When Boobs Meet Belly: A Woman’s Story of Unrequited Love

The trauma of feeling unlovable when you are an earth angel-sized woman is real.

Long gone are the days when being the shape of a Greek goddess was en vogue. Remember when Marilyn Monroe was the epitome of sexiness? She was not a tiny woman although she was not overweight. She was curvy and natural. The time has passed when a hefty woman was seen as the prize. Her rolls of fat proved that she was not only wealthy but healthy because having rolls of fat meant that she was rich enough to avoid starving to death. She was considered a keeper because she could easily carry babies or at least more easily so than a “fat-free” woman at risk of losing her period or dying in childbirth. With all that excess adipose tissue, she could feed her babies for months which ensured that they too would not die. Ahhh, nature and order. Those kids were needed to run farms after all. Nowadays, it seems more common to see very skinny women with breast and butt implants taking off their clothing on social media platforms for all the world to see. As women objectify themselves and allow others to objectify them, it sends a message to the more visual gender that this is the “perfect” woman.

Today, we know that less overall body fat is undeniably better for your health. As part of my holistic trauma coaching practice, I also help people with their health and weight because many illnesses do develop from being overweight—I mean to say over FAT. Being someone with excess fat tissue, or having body image issues, and body dysmorphia are struggles that often arise as a result of trauma and once we unburden from the past wounding, it becomes easier to shed the weight. The truth is that “healthy” body size and weight is quite variable, often has less bearing on your health than we have been sold, and looking exactly the same as everyone else is not only not totally possible, but it is not even a good thing. I mean, what happened to being unique and setting yourself apart? I might weigh 180 pounds and be mainly muscle. I weigh a lot because of muscle, which is heavier than fat. You might weigh 130 pounds and be mostly fat. You look smaller than I do, but who is actually healthier? So, being a larger person can be someone who is actually healthier. The amount of water in my body and the weight of my bones and organs might also be heavier, but that doesn’t mean I am not healthy. We need to view this in a better light for one thing.

Story Time

I’ll tell you a story. Let’s go ahead and place you as the subject in this story. So, you and a person who you are possibly romantically interested in (for the sake of this article, I will use the pronouns him and he) begin a slightly flirty but more or less just friendly connection online. You carry on with this for a pretty good, long time. At times, he is complimenting you on how pretty you are (based only on your fully dressed profile pictures) and although you still don’t really know where you stand, you think that maybe he kind of might like you and that maybe you like him, too. So, you decide to meet up. The meeting goes well but nothing really happens. So, you move forward. You think that maybe, at the very least, you can still be friends since nothing really happened romantically and the friendship was pretty decent overall. Well, apparently, he has other ideas because the next thing you know you are totally ignored, ghosted, and abandoned without any explanation at all. You have a huge question mark over your head and wonder if it was a “him” thing or a “you” thing. You scratch your head wondering what you possibly could have done to make dust clouds appear as he, in no uncertain terms, zoomed away faster than Speedy Gonzalez. After all, remember that no expressions of love or romance were ever actually expressed between you two.

Unfortunately, this story is a really common one these days. I hear this one more often than about anything else lately and it’s disturbing at a very deep level that so many people choose to leave a situation without so much as a goodbye note and betray a person who they might not have liked in a romantic way or been attracted to, but who is still a human being with feelings who deserved some kind of explanation. I won’t go into the trauma and attachment wounds that create this kind of avoidant person in this article or the topic of healthy communication skills, but it is safe to assume that this is a “him” issue in the context of this story. The reality, however, is that when this kind of thing happens to us, especially as women, regardless of size or body augmentation, we undoubtedly believe it is about us and something we did or, more precisely, the way we look. The person in this story most likely thought that the man who bolted did so because of her curves and holly jolly belly rolls. She jumped to this conclusion simply because he didn’t even seem to want to know her at all or even be her friend anymore after being in her physical presence.

She may never know why he ran, but she is left with the really deep and often quite challenging work of loving herself regardless of her body size. After all, and even when this is one of the worst things you can tell a larger woman, she has a “very pretty face and beautiful, glowing skin; a heart of gold; she is a giving and loving friend, mother, and family member; she is funny, outgoing, smart, AND wise.” These are all plusses and she sounds like the whole package to me! Who wouldn’t want this queen in his life? But, as you are probably figuring out, not much of that matters in a society where being a size two or less is seen as the gold standard, regardless of all those other great qualities listed. Unfortunately, you, as a larger woman, are deemed ugly, gross, and like you are invisible or don’t even exist to men who only want “perfection.” Pornography has really harmed so many of our men and created an illusion of what a good enough woman truly looks and should be like. Childhood and relationship trauma can also add to the fantasy many men have of one day having the most perfect woman who would never break his heart again. (Unlike those other bitches). The perfect-looking woman will surely also be the most decent and loving person on the inside too, right? This could very well be the case…or not. The measure of a person, no matter how they look on the outside, comes from their inner emotional health and self-love. So, certainly, the perfect-bodied woman could also be perfect on the inside. I know many women just like this, actually. But it’s not a guarantee. Nothing in life is.

