Is Love Making You Gain Weight?
Are you upping the ante, thinking you might be dumped because you’ve eaten one too many Cheese Puffs?
For married and cohabitating couples, one of the proven side effects of romance is gaining weight. In fact, one study featured in Obesity showed that people who get married or live with their partners are in one of the fastest-growing groups likely to become obese. For women, the sense of commitment often leads to weight gain within the first year after marriage or shacking up with their man. For men, the increased risk of obesity typically happens two years into the relationship.
The Psychological Impact of Commitment
Obviously, love, marriage, and cohabitation drastically change the lifestyle and routine for many people. However, there is another psychological factor involved as well. Up until the big commitment, men and women often believe that their personal appearance is key to landing a suitable partner. This is why single people tend to eat healthier, exercise more, and remain in one of the healthiest groups in society. Yet once the “hook and line” aspect is removed, men and women begin feeling comfortable and complacent about their weight and lifestyle habits. Additionally, many couples—newly married or living together—make major lifestyle changes to accommodate one another, meaning that old routines like hitting the gym or attending spinning classes may no longer fit in as easily.
So, we know that commitment can lead to weight gain. But is this weight gain really grounds for breaking up with someone you love? Isn’t love based on something more solid than numbers on a scale?
Askmen.com, in combination with Cosmopolitan.com, ran a survey of 70,000 people to determine if love is really contingent upon weight gain. The results, from this unmarried group of participants, showed that around half of all men would break up with a girl for gaining weight, while 20% of women would do the same.
Even Queen Latifah, despite all of her ‘assets,’ was dumped because her girlfriend felt she was overweight. But her partner brought up a great point in an interview. She said she didn’t dump Queen Latifah because she was fat, but because she was unwilling to eat healthy and exercise, showing a huge lack of self-respect that she just couldn’t identify with. As a personal trainer, these issues were deal-breakers for her, drawing a boundary line between their two personalities. Sadly, Queen Latifah isn’t the only one struggling to live healthier. These health and fitness statistics show our grim reality.
Sure, it’s harsh to break up with someone simply because they’ve put on a few pounds. However, if the weight gain is due to a lack of self-esteem, motivation, or even self-respect, then it’s natural for the partner to lose interest. Relationship experts consistently say that people are most attracted to those who take care of themselves and have high levels of self-confidence. For many, gaining weight signifies a major hurdle in self-esteem and can even indicate underlying depression or personality dysfunction. Perhaps the real turn-off isn’t just the weight gain, but the personality or moral fabric that is no longer shared.
It’s important to consider, however, that weight gain is often just the normal progression of life. If you marry someone, you should expect weight gain at some point. Women, for example, gain significant weight when pregnant and may not immediately bounce back to their pre-pregnancy size after childbirth. If the man in her life feels that weight gain is a deal-breaker, the relationship could face some rocky times ahead. Will he leave his new bride and baby simply because his wife has gained 20 pounds? More often than not, especially in marriage, the answer is no. However, men have admitted that the extra “baby cushion” can be a bit of a turn-off.
Dr. Gail Saltz, author of Anatomy of A Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie, says that couples who lose physical attraction due to weight gain often have an underlying source of agitation or anger that they are really upset about. It’s easier to focus on something visible, like weight, than it is to address the deeper issues in the relationship.
Still, dumping someone because they’ve gained weight is not an easy decision. It can make someone appear shallow and heartless, and it’s a tough pill to swallow for the person being dumped.
The truth is that, rarely, if ever, do people’s appearances and weights improve with age. The person you’re with now will not look the same in 15 years. You can’t just trade people in the way you do cars. Setting the bar for a partner too high without considering the effects of aging is a poor way to make a relationship feel compromised and unsafe. However, if you are particularly sensitive to your partner’s weight and appearance, it’s in your best interest to be honest about your intentions should weight gain occur.
The reality is that it’s best to find someone who loves you for who you are on the inside, despite what you look like on the outside. Dating people who share your ideology about relationships is important, as they will allow you to be yourself without strings or ultimatums. And yet, since physical attraction is so important in a healthy relationship, being honest about weight gain and its implications is fair. In many ways, it would be worse to stay with someone you aren’t attracted to just to save face than to break up with them and be true to your own feelings.
