ADVICE: If your partner's discomfort with their body is "getting in the way" of your sex life, I have a few suggestions of what to say and what not to say, writes Angela Barnett.
“What’s wrong?” the long-term boyfriend asked.
“You won’t get it,” I said.
“Did somebody hurt you?”
I didn’t say anything. “Just tell me who and I will sort them out!’
Twenty-six-years-old and my (then) partner wanted to know why I was sad sometimes, and why, during those moments, I didn’t want to be touched. There was no way the truth was coming out – that I was already almost a decade into a raging eating disorder and its constant companion, negative body image, also had a lead role in my messy mind. It was easier to let him believe somebody had hurt me than know that I was hurting myself. Because I had taken Women’s Studies at university. I had read The Beauty Myth. I should have known better than to have a negative body image! Or that’s how I felt.
Recently I saw a question posed on social media to well-known sex therapists:
How do I help my wife get past body image issues that are killing our sex life?
I wanted to comment, How does your wife get past your belief that the quality of your sex life is the fault or creation of only one person in the relationship?’
The therapists' answers were nebulous. There was “compliment her body” and “get her to talk about her relationship with her body”, and the ubiquitous “support her so she can take time for herself and have a bath” — how many times do we see “have a bath” as a response to the deep complicated issues underlying negative body image? If this worked there would be bathhouses on every street. Lastly, “tell her the impact her negative body image has on your sex life”.
These therapists are a big deal on TikTok and usually provide sound sex advice but they’re not body image experts.
The way out of negative body image is not usually receiving more compliments about your body, as you don’t believe them. Feeling guilty about ruining your partner’s sex life is also not a cure for this condition.
The way out of negative body image, in my experience, is about getting out of the image in your head. It’s about experiencing your body from the inside and not viewing it from the outside, especially when you’re thinking about sex. It’s about getting angry at the messaging you have taken on, rather than angry at your own body. And yes, it’s about kindness but not in a floating-petal, candle-melting bath sort of way, but being kind to yourself; even if, with all your understanding and education around these issues, you still feel negative some days. Because it’s not your fault.
It's not what you ‘know’
Healthy body image is about less judgement of your own body, and equally important, other bodies. If you reduce your judgement of other bodies, it impacts how you feel about your own.
It’s also about discovering your body is an instrument to live your life in — and that includes enjoying sex through — and not an ornament for others to admire or judge but it takes hard work to believe this in your bones.
If I’d been the therapist addressing that husband, I’d tell him: your wife might not want to talk about how she feels about her body, as that brings on feelings of guilt that she feels that way. She knows she should know better as she’s no doubt seen all the positive messaging on social media, but she’ll have a negative dialogue running inside her mind from all the contrary messages she’s seen throughout her entire life about what a woman’s body should or shouldn’t be, or what certain bodies do and don’t deserve from people, from media, from family members, friends and lovers.
It can take years of unknowing and getting inside your body to fix it.
Tackle the messaging
Husband, if you want more intimacy with your wife then roll your sleeves up and dig into where the messages came from that gave her the negative body image. (And of course, this advice applies to the unmarried, the non-heterosexual and every gender, but for the purposes of this article, I'll stick with our original husband.) Tell your wife that it’s not her fault she feels negatively about her body. She was being observant, listening, and absorbing the messages like a good student. The fault lies in the messaging that there is a good type of body and that only the beautiful, able-bodied, fit ones deserve love. This is simply not true.
Instead of her judging her own body, you want her to judge the powerful messages that made her so critical in the first place, whether that’s racism, sexism, ableism, fatphobia, ageism or a combination of them all. Tell her you may have added to those feelings and didn’t realise, and you are sorry. You’re a product of this culture too and that’s not your fault.
Stomp all over the fatphobic, ableist, ageist and racist messages that exist. Get fridge magnets. Be on her side and understand how harmful messages have made your wife, and many women, think their bodies exist for other people’s pleasure instead of their own god-given pleasure.
But don’t expect her to suddenly like her body
Jes Baker wrote in her excellent book about body image LandWhale that the time when you feel the most sexy and carefree about your body is the time immediately after sex. You’ll lie around smoking imaginary cigarettes and you could swing around a stripper pole if you had any energy but you don’t as you’re in post-bliss sexification with your bodies drenched with the chemical cocktail of dopamine and oxytocin. Baker laments that if only we could have the sexy feeling beforehand it would be so much easier. But you have to have the sex to get this sexy feeling.
The way to this feeling is to get out of your mind, and what you think your body looks like, and into your body. It’s the most extreme form of mindfulness to stay inside your body but seeing someone you love enjoying their own body is the sexiest thing. Husband, tell your wife that. Let her know you mean it. Sex is about desire and figuring out what you want, it’s not about body types or what the individual parts look like.
Body acceptance for your wife may never be liking how her body looks but liking how her body does things for her. Help her get into what her body can do. This is a slow game. Let her know your keen and sharp interest in her experiencing pleasure inside her own body.
Send them to KFC
When you talk about her body, talk about how incredible the whole thing is. Don’t dissect it, as this happens all the time to women’s bodies in the media, in conversations and in her own mind. As the rapper Drake said, “If they only like you for your breasts, legs and thighs, send them to KFC.”
Get her to talk about what makes her body feel good. What her desires are. Get her out of the image of her body and into her actual body. And do that all at her pace, not yours.
Your wife only gets one body. Her life, this life, is the only time in the long history of time where she will get to feel and experience the world through her body and it’s a privilege for her to share that body with you, not a right.
Whatever you do, don’t shame her or make her think that her negative body image is ruining your sex life. Sex is between two bodies. Good sex is about communication and trust, and being able to know and say what you want.
It takes two people to ruin it.
Finally, watch your words
Husband, have you ever said anything that indicates you judge women’s bodies? Notice what you say as it matters. A lot.
For instance, if you’re watching Bridgeton Season 3 with your wife (go on, great foreplay) and you see the beautiful Penelope Featherington, played by Nicola Coughlan, have sexy scenes including full nudity (which she pushed for as she told Variety as a ‘F*** You’ to Body Shamers’) with Colin Bridgerton, played by Luke Newton, don’t call it “brave”. Call it good storytelling because people of all different body types fall in love and have great sex.
Angela Barnett is a writer from Tāmaki Makaurau and co-founder of Like Bodies Like Minds.
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