Many women have felt the desperation of having to live up to these impossible standards of body perfection. They have succumbed to surgeries that are permanent and can cause irreparable damage to their faces and body parts or even death. The unique body and face they once had has been altered and she is almost unrecognizable. I personally know people who do these kind of things and they are truly coming from a place of loving themselves and just wanting to feel more feminine after having babies or lighter or tighter so they can feel good in their bodies regardless of what anyone thinks. They are not doing this to secure or to keep a man. They are doing it to match the love they feel on the inside with a body that reflects that. Breasts disappear or enlarge and hang lower than before and bellies appear more prominently after giving birth and many women just want to feel sexy and beautiful in their skin again. I don’t see anything wrong with any of it. I think that there are different reasons women change their bodies and I think the reasons are what need to be noticed. I encourage and celebrate anything that makes you feel good and at peace and happy in yourself and life.

The problem is that many women do these things for the love of men, the approval of abusive parents who never saw them as worthy when they were overweight kids, or the “friendship” of other women who they want to be like and be accepted by because they were never considered the “popular” girl in high school. Now is their moment to shine! There are many unhealthy reasons women choose to alter their bodies and much of it stems from past or even present trauma and abuse. Trauma and abuse create shame and shame creates parts of us called “inner critics.” These inner critics can do quite a number on our self-esteem and make us feel very, very unworthy. Then, when certain people show up in our lives to mirror to us that we are not worthy (especially when we are larger and men will not make eye contact or even utter a simple hello to us and treat us like we are invisible), we really start to believe what that mirror is telling us. Just like when the evil queen in Snow White needs constant validation that she is the fairest of them all, when mirrors in our world in the form of other people do not make us feel like we exist or that we are so ugly that they won’t even say hello to us as a person, we start to believe that we are not the fairest of them all. And this is when we spiral and start to take more desperate measures.

When your boobs and stomach have, in fact, met each other and seem to like to be together because no matter what you do with your exercise or eating habits you can’t unglue those two buddies, you can find yourself in a world of Hell…or you can change your beliefs about yourself.

My Story

I will tell you that as someone who is a prime example of this kind of larger woman (or earth angel as I would rather be known as because earth angels are larger people generally, but are wonderfully loving beings), I have been at both ends of the spectrum. As a child, some traumatic things happened to me and I put on a lot of weight to protect myself. I was bullied and mistreated by both family and school peers for my weight. I was always a giving, loving, and extremely kind child and I was beaten up emotionally and verbally anyway. My caring nature did not come close to protecting me from the cruelty of fat shamers. In fact, my pleasing ways seemed to invite and to encourage very self-hating, shame-filled people to abuse me even more. As an adult, I have learned to create very healthy, strong boundaries now, which has protected me from toxic and abusive people. So, it was a good lesson for me.

Later on in my young adulthood, I fell in love with a young man who deeply loved me. While I was not very overweight by that point and I exercised regularly and ate healthy food, I was not the tiniest girl in the bunch by far. I was taller than most and I have very broad shoulders which work well for winning swimming races, but don’t really make one look so feminine. However, I was happy with myself. I was light and I shined my soul essence to everyone I met. I was kind and caring to all, but mostly to myself, which is the most important part of this entire article. He was likely mostly attracted to my goodness and kind soul and heart over my not-so-perfect body. Also, he obviously loved himself which is how he could love a less-than-average-looking lady like me without needing me to be smaller in order to make his ego bigger. As a result of my boyfriend’s love for me and the love I had for myself, I was able to even more clearly know how good and lovable I am. From there, I was inspired to start working out a bit more, eating even better, and seeing my worth. My studies in school became more on point and I was successful in almost every area of my life. Because of my self-love and his love for me, I was simply able to hold firmly to a true and deep belief that I mattered and that I was enough. I wasn’t telling myself affirmations, meditating, or praying to be deemed lovable. My subconscious was just bathing in my knowing of my worth. And that is all it takes to change your life on the outside. Change your beliefs on the inside first.

On the other end, later on when I became really thin and much more socially ”beautiful,” I got a lot of male attention and very often from the wrong kinds of men. These were men who used my beauty as a way to make themselves feel worthy by having a “trophy” on their arm. This is what mattered the most to them. I was their extension and so long as I looked good, they could “love” me. As soon as I looked unacceptable, I was treated with disrespect and contempt. Heck, I was treated with disrespect and contempt by these ones anyway, even as a thin and pretty person, because, frankly, they did not even love themselves and nothing was going to fill the emptiness inside of them. My loving nature was important only in the sense that they could use it to take advantage of me, use me as an emotional punching bag, and to get their emotional needs met. My outer beauty was needed to support their false belief that my good looks would help them look good enough. These were emotionally abusive relationships with people who were using me and I was not fed by their love. I was fueled by and projected onto with their self-hate. In these situations, I ended up hating and abusing myself with words and beliefs of self-loathing and I gained weight instead. Essentially, I not only protected myself from my abuser by putting on fat but also from my own self-abuse. Also, being in that kind of environment was extremely stressful and a lot of cortisol dumping was happening in my system. Cortisol belly is a real thing and can not only be hard to get rid of but also sets you up for pre-diabetes, insulin resistance, and Type 2 Diabetes as well as heart disease, systemic inflammation and autoimmune disorders, and even cancer.

