Girlfriend has no esteem

[gaygirlwales]

Hi all

I've been with my GF for 7 months now and we are about to spend our first Christmas together in my house.

We are very happy and things are going great.

Before she met me my GF was very overweight and had been for several years, I think she was a size 26 at her heaviest. She is now down to a 16 and struggling to lose any more weight. I constantly tell her she's beautiful and kiss her all the time etc but whenever I pay her a compliment she basically says stfu.

Is there anyway I can increase her esteem other than constantly telling her how beautiful she is? It hurts to see her be so critical of herself. She's also got into a habit of asking if she is bigger than (a passing lady etc).

I tell her she has done amazingly to lose the weight and she should be proud of her figure.

Any help please :)

The thing is, if someone feels so badly about themselves then no amount of telling them they are wrong is really going to make any difference. There must be some underlying reason for her low self image and feeling unworthy of compliments.

Only she can fix this, by accepting there is an issue and then trying to get to the bottom of it, perhaps with the help of counselling. As a caring partner, you can support and encourage but you cannot actually change the way she thinks.

Hi OP

My GF has the same problem with me I'm afraid and so it's not really advice I'm offering, but I can understand where your Gf is coming from.

I've never had a weight problem and actually, I've always had quite a lot of attention and so people assume because I get that that I must be really happy with how I look, but I'm not at all. If someone does come on to me and pays me a compliment, I always manage to twist it round somehow, it's quite a talent actually But my insecurities are completely genuine and sometimes I get really down.

Deep down, I know how attracted she is to me and my ex BF was the same, but I would still look at myself in the mirror and see many flaws and it would/does drive them insane.

The weight 'issue' with your GF isn't actually the issue, in my opinion anyway. It really is just how you see yourself and unfortunately, it won't matter how many times you tell her how beautiful she is, it's her who needs to believe it. I'm not saying you should stop complimenting her. It will mean a lot to her, even if she doesn't say so, but ultimately, it will take time for it to really sink in. I'm still not quite there yet, but my GF does help me. Actually, I've only just realised how much she's helped me. I've never really thought about that before.......interesting.

Has she ever been teased or anything about her looks? Or do you believe this is just something that has come from within, for whatever reason?

Thanks SuspiciousMind and Maparole

I don't think she has been teased. She found some messages on her exes phone though that her ex had sent some girl she was seeing behind her back calling her fat and ugly, that's bound to have had an effect.

I just love this girl so much and sometimes when we're in bed and I look at her, her beauty floors me and I tell her and she thinks I'm taking the piss I think. Madness

that sounds horrible OP Yeah you're right, that must have affected her confidence.

My GF's approach was very different to my ex's. She's much more like you it sounds and will tell me a lot how beautiful she thinks I am and yes, sometimes I also think that she's just being nice etc, but then I think to myself, well why would she want me so much and why is she with me?! She has no reason to tell me these things, unless they were true. That's when I'm thinking more logically though and unfortunately, that's not majority of the time My ex on the other hand would assume that a tap on the ass would be enough to make me feel beautiful Yeah.... I felt reeeeeealy special. Anyway, that's another story.

God her ex has got a lot to answer for hasn't she!!

Yeah she was horrible to her, talked to her like shit. I'm really looking forward to making her happy for a long time!

I'd urge caution. There is such a thing as 'fishing for compliments' and I've met people who deliberately play on their weaknesses and make themselves out to be substandard as a way of getting the other person to keep reassuring them. You can't make an insecure person secure. Just be careful you're not being manipulated into thinking it's your responsibility to keep her happy. That's not healthy

I have this problem and my bf is taking the same approach - telling me how beautiful I am all the time. It is not helping because I feel it is drawing attention to my looks and how I feel about them. It is making me worry that my looks are very important to him and therefore making things worse!

Can you train together? Maybe if the weight is such an issue, can you just help motivate her to lose weight to healthier size. Maybe ignore her comments about her weight, gloss over it and help her train to lose the excess.

OP, so is she not happy generally then? Of course you should want to make her happy, but it needs to work both ways and if you're not careful, you might step back one day and see that it's gone a bit one sided. I'm not saying your GF would want this to happen or is doing anything intentionally, but try not to think of it as your job to make her happy and more that you should make each other happy, simply because you're right for one another. Does that makes sense?

Exactly what cogito said.

Also, it sounds like you are both focussing possibly too much on how she looks. Aren't you going to get fed up at some point of constantly praising her for how she looks? It all sounds a bit tedious and teenagery. She sounds a drain.

This is something I relate very strongly with. I've been anywhere from 18st to 9.5st.

I can't speak for what your girlfriend might be feeling but I can share my feelings about myself. I can tell you in all honesty that I feel no more loved now than I did at my biggest. My hubby never discussed on my looks, whether I was small or huge. This has been such a stabilising factor in our relationship because he's always gone to great lengths to know why he lives me, not my body. Who I am doesn't change much, what size I am does quite dramatically.

So if I were giving my hubby advice id tell to keep telling me how wonderful I am, draw attention to why he lives me rather than concentrating on trying to change my opinion of my size.

I am the same and I am 8/12 stone on a good day mine comes from being bullied and teased my o/h still compliments but not often more just little things like coming up behind me and giving me a cuddle holding my hand when we are out and about. To be honest that works abit but I don't think anything he could do would make me feel better unfortunately but when he complimented me all the time it made me very self conscious it's more a rooted issue and it would probably be counselling to try and get on top of it. I hope everything works out

OP If I can offer you my personal experience, it might help you to understand how she might feel.

I've never been very overweight, but I'm not slim either! My self esteem was damaged by my mother, basically, telling me I was unloveable/fat/ugly and (until I cut her out which removed the negative input) I just accepted it and believed her.

The result was that anyone complimenting me on my appearance made me feel:

Actually physically sick - a tight knotted feeling in the pit of my stomach and a constricting in my throat
Angry that they were lying to me
Embarrassed that they had noticed me physically (I just pretend most of the time that my physical appearance is 'invisible' to other people) and I fantasised about slicing parts of my body off or causing actual damage to e.g. my face, so that people wouldn't say things anymore
Sometimes I felt a tension pain in my ears and an urge to damage them (by stabbing something into them) so that I could stop the words from going into my head

Basically, I always felt that physically I wanted to minimise myself and I was able to do so until someone commented on something about me/my appearance and then I felt such deep seated torment, rage, anger and disgust towards myself that I would be a bit snappy and tell the other person, effectively, to stfu. In my experience, it didn't mean a lot to me to hear it, it caused me physical, not just mental, discomfort.

So my suggestion would be don't tell her. If she doesn't want to hear those words, don't cause her further distress by drawing attention to her physicality by mentioning it.

Just show her how you feel about her instead. She doesn't like feeling like this (I can guarantee that!), she just doesn't feel like she has the right to feel differently.

Cogito she never "goes on" about her looks, it's mainly if I compliment her so she definitely isn't fishing for compliments.

Other than that we have a great relationship, lots of fun etc :)