SelfhelpMagazine

by Edward A. Dreyfus, Ph.D.

Love and relationships can be a complicated duo. Your husband loved you enough to marry you despite or perhaps because of your being over your ideal weight. Many men actually prefer a woman with some meat on their bones. Your "ideal weight" may not his ideal weight.

What I get from your question is that you don't love you very much and probably wouldn't have married yourself because of your weight. This seems to be an example of how your own beliefs about yourself can be projected onto someone else.

It appears to be hard for you to accept that someone could have a different perception than your own and could love you even when you do not love yourself. Assuming that you are indeed 25 pounds overweight and it is not some unrealistic weight that you have established as ideal, being over-weight may be the result of compulsive over-eating.

Such behavior often is symptomatic of underlying feelings of emotional emptiness (which we try to fill through food) and can reflect the absence of self-love. Most frequently we learn to love ourselves because we felt the love and adoration from people around us during the early years of life and internalized it. If it was missing, or insufficient, we feel a sense of longing or craving.

Food becomes a substitute and a form of self-medicating. As you learn to love yourself (and it may take professional assistance to learn how), it will probably become easier for you to internalize your husband's love, for you will feel that you deserve it. The subject of love and relationships includes your relationship with yourself.

About the Author:

Dr. Edward A. Dreyfus is a Clinical Psychologist, Marriage, Family, Child Therapist, and Sex Therapist. Dr. Dreyfus has been providing psychological services in the Los Angeles-Santa Monica area for over 30 years. He offers individual psychotherapy to adolescents and adults, divorce mediation, couples counseling, group therapy, and career and vocational counseling and assessment. Dr. Dreyfus can be reached at: (310) 208-5700.