Sometimes the pain positively oozes through the questions asked during our Calgary Marriage Counselling Sessions:

Why can’t you love me for who I am?
Shouldn’t you just love and want me for me?
Why is it so hard to love me for who I am inside?
Why does my appearance stand between me and your love?

Why don’t you love me regardless of my appearance?

It’s a question that echoes in my office, resonating with millions on social media – for both men and women alike. It often comes with a fervent belief in body positivity and a series of long-debunked studies suggesting that lower body weight leads to early death.

These so-called “obesity paradox” findings are really not a paradox at all. They are all the result of a glaring failure to adequately control for reverse causality (where illness causes weight loss) or, in some cases, research fraud; deliberately including outliers like chemotherapy patients and those with eating disorders in their sample sets.

Yet, the intensity of the presentation and our willingness to buy into such obvious fictions speaks volumes about the degree of pain associated with this subject and the social controversy and turmoil that matches it. Our sexual relationships and marriages are hurting, partners are withdrawing from each other and the dominant stream of thought surrounding it doesn’t and never did make sense. The entire discussion seems hopelessly off course leaving us not even working on the real problem.

And even if this entire line of thought were backed by credible evidence, something inside all of us knows it would still be a diversion, our society’s subconscious ploy to avoid the real issue.

Why? Because the issue never was measuring up to some sort of movie star/starlet. It’s a far more intimate and personal question than vague philosophical meanderings about whether our societal definitions of beauty are sane, balanced or attainable for most of us.

Why? Because the deep relational vulnerability and emotional understanding required is far more risky than just pursuing some external standard.

The real question isn’t about living up to societal beauty standards; it’s about safety and security in love, respect for the person/relationship, and how slowly our attraction patterns evolve.

When people marry, they are attracted to each other and marry the whole person. Sure, we all have fantasies of the perfect person, but we also all realize they are just that: A fantasy. We all marry real people, and if a supermodel-type appearance was that critically important to our partners, they would have made compromises in other (probably much more critical) areas and dated/married that in the first place.

To put it bluntly: If your partner married you, he/she wanted you as you were.

Simple aging and life experiences (like disease or childbearing, for example) do change all of our appearances. Still, the human psyche has an inbuilt mechanism for the maintenance of attraction and a sense of continuity through incremental changes: When people reach orgasm with a partner, that which caused the orgasm (Hopefully the partner) is sort of reloaded and refreshed in the brain as a renewed definition of that to which the person is attracted.

(This is why it is a wise partner who says, “Hey, we can try whatever fun positions and adventurous sex acts you want, but we reach climax looking deeply into each other’s eyes.”)

So, people marry who they want and can continue to believe their partners are the most beautiful people alive even into old age when, by any objective measure, we all start looking increasingly shrivelled.

When your grandfather got up at their fiftieth wedding anniversary and talked about how he was married to the most beautiful woman who ever lived, he meant it – thanks to a lifetime of orgasms with her.

From the earliest moments of the relationship, every couple embarks upon a process of ever more profoundly bonding and attaching to that which they married. Their sense of self, security in the world, belongingness, sense of family and being valued and cared for by the other person becomes attached to the effort expended in the maintenance of who and what they choose to marry.

Marriage truly makes us one, and even for the most mentally healthy and highly differentiated of us, causes our sense of self to become ever more powerfully shaped (And hopefully grown and healed) by our partners. While the separate persons do not vanish, there is a sense in which we rapidly become more of a “We” than an “I,” and all of our actions (or the lack thereof) have a profound impact on our partners.

Time and again, throughout nearly thirty years of offering relationship therapy and marriage counselling in Calgary, we’ve observed how one partner’s self-image can transform both the other person identity and the relationship itself. When one person in the relationship ceases expending that effort and caring for himself or herself, the impact is massive and does damage on three separate levels:

(1). It takes very little neglect of self-care to change the appearance faster than the normal process of orgasm-related adaptation can compensate for.

(2). Because our senses of self become so intertwined, the implicit devaluation of self inherent in the abandonment of self-care impacts the partner as a bleak statement about his/her significance and the value of/respect for the relationship itself.

(3). Most critically, though, we are all acutely aware of the degree to which regular exercise, a decent diet, healthy levels of sleep, low alcohol consumption and other foundational elements of self-care impact longevity. In many cases, unhealthy choices can easily cut a lifespan by half and may boost the risk of premature death by up to 91%. To a partner, this can feel like a threat to the security and permanence of life, love, and the relationship we all desire – akin to a slow-motion suicide attempt comparable to severe substance abuse or other self-destructive behaviours.

Invariably, one partner says something, triggering off all of the powerlessness, low-self-worth, shame, guilt and fear in the other for his or her inability to match some Hollywood ideal. One moment the relationship is going well and everyone feels safe and loved. The next moment, both persons suddenly feel like they are drowning as the conflict escalates and all rationality vanishes.

And the backlash is always the same:

Why can’t you love me regardless of my appearance?

Calgary Marriage Counselling: Shifting the paradigm

As a registered Psychologist offering marriage and couples counselling, shifting the paradigm is the most challenging part of our Calgary marriage counselling services. As long as the battle is about some unattainable goal, motivation evaporates – usually replaced by a poor self-image, helplessness and various mood disorders. But it was never about those Hollywood ideals.

It’s all about the degree to which we say “I love you” to our partners when we act to love and care for ourselves.

Furthermore, the effort shouldn’t be towards any sort of a goal in the first place. Goal setting is a massive industry built upon a scam. The moment you set a goal, you enter a fail-state of shame and guilt, which you use to try and motivate yourself. Most of the time that fails. And, when it actually manages to work such that you achieve your goal, you raise the bar, creating a new fail-state.

Real change comes by way of process: Creating new systems. Systems exist in a success-state because, every time you execute your system, you feel better and better about yourself. Systems that create physical change and emotionally/mentally keep you in a success-state form a powerful feedback loop of positivity and relational value.

Don’t aim for the unreachable; instead, build systems and processes to guide your lives forward. This is much more about two people by way of their self-care-related systems saying to each other:

“You matter, I matter, the relationship matters, and I am going to make absolutely sure I get to be here to love and enjoy you for at least the next 60yrs.”

And, if this issue has become a battleground in your relationship, there are likely much more profound problems of self-worth, various mood disorders, addictions and past traumas underlying it.

Those problems may run deep, but they are often far easier to resolve than you may imagine. When those underlying issues are resolved, self-care often becomes automatic, and the relationship can move forward in ways you may have never imagined!

We’re here to help – reach out for our Calgary Marriage Counselling today!