Am I shallow? What do I do?

Seriously, you don't have to do anything you don't want to, and if she's enormously fat she should lose some weight anyway. If she's just a bit podgy though, I say give it a shot. A personality you click with is hard to find.

yeh, it's shallow, but dude: you can't help how you feel. chap, above, is bang OTM.

same thing with not dating ppl you're not attracted to, vs dating someone you were attracted to and could be again.

it all depends on how much you liked this girl and why she's gained weight. if she's going thru a really low period in her life, and that's behind the gain, and you can show her that you're not going to run away just because she's gotten heavier - and if you really do otherwise like this girl a lot - then i'd consider going for it. especially if you feel like her mind and personality are serious relationship or marriage material.

OTOH if she was near-anorexic when you met her before, and now she's at a weight that's normal for her, then it'd be fucked up to try to return her to that.

really you don't have to either/or this one, you can try taking things slow, spending time with her, getting more insight into what's going on and stuff. maybe she's on anti-depressants, or maybe she has a crappy job that makes her sit, or maybe someone died, or whatever.

also i think a lot of guys are weirdly afraid of hooking up w/ a 'fat girl', like it's some line that can't be crossed. but i've done it and had a damn good time doing it. she may have been joking but mandee otm, most of the best and most enthusiastic sex i've had has been with girls who were at least a little overweight. i don't say this is a universal truth, just my experience.

http://www.edrperformance.com/images/jabbaTheHut.jpg

Sound advice in most cases anyway.

(xpost!)

I think there's a lot to this, actually. The first time I hooked up with a fat girl, I was a little ...confused, I guess. My situation I guess was pretty different in that I was attracted to her when she was fat, but didn't entirely know what to do with that, whether it meant something different about myself ("chubby-chaser", etc - plus the whole idea that it must mean the actually hot girls are out of your league). Let's go to the journal excerpts (redacted to remove the naughty bits and the irrelevant tangents):

"5/15: [...] Upstairs, she without warning peeled off her shirt and slipped into a nightgown and then we talked for a bit [...] we cralwed into bed, and despite the lateness of the hour we settled in for the promised makeout, and it was lovely. [...] Funnily, as the night wore on she only got cuter to me [...] - partially the effect of seeing her up close, but I think also just me shedding a lot of culturally programmed uncertainty of what to do when you find a fat person attractive. Seriously! I was thinking on my walk to work today, cultural/media portrayals of non-skinny people haven't so much coded me to view such people as ugly - rather, I just don't know how to process internal feelings of attraction towards them. But anyway, that was swiftly a non-issue: the girl is frigging gorgeous!"

Don't know if that really helps, but I think you're better off at LEAST doing as Valerian suggests and going on some dates and feeling out how you feel. Maybe you'll have some great times and maybe you'll have some great sex, and maybe you'll EXPAND YR MIND, MAAAAN!

i have a lurking feeling that come morning (american time) someone's going to come swooping down on this thread and yell at us for making overweight women/ppl feel awful

before doing so, said hypothetical person might want to consider that the frankness and candor of the thread, though it might be painful to read here and there, is probably helping a lot of men/ppl to reevaluate their assumptions and premises

in other words, a net positive for fat-positive

(NB i know it's no consolation)

My husband is shorter than me! Hooray for me, I'm not shallow! In fact, I chose him especially so that I could claim the moral high ground in silly arguments on the internet!

As usual, Kim cuts straight to the chase.

Yeah, a lot of this thread makes me feel downright awful, too. But you know, I already feel bad enough about myself and my appearance.* I don't need other people to do that. They just reconfirm what I already know, i.e. most guys are shallow assholes.

*Though obviously, not bad enough to change it. I've been a lot happier since I stopped caring.

If you want a friendship with her, have a friendship. To attempt to fit yourself into something you obviously don't actually want will cause heartache for both of you - far more, long term, than admitting you aren't sexually attracted to her. Being attracted to someone's brain may be wonderful but if you're thinking of someone else when you're touching her body its not going to work.

Sorry, you're Calum.

xpost - ouch :(

otm, i wish i was articulate enough to have said this.

http://s129178457.onlinehome.us/celebritieseating/uploaded_images/81-791403.jpg

oh germans could you be any more german...

but wait, i don't want to derail this thread

I realize that the original poster asked us to judge him and that therein lies a crucial difference between his judging of this woman he doesn't really know and our judging of this guy we don't really know; aside from that, the judgements flying here are just as "superficial" as the judgement described in the opening post.

http://www.nme.com/images/84_thomyorke_radiohead_L210306.jpg

(You have to derail Calum threads, it is The Law.)

Anyway, who's to say that this girl is into superficial guys? Maybe this exposes more to her about him that makes *him* unattractive to her.

Wanting to date somebody because you find them physically attractive and charmed by the surface attributes of their personality in itself is pretty normal; not wanting to date someone because you aren't physically attracted to them or their surface personality seems to be the norm also. There are millions, if not billions, of people who aren't interested in dating me for precisely these reasons and I don't think that makes them bad people. It's not basing your entire valuation of a person's worth on whether or not you want to date them, it's just about wanting to date somebody or not.

Your (David) situation is fucked because you already laid your cards out on the table and there's no way to get around the fact that the situation has changed. If you truly feel the same way about her outside of the physical issue them you'll want to be in her life no matter what, and you'll find a way to make that happen. If not, then it was just a casual dating thing anyway.

+ I don't think saying you've slept with someone short or plus-sized means anything. Who you'll bang is much different than who you'll date. Also, "plus size" = US size 12+. Someone who is a size 12 isn't at all fat, so yeah.

take a wild guess

i have posted here before, under a different name - never much, but a little bit here and there, a little while back. enough to know the ilx memes, not enough to really get involved. lurked for a while, then decided to post when i saw this thread. ok?

this is definitely true (and a distinction i made in my own posts).

Also, "plus size" = US size 12+. Someone who is a size 12 isn't at all fat, so yeah.

also true! many women look their foxiest at sizes 12 and above (what size depends on the girl).

a lot of this for me is about faces - some ppl's facial features really work best at a particular weight range, and it ain't always the thin part of the spectrum. i've heard ppl say 'oh she'd be so pretty if she were thinner' - but some girls are prettiest when they're 'fat', and tend to look pointy or severe when they're 'thin'. (same goes for boys, of course.) when i went to hawaii i found that the native hawaiians often looked really stunning with some extra pounds.

maybe it has to be self-diagnostic: you meet someone, you think they're cute and really like their personality, but you're put off by their weight. if you think 'you know, this person just doesn't work for me, physically, at this weight', then that's one thing. but if your mind steers towards thoughts of status and embarrassment - 'what would my mates/co-workers think?' - then it's time for some soul-searching.

Alright, thanks again.

Peace

If she's no longer his type then there no reason he shouldn't not want to start a relationship with her (it does help if you find your SO physically attractive, at least at the beginning of a relationship) - Of course, maybe he should expand the boundaries on what his type is, but that's part of growing up.