Fat Happens. What Are You Going to Do About It?

Other factors that contribute to women not being able to shed extra belly weight are: having children, menopause, hormonal fluctuations over the course of a lifetime in general, comfort eating, over-exercising to the point of stress on your body, and starvation diets that backfire. People often emotionally eat due to stress in life or because of abuse or for many other reasons. To fat-shame women for eating for reasons that likely serve to calm their traumatized nervous systems is unfair and lacks compassion. People have real struggles and challenges in life and someone who keeps excess weight on their bodies has a deeper reason for doing it because no human wants to be unhealthy and overweight. The pressure to be thin and beautiful in order to be deemed worthy and lovable in our world is intense and non-stop. Women are backed into corners over and over again and many have opted to either settle for less in order to not be alone in the form of being with men who only want them to fill their voids or have decided to be okay with being alone simply because men will not even look in the direction of a heavier woman.

As a heavier person with past moments of abuse, neglect, out of whack hormones, diet confusion, and a lot of stress, I can tell you that when I am at one weight, I am completely invisible or even looked at with disdain by men and when I lose even five or 10 pounds, it’s like all of a sudden the lights come on and I exist once again. It’s very depressing and maddening because if you knew ME, you would want me. Period. To have someone like me as even just a friend is a bonus in anyone’s life. I say this in complete and total truth and honesty and not to boast. I do love myself very much and I see my worth and value as a being and it is just the truth that I am a loving, compassionate, passionate, considerate, accepting person and if you are in my life, you are lucky to know me. And it’s not just me who is this way. I know most women are this way, too, because, folks, women are a beautiful and necessary ingredient in this world. The world would not survive without women. Not only do we bring into life the very next generations, we are also the intuitive, allowing, accepting, loving, giving, caring and nurturing part of the whole. Men offer the other side of the coin. But without both, we don’t have a whole collective. I do not know one woman who is not the complete essence of inner and outer beauty. All women are so mind-blowingly beautiful that to walk past even one of us, big or small, is to lose the chance and the gift of true love and happiness. When a woman looks at a man with the eyes of love and acceptance, it can heal him and vice versa. We need each other.

When men make women feel objectified and not good enough, it is their trauma showing up, but it also traumatizes women more.

Women can’t love men wholeheartedly when they are traumatized by men “only wanting one thing.” When women have to be thin, overly muscular and have no fat on their bodies, they can often look masculine. Why do we want women to look like men or little boys? Why do we try to force women to be more like men? Some women have naturally muscular bodies and look outstanding. They have arms anyone would want, but many women don’t naturally have that mesomorphic physique. Women are logical too. They are not always overly emotional. I’d expect my man to also be able to cry sometimes or express his feelings when he needs to. I don’t want a robot. And whatever happened to the saying, “More cushion for the pushin’?” When did that go away? When women aim to be “perfect” for society, they never feel like they are perfect enough. So, they often will resort to plastic surgeries to try and fill an endless hunger to be “perfect enough” for others. If they are attracting men who only like shiny things then there are always shinier things out there. No amount of surgery, starvation, or strip-teasing (or even just stripping as far as I can tell) on Instagram will ever make a man love a woman that he only sees as an object. When women play into this toxic system, they are only objectifying themselves. You have to love yourself first before anyone will love you and before you can love anyone else. That is how energy works. Like attracts like. If you are objectifying yourself then you will be met with someone who only wants to objectify you. When he is finished playing with you, he will find another object to play with. And only you know if your intentions while showing off your nipples on social media is meant to show that you love yourself or if you are really trying to get love from others. This is your personal truth and knowing. I invite you to really and truly look at this and ask yourself your “why” on this, however. It could be the exact information that will change your life.

Just to Be Clear Here

There are many larger-sized goddesses out in the world and they have apparently attracted men who love them, so this is not the way it is in every case, obviously. And I think with the women who do attract true love regardless of their size, these are women who love themselves in spite of their size. They have been able to buck the dysfunctional system we live in, have self-worth, and know that they are a beautiful soul that their body simply lives in. In other words, they know that they are a SOUL and not just a body. Your soul is the beautiful, perfect, whole part of you. I applaud these women because their soul essences shine through a lot and that is what really matters to most people, men included. I also applaud the men who would gravitate to someone’s soul instead of only seeing the physical form. This gives me hope that true love sees through physical form and into the soul of the one who loves you.

As I mentioned above, just knowing you are worthy, lovable, whole, and beautiful and really and truly believing it with your entire being is how you start to heal and love yourself. Your body might still look the way it does, but the way you regard it is no longer with hatred and disappointment. Accepting what is right now is how we change anything and everything, including our bodies. When we have the come from of love for ourselves no matter how unacceptable the world views us, we have a lot of power to change our body’s resistance to shedding the excess pounds. Just as when someone loves you fully and totally and it changes your body, so too can you love yourself enough to do the same. Try it!