Okay... this should get me in trouble with all sorts of people, but some things just need to be said...

1. Dogmatic, sanctimonious, "politically correct" left wingers and dogmatic, sanctimonious, fundamentalist right wingers have more in common than they have differences. Both are pure poison. This is America, boy! Stand up and speak your piece and if someone - on either end of the political spectrum tells you off for it, hand them a copy of the Bill of Rights and tell them to go piss up a rope.

2. That said, there is no need to speak about things just because they happen to be true. You love your dad. He loves you. Leave the poison past - and its ugly secrets - in the past and move on. Dear Abby used to have a piece of advice that went something like, "Before opening your mouth ask yourself if what you are about to say is true, if it is kind, and if it is necessary. UNless you can say yes to all three, think twice. If you can't say yes to at least two of the three, shut up". The discussion you contemplate may - or may not (Mama could've been lying to you) - be true, but it sure as hell ain't necessary or kind. Leave it be.

3. Dishonesty justified by expediency is not a good sign. I would wonder what other areas of life she was willing to be dishonest in if doing so was expedient at the moment. I would worry about it. And then I would leave.

4. A happy, healthy sexual relationship is important to any marriage. Obesity is not conducive to such a relationship. I don't know how buff the guy is here, or how overweight she is, but if he finds her weight to be turning him off, he has a valid point. And before you ladies start screaming at me, there are two things you may want to consider. First, it is possible to love someone dearly and still find them sexually unappealing, which can make for wonderful friendships but lousy marriages. No amount of love will make obesity sexually appealing and you damn well know it. Second, men are no more "shallow" in this regard than women are, and if you're honest about it, you can't deny that either. Very few supermodels, actresses and other "beautiful" women are married to short, fat, bald men with little peckers. An ugly truth, perhaps, but a truth nonetheless. Let's stop being so "politically correct" about it and just deal with it.

I have to disagree with you on #4. While I do agree that a happy, healthy sexual relationship is important to marriage, on the point that obesity in not conducive to such a relationship, it's just not always as cut and dry as that. I'm sure we've all looked at a couple and thought to ourselves "what do they see in each other". In fact I'm sure people think that while looking at my husband and I, because while my husband is a average young man, I am most definitely classified as obese. When he was first interested in me, I figured for sure he was lying. When he said he was actually sexually attracted to me, I kept waiting for the punch line. But our sex life backs him up. He is just one of those people who is attracted to larger people. When he tells me I'm beautiful, I wish I could see myself through his eyes. When he looks at people on TV, the people most in America would consider drop dead gorgeous, he says they need to gain more weight.

And I'm sure that many people will try to tell me that he's making it up, or that he's just trying to keep me happy so I don't clobber him or something like that, but truthfully, you can only lie so much about what you're attracted to. And I really believe that he loves me the way it is. And when we talk about my weight loss efforts, it's only ever for health reasons, and never to fit the societal ideal of attractive. So my point is that what a person finds "attractive" is largely individual to that person. There is no clean cut formula for attractive and unattractive. Your unattractive might be someone else's drop dead gorgeous.

blackraincloud81;

Point conceded - and I am truly happy for you. There are, indeed, men who find heavier women attractive, just as there are men who (for reasons inexplicable to me) find women who are anorexic attractive. I guess the point I was trying to make was that most men are attracted, for reasons firmly grounded in biology, who are neither. I have always been attracted to "athletic" women. I am an "athletic" man. I have loved women who were obese, but have never been attracted to them sexually, and would not consider marrying them for just that reason. That has, on occasion, been the cause of hurt feelings and even accusations that I am shallow, bigoted and cruel. I can assure you I am none of those things. As you yourself pointed out, you can only lie so much about what you're attracted to. Faking it, to spare someone's feelings - because you "love' them is, in the long run, far more cruel than being honest about it from the get go.

I was not suggesting that she should lose the weight if she doesn't want to lose the weight. I was not suggesting that nobody would ever find her attractive if she did not. I was merely pointing out that he clearly is not a good match for her if she does not want to lose the weight, and that vilifying him because his tastes run to women thinner than she is right now is absurd. Humans - male and female - are attracted to whatever it is that attracts them. They do not consciously choose these tastes, nor can they be changed by simply "loving" somebody. He is not "controlling" or "manipulative" simply because he is honest enough to tell her what he finds "hot", nor for suggesting that marriage to someone he does not find "hot" is not something he is eager to enter into.

Walking away from him may very well be the smartest thing for her to do, but condemning him for failing to find her attractive regardless of how she looks is just wrong.

I love my husband who is more overweight than I am, is 17.5 years older than me, and who is bald. He cares about his weight a lot more than I do. In fact, I wish he'd quit being so down on himself about it; I don't like to hear him talk about himself in that negative way.

I told a friend of mine that she needed to quit fiddling around with young men and find an older man because they are more responsible, have few to little wild oats left to sow, and tend to come with perks like a house and a good credit score. My husband finds that hilarious and accuses me of only marrying him for his credit score.

There were a lot of reasons why I married him, but I first noticed him because his smile and laugh would light up a huge room. He makes other people smile and laugh when he does. That's a form of physical attraction that doesn't have anything to do with the scale in the bathroom or hair on the top of your head.

