B,

You wrote, “In my experience, people only say kind things and flattering things when they want something.”

Okay, let’s go with that. What does your husband want when he says “I love you,” or “you’re beautiful,” or when he says he’s attracted to you or loves seeing you in high heels? Is it possible that you may want the same thing?

My father in law is the most conservative person I know. My rule of thumb is that if I’d feel weird wearing a shirt, dress, swimsuit, etc around him (or it would make him uncomfortable), then it’s probably not appropriate in public.

B,

Please indulge me with one final comment, and I promise I’ll leave you alone.

As I have read your posts over these many months, my heart weeps for you. Yes, it’s good to accept the things you cannot change, but I sincerely believe in the depth of my heart that you are accepting a lie.

If your husband went to the beach looking for a petite brunette, there is no way on this earth he would have approached you, dated you, become engaged to you and married you. No way, no how. He would have just moved on to another petite brunette; there are plenty of them out there. Do you honestly believe the pool of attractive women is so shallow that he would settle for someone he believed was so totally opposite of what he really wanted?

I’m with J on your brother-in-law. It seems there are people in your extended family who, for reasons known only to them, enjoy making you even more self-conscious about your body shape and type, telling you you’re too tall or fat. Like a shark smelling blood, they seem to smell your insecurity and enjoy feeding it.

The truly sad thing is that you believe everything they tell you because it matches your self-image narrative. But you disbelieve everything your husband says because he’s “trying to spare your feelings.”

Yes, I agree that actions speak louder than words, but I have learned first hand that actions are sooooo easy to misinterpret, especially when I interpret them through the filter of my own love language.

My love language is physical affection; my wife’s is acts of service. When she can go weeks without kissing me, and *never* seeking a kiss from me, I misinterpret that inaction as a lack of love. But, she loves me deeply as she shows through other actions consistent with her love language (which don’t speak love to me no matter how much she does them). And, like your husband, she tells me with words that she loves me. Like you, my knee jerk reaction is to disbelieve her words and look to actions that don’t speak love to me, even though they scream love to her.

I honestly believe you are misinterpreting your husband’s actions and his repeated pleas for you to believe his words are falling on your deaf ears. So, you end up believing misinterpreted actions and not believing his clear words. This can only have a negative effect on his libido. I would have a real hard time wanting to make love to a woman who didn’t believe me when I told her she was beautiful. To not believe a man is one of the more painful things you can do to him.

Please let me say with all the Christian love I can muster that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:7 that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” To love someone means to believe what they say, *even if it turns out later that they were lying.* To love someone means to believe the very best of them.

I have had to learn to trust my wife when she says she loves me even though her sexual behavior tells me that that she does not. In love for her, I am choosing to believe her words even though my emotions don’t want to. I am choosing to believe her because that’s what love does. It “believes all things.”

I would prefer to believe her and be wrong than not believe her even though I might be right. It’s better for *me* to trust in love rather than doubt in an effort of self-protection. When you say you are accepting things as they are, I believe you are simply trying to protect yourself from emotional pain rather than running the risk of being vulnerable and believing what your husband tells you.

No, his libido isn’t where you would like it; neither is my wife’s. But, there are a zillion explanations for this other than your physical attractiveness, things like work stress (you say he works long hours), fatigue, possible depression, and the miscommunication that comes from both of you wanting sex but neither of you mentioning it to the other. If only you would give yourself and your husband the grace to consider these other possible reasons for your sexual issues rather than believing the lie that your husband finds you unattractive.

I pray you will take a chance and believe him. Yes, he may break your heart, but that’s the chance love takes. It’s better to love him by trusting him than to protect yourself from pain by not loving him through trust.

Okay, I’ll leave you alone, now. I pray you and your husband find more than acceptance of being stuck with each other. I pray you both love each other enough to trust each other and surrender your hearts to one another.

God bless you both

If your brother-in-law is anything like mine, he might say something like this just to get a rise out of you. Just sayin’.

Ironically (because of the topic of this post) my husband and I met on the beach. I was working, he was vacationing.
However, according to my bro-in-law, my husband went down to the beach to ask out another girl. When he couldn’t find her, he asked me out instead. Did I mention she was brunette, tiny, and perfect? She was another resort guest (who strutted her perfect body around in her tiny bikini. No wonder my husband was actually looking for her. I was just the frumpy lifeguard in the one piece suit). I didn’t know (at the time) that I was a consolation prize, and so I agreed to go out with him. I was very interested in him and could not believe he wanted to take me out. It wasn’t until a couple years into our relationship that my bro-in-law revealed the truth. My husband disputes all of this, in an attempt to spare my feelings, but why would my bro-in-law lie? He doesn’t care about my feelings, so he just tells it like it is.
We had a lot of fun together when we went out. I was a LOT more laid back then, when I was still naive and gullible. I guess my husband was interested in the fun we had together. My theory is, it wasn’t until after we were married that he realized he’d be stuck with his athletic blonde wife forever, thus having to forsake all petite, perfect brunettes, forever. Now the poor fellow is stuck. We still have fun, and we do love each other. It’s just a shame that he will never know the thrill of being attracted to his wife, and I will never have the joy of being pursued and desired and found beautiful by my husband.
But as I said, it is what it is, and I am learning to accept it. If you’ve read my comments from the past, you’ll see that I was bitter. I am much happier now that I’ve decided to try my hardest to make peace with this fact, and to look for my worth in Christ, and not in man.

I would be so interested in knowing how you met and fell in love if you are so far from his ideal woman.

@e2,

Thank you for your replies. You are correct, my husband cannot convince me he finds me attractive, nor should he have to try. I feel badly that he feels a need to try to convince me of things that are not true. It’s hurtful to have a husband that prefers another “type” – to know that I will never be what he longs for – but it is what it is and I am learning to be happy anyway. You see, actions speak much louder to me than words.
When my husband had a very hard time checking out other women in front of me, they never looked like me. He is a good man who now tries not to overly-admire other women in front of me. However when it did and does happen, they are always perfect, petite, tiny brunettes. I am tall, athletic, and blonde. So I do not fit his ideal of beauty, nor will I ever. If he had participated in that British study referenced above, he would not have picked me as his “ideal” in 100 tries!
I more resemble a Kate Upton in size, shape and coloring (I’m nowhere near as beautiful as she is, but I am big like her). My husband very much prefers the Kate Middleton type. Tiny, brunette, beautiful and perfect. I am not that and I never will be. My poor husband got stuck with the wrong “Kate”. Oh well. I am learning to accept that he loves me, and if I never know what it’s like to be beautiful to my husband, well, that’s just how it is I guess. I don’t really know what else to say. We are happy for the most part.

One problem with studies like that in the British documentary is that it leaves the impressions that (a) a man’s taste in women is static and (b) his sexual and romantic attraction is driven largely by her appearance. I have found neither to be true.

I married relatively late in life, near 30, and had had several girlfriends before meeting my wife. I dated (and fell in love with) girls tall and short, red-headed, blond and brunette, large and small breasted, long and short legged. None of it mattered. None of them were more or less my “type.” I loved them for reasons other than their physical appearance and, being in love, I found them all beautiful.

I feel for B because her fears tell her that her husband likes a specific type and that she’s not it. I won’t try to speak for all men, but for me, it just never worked that way. Based on what B’s husband has told her, I suspect it doesn’t work that way with him either, but he just can’t convince her of it.