Love, Love, Careless Love

Today I’m feeling like talking about love, and my life experience with it. It isn’t a particularly pretty story, but I think it’s relevant to the discussion of how obesity affects all aspects of your life. And how our societal view of obese people can make finding a life-mate who appreciates you for all of who and what you are challenging.

As a small child, I had a hard time feeling loved. I’m sure that my parents loved me – it’s simply that they were not demonstrative people. The only affection I ever saw between them was an occasional hand touch. However, for some unknown reason, I’ve always acutely craved affection and reassurances that I am loved. I drove my mother to distraction asking her, over and over again, if she loved me or how much she loved me. And no matter what she said, it was never enough.

Fast forward to my teenage years. I watched all the couples with envy – I wanted a boyfriend SO bad! In my freshman year of high school, the unimaginable happened – a boy asked me out. Of course I said yes – I was so excited! I was actually going to have a date for the Homecoming dance! As it turned out, not only did I have a date – I had a boyfriend. I was in heaven. This same boyfriend lasted all through my high school years, but to be honest, he didn’t always treat me very well. He seemed to delight in keeping me off-balance and making me insecure. With my low self-esteem, I accepted that. I thought I didn’t deserve better treatment, and I was incredibly afraid of losing him. Three months out of high school, I married him. That may have been the worst mistake I’ve ever made.

The marriage lasted 8 years, and produced one child – my son Randy. It was, to say the least, a troubled marriage, with him blaming me for all our problems, particularly the sexual ones. After one particularly bitter scene, he told me that “No man will ever want you – you are repulsive”. I didn’t want to believe him, but I did. To my shock, the marriage finally ended when he confessed that he was gay – had thought he was bi-sexual, but now decided he never wanted to sleep with a woman again. To this day, I don’t know if it was more a shock or a relief.

Through the years, there have been a number of men in my life, but not in the way I wanted. All of them wanted me to be their friend, confidant, sister-confessor, soft shoulder to cry on, etc. None of them wanted to be my lover. The last on-and-off relationship lasted around 10 years. The biggest question I have is this: Why do I put myself through it? I think the answer is that it is still the one thing I want most in life – the one big hole left in the center of me that I can’t stopper up myself. Love – for me, is the most important and most unattainable facet to living.

Don’t get me wrong – I do have friends and family that love me. And in their own way, each of these men I’ve been with has loved me, too – but loved me in the same way as friends and family. Not in the special. “Babe, you’re the one” way I’ve always craved.

There are a number of things that could be the cause of this. The ones that come to mind are:

1. I make bad choices. I choose men who are emotionally unavailable – at least to me
2. My body disqualifies me as a life-mate. Because of my weight, I’m certainly not “arm-candy”, “trophy wife” material. Men simply don't find me "sexy"
3. I'm just unlovable. Period.

These days, I have come to the conclusion that having a life companion is not in the cards for me. I need to try to stop obsessing on it and move on with my life – I have goals to accomplish and improvements to be made. I should stop wasting my energy on something that I can’t MAKE happen. As the old Bonnie Raitt song says, “I can’t make you love me if you don’t; I can’t make your heart feel what it won’t”. But it still leaves me feeling sad. And lonely.