and I wouldn't want a relationship where my partner was not as deeply in love with me, so no, it certainly isn't how relationships have to work. However, everyone's different and some people fancy more than one person and are fine if their partners do too.

You can choose what matters to you in a relationship, or can if you feel confident enough. It sounds like your low self-confidence is one problem, but a relationship with someone who isn't considerate of that is also ptoblematic.

This is quite funny, actually. Some of us prefer films with more normal-looking actors in them and we value the films for the stories, acting, depths of insights and artistic skill, rather than as soft porn shows!

My husband won't admit to any celebrity crushes. I've tried to wheedle it out of him but he won't play ball. I think the closest I got was 'Angela Scanlon looks like she takes care of herself'. Your DP is not very nice.

If he's doing something that you've expressed you find hurtful/disrespectful and he continues to do it then he's an arsehole. Don't because he fancies someone but because he continues to tell you about it when you've told him it hurts your feelings.

I'd be passed off if someone told be my upset is silly. You are allowed to feel how you feel. He doesn't get to invalidate those feelings because he doesn't understand them.

Personally, it wouldn't bother me. He's in a relationship. He's not dead from the waist down. However, you've told him that it does bother you. If he loves you he'll stop. If he's not stopping you need to ask yourself why. Does he like seeing you upset/ insecure? What's he getting out of it?

I have no idea who DHs celebrity crush is but he always points out mine, a former footballer now a manager. Just good natured teasing particularly as the team were relegated yesterday. I mentioned how handsome this guy was once 25 years ago!!!

@Marylou2 Ruud Van Nistelrooy, by any chance?

I'm curious about this post. Are you married? Single? I can't help but feel you'd be pretty hard pushed to find someone who thinks that you are the only attractive person in the world regardless of how much they love you.

Absolutely!!

If he was going on about a neighbour , someone at work, my relative then I have an issue. If he mentions that Cameron Diaz or something is attractive then good luck to him - she isn’t looking his way!

He sounds like an insensitive arse. Why do you put up with it?

Oh, don’t be so silly. Millions of women have a crush on (eg) Cillian Murphy but it doesn’t mean Oppenheimer was ‘soft porn’ to them FFS. Grow up. Lots of women adore Colin Farrell but I doubt they were having a wank through The Banshees Of Inisherin. To Kill A Mockingbird doesn’t become a less engaging or important story because the film stars Gregory Peck. It is perfectly possible to be an excellent actor AND good-looking and it is perfectly possible to appreciate good storytelling and filmmaking while also finding the lead actor attractive.

Finding certain human beings attractive - whether it’s for their looks, their personality, their behaviour or anything else - isn’t some kind of intellectual failure, you know.

Dear lord, do you think that the only reason to feel good about yourself is your looks?

Nobody has their looks forever, how do you think anybody over the age of around 50 gets through the day?

I’m pretty physically unattractive, I know it, and I genuinely don’t care. Why? Because I can’t change it, it doesn’t really matter, and life’s too short to feel miserable about things we can’t change that don’t matter.

I am a nice person. A good person. At least I think I am. Those people who enjoy my company like me because of my personality, not my looks, and I’m okay with that. In fact I’d rather that than the other way around.

You put far too much importance on beauty and attractiveness OP if your whole self esteem hinges on it, maybe because of your past. Agree with PP you would definitely benefit from talking through this with a counsellor.

Your question implies it’s normal for men to have ‘crushes’. It isn’t.

Im so sorry you feel like this. I expect my husband does admire other women but he doesn’t say so to me and I’ve never asked him. It sounds like he’s being thoughtless - is he ever thoughtless in other ways?

The woman you're talking about looks on the good looking side of average to me. I think you've wrapped this up in your head to be something it's not. Just because he fancies her doesn't mean he can't fancy you, that's not really how it works.

This seems really extreme - have you talked to him directly about your insecurities?