…to wonder how we fall in love when bodies are kind of grim?

[BarilynBordeaux]

Idle brain wandering - Seen a few posts advising to get over heartbreak or a crush on some bloke by imagining him the loo or whatever to prove he ain’t great - but, erm, everyone does that! Even people who are great 😂 Sometimes I wonder how we fall in love at all up against with the weird undignified reality of just having a body with all its functions. Sometimes just having a body feels so gross myself I wonder why I’m looking to share space with another one!

That’s so lovely though! I’d love that.

Reading my way through the thread and I'm extremely relieved that I'm not the only person who has these thoughts.

I find my own body disgusting most of the time, let alone anyone else's. And I never, ever want to see anyone else on the toilet/farting etc. It makes me feel sick.

No they don't, many animals have episodic memory.

I’m afraid I think human babies/children are the ugliest things in the world. Compared to puppies and kittens and baby animals.

Got to agree with you there.

I’m always amazed at how many people on Mumsnet basically seem to find human bodies so repellent. I really, really don’t understand the ‘Ew, men, their bodies are horrid and willies are disgusting, yuck, they’re all sweaty and smelly’ attitude at all. I certainly don’t have to be in love with someone to enjoy seeing them naked.

I always think that (most) animals are so much more beautiful than humans. Especially baby animals. Human babies look like aliens 😆

Also, after menopause, I find the whole idea of sex quite ridiculous. And the things we women do to make ourselves appealing to men, even more ridiculous. It's no wonder men are so afraid of middle-aged women.

It's not that people feel this way that gets me so much as the cast-iron certainty that this view is right - and shared by all right-thinking people. The title of this thread assumes that we all agree bodies are 'grim'. No.

Just like the tiresome towel and bedding washing posts where posters decry not washing at least every other day as EW, GRIM, GROSS. You're perfectly entitled to your feelings and preferences (I have a 'thing' about crumbs in other people's cars) but these things are not objectively dirty or unsanitary.

Also can't stand the prim, childish language around it all!

It’s not so much the humour - I love a bawdy anecdote - but what I find weird is the way so many Mumsnetters seem to think that actually liking sex, and all the physicality that goes along with it, is somehow a bit gross and vaguely lower-class. And heaven forbid any woman on here might actually like looking at men’s bodies, or enjoy sex scenes in books or films - you might as well announce you spend your weekends getting off your tits in a crack den.

Or sending their poor DH’s to poo out of the house 🤣

A lot of it is probably age, though. I used to love sex; everything about it. The sweat, the smells, the oral, the deep kissing. Now as a middle aged woman in perimenopause I do not feel the same way. That part of me has been switched off (possibly temporarily) and enabled me to look at sex and bodies from a more detached viewpoint. And seeing it all as rather odd. It’s just a matter of perspective really, and it’s interesting to me.

I think I’m both (or neither) of these things, and I think lots of others are too.

I love sex. I like thinking about it when I’m in the mood, and I like doing it. I like certain men’s bodies. We all have our preferences and I have mine, but I certainly don’t go around thinking that other people and I are disgusting or that sex is.

It’s just that when I take a step back and sort of think of things in a more literal way that I find things weird. For instance, most of the time I’m very happy with my body, and various men have fancied me enough to want to shag me in the past. But as I said in a previous post, when I think about it, it is disgusting. Without urgent and frequent intervention it would be hairy and smelly and gross. In the small time I’ve been awake this morning I have had to wash it, apply deodorant to it, remove hair from bits of it, clean my teeth, and expel horrible things from my bowels and bladder.Yuk. And I have to do these things every day!

Same with sex. It’s an absolute joy, but if you described the mechanics of it to someone totally unfamiliar with the concept they’d think you were mad.

I have enjoyed the humour on the thread and I think some of the objectors have the wrong idea about those of us who sometimes think about bodies in very unromantic terms.

We are not all prudes or germ-phobes. I’m not one of those who washes their towels and bedding all the time. I use a loobrush. I never use bleach. I empty and clean my Mooncup in the shower for goodness sake- definitely not a germphobe! And I’m also not a prude. I’m less interested in sex as a middle aged woman than I was as a younger woman, but I do know what it is to feel completely swept along by lust, to feel light-headed with lust, to want animalistic sex, to fall in love.

But sometimes, my brain thinks things of its own accord- sometimes they’re almost like intrusive thoughts. The reality of bodies and what they actually are. It’s all so incredibly weird when you really think about it. I do see myself as an overthinker, and I also don’t think I am neurotypical, if it’s relevant.

None of this makes me feel superior to others, and it doesn’t mean I think people are disgusting. I just simply think bodies and sex are weird and kind of humorous when you give it too much some thought.

My goodness. That you have this poem at your fingertips. I salute you.

I’m 49. I’m definitely as much into sex as I ever was.

And a lot of the people who apparently find the human body horrific on here are definitely not perimenopausal.

I am glad that for many women, menopause is not the end of their sex drive at all. How depressing would that be. But, after careful investigation and inappropriate questioning 😂, it seems that many women are having a brilliant time - and less kids in the house so freedom to spend nights as they fancy!

Yes, but that’s fine too, isn’t it?

imagining someone on the toilet can put you off them?? 😅 What about giving birth? When you’re told ‘oh there’s like a 90% chance you’ll poo right there with your legs wide open and your husband seeing and smelling the whole thing in full HD. But don’t worry it’s all natural!’ Marriages are expected to survive that no?

Depends what you want from a marriage. Some people want a comfortable relationship, without any real spark. Other people want to keep a lover and prioritise that side.

No right or wrong, but it helps if you both agree on what is important.

Why would your husband need to be given a full show of what's happening down there? 😂 Mine sure wasn't. He stayed at the top and that was more than enough. Of all the people who don't need to see all the "natural" things going on, birth or not birth related, surely the person you want to have sex with is the main one.

And then they lick humans. As do dogs 🤢

Urgh, when I think about my younger years and who - and what! - I did, well, I guess I don’t want to spend too much time thinking about it 😂

Yep, this.

It’s like everything you’ve ever found sexy just seems horribly grim and repulsive. And yep I’ve tried HRT. Makes no difference.

I think it's sad, and as usual unfair. Menopause seem to affect women so differently.

Women not having to do things they no longer want to do. How is that sad?