My Husband Hasn’t Seen Me Naked In Two Years…
I’ve never been an exhibitionist but I’ve never been shy about my body either. My twenties and early thirties were spent being perfectly happy with the way I looked and having the self-confidence to strip off around my hubby whenever the mood took.
Then it all changed. Why? I hear you ask… Because I fell pregnant with my third child.
There’s something odd in our culture about the way we covet the perfect body. A body that’s slim, toned, flawless.
Pregnancy sticks two fingers up to that very quickly.
Going through three pregnancies is the equivalent of your body piling up all your hopes and dreams about how you want to look and throwing a grenade in them. Before shooting the pile with a rocket launcher. And then crapping all over it.
I’ll be the first to admit that I was lucky with my first two pregnancies. My body changed but it went back to pretty much how it was and I was still slim even if I wasn’t toned.
But then baby number three came along and totally screwed that up.
I won’t bore you with all the things I now hate about my body. The list is long and depressing.
But the impact of hating my body has extended far beyond what I could ever have imagined.
Here’s the thing about body image, we think it just affects how we feel about how we look. But it actually affects everything. EVERYTHING.
It can affect how confident you feel in a meeting. Whether or not you are happy splashing out on nice clothes. What you eat (whether that’s desperately trying to diet or shovelling chocolate down because you’re so unhappy with the way you look). And it has a big impact on your relationship.
Shortly after my third baby was born I noticed that the weight wasn’t coming off. It was, in fact, creeping up. I started to hide my body around my husband because I was embarrassed that it wasn’t going back to how it looked before. I threw out anything fitted and started wearing baggy jumpers all the time so he couldn’t really get an idea of my new body shape. I stopped getting dressed or undressed in the bedroom if he was in there.
And I stopped doing anything remotely intimate unless it was pitch black.
Fast forward two years and it’s been that long since my husband got a good look at me naked. As you might imagine, it’s making life a little challenging.
Not only does it impact on the obvious — sex — but it also impacts on how I feel when I’m around him. I can be awkward if I have to change a top or take my jumper off because then he’ll be able to see that I still look 6 months pregnant. I sit on the other end of the sofa just in case he notices that my stomach has lots of rolls in it when I sit down. There have been more than a few occasions when I’ve panicked because I’ve thought he might be about to initiate sex outside of the bedroom, which is terrifying because I can’t duck under the duvet and turn all the lights off.
These issues haven’t been helped by the fact that for the last two years we’ve slept separately because baby number three has highjacked our bedroom and thinks sleep is overrated. Our opportunities to connect and have intimacy are limited and to be blunt, when you’re having lots of sex it’s easy to feel that your partner finds you sexy. When you’re not…
I’ve spoken to my husband about this a few times. Sometimes it’s gone well. Other times it’s been a complete disaster where he’s told me that he’s not attracted to me anymore. Which I get, to a certain extent. We’ve had our fair share of problems and have struggled to nurture our emotional connection, let alone our physical one. Plus, if you’re married to someone who feels so awful about herself that she won’t let you see her naked and doesn’t want intimacy unless it’s in complete darkness, it’s going to affect how attractive you think she is.
But the catch 22 for me on this is that if I was confident that my husband still found my post-baby body sexy then I’d be more than happy stripping off in front of him.
That said, pinning your body image on to what someone else thinks about it is dangerous and not a long term solution. After all, why would you want your self-esteem in someone else’s hands? That seems a fairly stupid place to put it.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that part of that confidence has to come from me. Even if my husband told me that he finds me sexy all day, every day, unless I feel like I’m sexy, I won’t believe him.
So I will continue working on my own issues. Battling my (many) demons. And hopefully, falling in love with my body all over again.
Who knows, one day, I might even reach the point where I’m confident enough to be naked in front of someone again. One day…
