When Your Husband Stops Finding You Attractive

In high school and college hours upon hours were spent with my friends dissecting, analyzing and evaluating our relationships with our boyfriends. Word placement, tone of voice, secret intentions, theories of why this was said or unsaid was commonplace.

Then we all got married and suddenly these conversations became taboo. Fights were kept secret, hurt egos were healed behind closed doors. Put on your happy face at work, at Thanksgiving dinner, when with friends and neighbors. Everything is perfect.

But it wasn’t.

We were in a rut. Our business was failing, my doctor said I was borderline obese, my 20th high school reunion was approaching  and we were fighting, fighting, fighting all the time. I’m a person who avoids confrontation like the plague, so I handled stress by focusing on my kids and eating.

Some women have apple shapes; others have the dreaded pear shape. My shape? Bun in the oven. I was constantly being asked when the baby was due.  “I’m not pregnant, just fat,” I laughed, feeling like shit on the inside.  “No excuses” is a big catch phrase, but honestly I was at a loss because I really was attempting for fitness success. I tried everything to lose weight. Pre-packaged meal plan systems, protein shakes, diet pills. I even did the Beyoncé cleanse diet on the internet which was fancy for “starve yourself and take laxatives.” Everything worked for a time but then I would gain it all back plus five more. I thought that maybe I needed to exercise more, so I ran a half marathon (13.1 miles) and that didn’t help me lose weight either.

I showered in the dark. Wore baggy t-shirts that hid the tops of my arms and my maternity pants, even though my son was 2 ½, because having to face that fact that my size 14 jeans were getting too tight was just too much honesty to handle.

And that’s when he said it. I wanted to kiss him but he refused. “Lisa, I will always love you,” he said, “but I’m just not attracted to you right now.”

They asked me about it in my background interview on American Grit, and they just showed it during a “behind-the-scenes” show on FOX yesterday.  I wrote about what he said in my book, She’s Losing It! but it’s different when you see it on camera.

I almost kept it secret. What will my kids think? What will my neighbors say? God only knows what memes little trolls on the internet will come up with. But I decided to tell the story anyway (and made sure my husband was ok with it too.) Why?

Because my guess is that lots of women are going through this too. Several men have told me, privately, that while they never would have said what my husband said to me, they too were less attracted to their wives after they had kids and couldn’t shake the extra pounds.  I think when women ask the question, “Does this dress make me look fat?” we are really asking about our deepest fears.  Are you still attracted to me?  Do you find me sexy even when I look different?  We want to know that we will still be loved no matter what we look like, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, through fat and through thin.

Today I was going to blog about my trip to Utah, about eating clean on vacation.  But since people have been messaging me about it, I thought I talk about how that sentence he said impacted me within the context of an almost 12 year marriage.

Here it is.

Lisa

Lisa Traugott is a Mom’s Choice Award winning writer, fitness blogger, wife and mom of two….and Original Cast Member of AMERICAN GRIT on FOX!!!

Standing in my size 14 jeans

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