Sex Love and Obesity Part 1

I believe that there is a part of the weight loss journey that we don’t talk about nearly enough. The way obesity affects the decisions we make regarding sex, love and relationships.

I wasn’t always an Obesity Rebel. There have been times in my life that Obesity kicked my ass and suffering from this disease lead me to make some bad decisions in when it came to these things. There were times when I was 100{6e74c841b8f362d8aea590534016dc569fd3035eeb9e530df8846b42682c6656} convinced that losing weight would fix all my relationship-oriented problems. Times I believed I would miraculously find Mr. Right if my waist size wasn’t in the high double digits or if the number on my scale didn’t start with a 2, 3 or 4.

In this next blog series, “Sex, Love and Obesity” I’m going to share some of my thoughts and experiences on this topic with you.

Sex Love and Obesity Part 1: I thought losing weight was going to fix my love life.

When I first started my weight loss journey I was in the middle of a failing marriage. The marriage was already over honestly and there wasn’t really anything left to fix ; we’d already grown apart. I couldn’t tell you what was going through his mind at the time, but I had decided that after losing all that weight I was finally in a position where men might actually *WANT* to date me, and I was curious if something more fulfilling was out there.

I’d never really done that. The dating thing. As someone who suffered from obesity since childhood, my dating background was sort of slim. I had a high school sweetheart that was also a bit overweight. So, he was very accepting of me.

We broke up not long after graduation. I was 18 then and the internet had just become a thing. I met a 24-year-old guy in an AOL chat room. He was a computer geek, gamer, and wasn’t exactly the epitome of slender himself. I moved in with him within a month of dating him and together our poor lifestyle habits lead to an even more overweight me. Our relationship sexually was rather boring, so I started looking for more excitement in online sex chat rooms.

Cyber sex filled a void in my life.

It provided a venue for me to experience the sort of passionate romantic and exciting sexual escapades I was looking for without my weight being a hard limitation. However, as soon as anyone got close enough to me that they asked for a photo and realized how overweight I was, I’d feel the sting of their rejection.

As the number on the scale climbed, I probably weighed somewhere between 200-250 pounds. In the world of the internet chat room and internet chat lingo, I was what was referred to as a BBW, (Big Beautiful Woman) only nobody really thought big was beautiful and most the times the posts I would see from men advertising that they were looking for someone would exclude me. “No BBWs please,” was a common line in the online profiles I read.

In my search for men that were accepting of my size, I would often start-up chat conversations with just about anyone that didn’t post a weight restriction in their profile. I’d feel them out, avoid the part of the conversations where they would ask for photos, and try to build a relationship based on my personality first. I figured eventually I’d find someone who would like me for who I was and then what I looked like wouldn’t be so important.

I did meet someone like that. Someone that didn’t really care much about what I weighed or what I looked like. He was more focused on how I behaved. Particularly how submissive I was. He introduced me to the BDSM, (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism) community. I was about 19 years old then. If you read erotica I’d say my life varied somewhere between The Story of O and the John Normal Gor Novels.

Before Photo – Taken approx. 2001 – 400 lb.

I was owned, I was considered property, and I was used sexually.

Strangely, my lack-of-self-confidence made this all justifiable in my mind. I was proud to be such a good submissive, slave, or whatever label you wanted to put on it, that men wanted to own me. Being owned was a privilege. Being hand selected by a man to be his property made me special. That’s what I was taught, and that was the way I lived my life for the next thirteen years.

I entered into relationships as if they were contracts. I had rules that I had to follow. Rules that determined things like how I could speak, what I could wear, what changes I could make to my hair or my body, what music I could listen to, what television shows I could watch. If I broke the rules, I was punished. Sometimes the punishments were physical, sometimes they were emotional. But I spent my life striving to be so obedient that I was rarely punished.

In the beginning I had several owners. The alternative lifestyle community kind of promotes open relationships. Many of the men involved in these types of relationships have no problem sharing the women they own with others. This is often acceptable because they either wish to participate in sexual experiences with other women themselves or because they own more than one woman at a time. Swinging, poly amorous relationships and “sharing” were a common occurrence in these relationships.

I didn’t really want to share someone’s love and attention.

This presented a problem for me. I never really wanted that sort of relationship. I found myself constantly seeking a man who wanted only one slave. I envisioned the romanticized version of these relationships where in exchange for my undying love and devout submission, I was provided for, emotionally, mentally, physically and financially.

After the better part of 6 years, I found the type of Master I believed I wanted. But by that point my relationship with food and my habit of feeding my feelings had caused me to gain a tremendous amount of weight. I weighed nearly 420 lb. and even though I had found my equivalent of Prince Charming in my BDSM fairy-tale. My happy ending came with a caveat, I had to lose weight if I wanted to be owned by him.

When he presented my weight as an obstacle to a relationship he was kind about it. He let me know that it wasn’t just about what I looked like and his level of physical attraction to me, it was also about not wanting to be with someone who was unhealthy. He had concerns about the physical ailments and medical ramifications associated with obesity. He wanted me to be healthy if he was going to make a lifelong commitment to owning me.

When he presented this issue to me, in my mind, any loyal submissive that truly wanted the commitment of ownership from a man on the level that I did, would do anything asked of them to earn it. So, I decided, for the first time in my entire life of struggling with obesity to make a commitment to losing the weight. I started dieting and exercising and the weight started melting off.

In just a little over a year, I had shed 195 pounds and moved to another state to be closer to him. I achieved that coveted title of being his slave. About 9 months later he decided we should get married. It made sense at the time. It sealed our commitment to each other in a way the world recognized. It would allow him to make medical decisions for me as my “Husband” that he wouldn’t be able to make as my “Master.” – I was elated. I thought I had found my 50 Shades of Gray version of happily ever after and my fairy-tale ending.

I also thought I was correct in my interpretation that losing weight would miraculously solve all my love life problems.

But my romantic problems were just beginning.

My struggle with obesity was nowhere near over and every decision I had made in my love life thus far was more an act of desperation than an act of love.

I had no idea how much suffering from obesity had damaged my self-worth. I was unaware how much it had caused me to devalue myself. I was oblivious to how it was affecting my decisions when it came to sex, love and relationships. But, I was about to find out.

Stay tuned next week the next part of this blog series.

Sex Love and Obesity Part 2 – How Gaining & Losing Weight Ruined My Marriage