Dating While Fat: the Emotional Consequences of Anti-Fatness
As a fat person, you’re told pretty directly you will not be loveable until you lose weight. You won’t find a partner, no one will want to date you, and you’re not attractive until you become thin by whatever means necessary. None of this is an exaggeration and many of us can identify moments where we were explicitly told this, sometimes even as young kids. As a fat kid, very early in life, you’re given the message that your body means you are not good enough.
I see this all the time with my clients, and I lived it myself. Just the other day my client expressed avoiding dating and shutting down any romantic feelings she has because she doesn’t believe anyone would want to date her. I remember doing the same myself for many years. I blocked off any feelings I had of crushes on my classmates, brushed off any rumors that so and so liked me, and assumed that no one could ever possibly want to be with someone who looked like me.
I still grieve those years of denying myself relationships, of being so convinced I was so flawed and unlovable. It still pains me to think of it.
Before you jump in with “oh but if you love yourself, others will too!” or whatever other platitudes, let me say confidently that fat people are not actually entirely wrong about this. Here’s the thing- anti-fatness is real. Fat hatred (or fatmisia) is real. People do reject you because of your body size, just ask any fat person that has a public social media account. The messages we received about being unlovable may not be true, per se, but being unwanted as dating partners because of our body size is kinda true. Let’s not pretend that every person in a bigger body can date in the same ways as straight sized folks. Just like let’s not pretend that racism, homo/transphobia, ableism, and healthism don’t exist too. When there’s a giant societal bias against you and your body, you have a harder time dating. Period!
And let me say this before I go further- your body is not actually the problem in dating, the bias against your body is. So if someone you’re with blames your body, your size, your health, anything like that, for why things aren’t working or why they’re treating you a certain way- they are actually saying “my bias is why I struggle to connect with you in a caring way”. You never ever ever ever, never never ever have to put up with this. And you never need to stay with someone who is unwilling to work on their biases against certain bodies.
I’m not a dating coach, and let’s also be real that I’m aging out giving practical dating advice anyways. (I’m the okcupid generation, to age myself). But, I can help you heal the underlying wounds around feeling worthy and deserving. Because healing those wounds is crucial to having healthy dating experiences.
Healthy relationships require vulnerability, trust, boundaries, and communication. Healing your wounds around feeling unlovable can help with all of these by helping you:
To be open to receiving affection, feeling deserving and worthy of love and tenderness. This will help you to not push away affection, to not misperceive negative attention as affection, and to be emotionally available for someone who is also emotionally available.
To be comfortable with and knowing what gives you pleasure and makes you feel loved. This includes sexual pleasure and knowing what your sexual needs are in a relationship.
To know your boundaries and to feel confident in expressing those boundaries. If you don’t feel deserving or feel like you’re unlovable, it’s hard then to feel like you deserve boundaries and your own needs. The relationship can become focused on keeping someone in your life and can turn into people pleasing and abandoning yourself.
To develop your “picker” as they say, or to get more discerning about who you spend time with. This will help hopefully avoid people that aren’t a healthy match for you. You deserve to be discerning! Not everyone is entitled to your time, energy, love, and certainly your body.
For practical dating tips as a fat person, I recommend what I often recommend- talking with your fat community! There are facebook and discord groups dedicated to the topic of dating while fat, and there are great tips on what apps are more body affirming than others.
I recommend finding a fat affirming therapist for this work specifically because it’s important to find someone who understands the very real messages you’ve received about your body making you unlovable. It’s not going to be helpful to have a therapist who shrugs those off, who blames you for interpreting messages to be against your body when they weren’t (because they very likely were), etc etc. You want someone who’s comfortable talking about anti-fatness and who validates what it’s like living in a world that is biased against your body.
You can check out ASDAH’s list of providers, ask around your fat communities, or reach out to me for referrals in your area. I’m taking new clients in California as well.
You always have deserved love, care, and tenderness. You deserve to have your needs met, your boundaries respected, and your body treated with sweetness. You don’t have to shut down giant parts of your life out of fear of rejection. You can find love, because you’ve always been and always will be entirely lovable.