P.S. My mother's married to a very short, bald man also 17.5 years her senior and they've been married 22 years. Of all the things she's ever complained about, his lack of hair, height and age haven't been among them. So maybe I learned from them to love someone because of how they act and how they think instead of how they look. Because, let me warn you, looks don't last but attitude almost always does. One day your hot, shrew of a wife will be an old shrew of a wife and you will have nothing but misery.

I was just about to recommend your post, when I got to #4. If he isn't turned on by this woman, go find another one! Don't offer to marry her, and then put conditions on it that she can't promise to keep forever. She'll probably have a kid or more. She'll get older and her metabolism will slow. She'll hit menopause. Somewhere in there, the odds are good that those few pounds will return.

There are men and women who are willing to love someone despite physical imperfections. Typically, they are much happier than those who chose their spouses merely on the basis of the wrapping paper.

<<vilifying him because his tastes run to women thinner>>

But do they? He likes her well enough right now to live with her, be seen with her and, presumably have sex with her. Why is she good enough for that now, but not with a ring on her finger?

I agree with you that a person isn't to be vilified for what they find sexually attractive. I will even agree with you that this guy was right to tell his girlfriend that she had to lose the weight before he would married her if that was how he felt.

What I have a problem with is the inherent contradictions in the situation.

You say sex is important to marriage, well it seems pretty obvious they are having sex and the LW at least hasn't noticed a major problem with it. So, the only difference is if they are having sex as a married couple or just as a dating couple. And for that, I don't see why the weight matters. I could possibly respect him for saying 'I am not attracted to you so shape or up I leave'. I cannot at all respect him for saying 'I'm going to hang around and keep taking advantage of having you but I won't give you what you want until you meet my standards of attractiveness'. THAT is controlling and manipulative.

And of course there is the whole fact that she won't be a nubile young woman her entire life no matter how hard she works. But young people never do realistically face that so I'm more interested in your reaction to the above.

IncogNeato:

I was just about to recommend your post, when I got to #4. If he isn't turned on by this woman, go find another one! Don't offer to marry her, and then put conditions on it that she can't promise to keep forever. She'll probably have a kid or more. She'll get older and her metabolism will slow. She'll hit menopause. Somewhere in there, the odds are good that those few pounds will return.

There are men and women who are willing to love someone despite physical imperfections. Typically, they are much happier than those who chose their spouses merely on the basis of the wrapping paper.

I never said - or even implied - that people should choose their spouses "merely on the basis of the wrapping paper", nor that she should lose the weight if that's not what she wants to do. In all probability, she is better off leaving him now and finding someone who prefers his women on the heavier side. The only point I was making was that vilifying him because he was honest enough to tell her it was an issue for him - and a serious enough issue to cause him to have misgivings about a commitment as permanent as marriage - is just wrong. Had he kept that from her and married her despite his feelings, I think we all know that the marriage would most likely become a disaster down the road. Better to have it out in the open from the get go and get it dealt with.

For the record: I think they are both better off splitting up now, even if she does lose the weight. It seems clear that the importance they place on things like appearance is so wildly different that they are likely to have serious compatibility issues down the road even if they resolve this one.

Exactly, Susan. In other words, she's good enough to **** but not good enough to marry.

Maybe this is his way of breaking up with her? He's not man enough to tell her the relationship's over so he thinks making offensive demands will drive her away?

SusanM;

We have, of course, no way of knowing whether they are living together or apart. There is a great deal we can't know, because the LW didn't give alot of detail. What we are left with is presumption and conjecture. First, I will repeat, yet again, I think they are probably better off splitting up right now, regardless. My objection was to people instantly assuming the worst about the guy, in the absence of any evidence at all. Given that people seem to universally agree with me on the "political correctness" issue, I find that hard to fathom. To me, they seem to be very much the same. He had the gall to say, "I won't marry you because you are too fat" and he is instantly some kind of demon. Maybe she actually is fat. Maybe she has put on 20 pounds - and then some - since they first became engaged. It may not be politically correct to mention the posibility, but we both know perfectly well that the possibility not only exists but that it happens all the time, just as it often happens that once a man is secure in the permanence of a relationship he is likelly to ease up on the shaving, deoderant and clean, fashionable clothes.

I saw nothing in the LW's post that convinced me his position boiled down to, "I'm going to hang around and keep taking advantage of having you but won't give you what you want until you meet my standards of attractiveness". If I had, my reaction would have been quite similar to yours. I would hope that he had the common decency to have taken a gentler and kinder approach. But we cannot know, from the information we were given, what the truth of this one is. Having been accused of "calling me fat" for honestly replying I thought one dress looked better than another (I swear to God I didn't know the one I preferred was two sizes bigger than the other one), I am really really really leery of just instantly jumping to the conclusion that this guy issued the kind of cold, cruel ultimatum a lot of people are assuming (without any evidence) he did.

Let's look at what the LW said:

"We have been talking about marriage lately, which I am beyond excited about; however, my boyfriend has informed me that I need to lose 20 pounds before he will propose. He claims that's the only reason he hasn't asked me yet."

So. Does it sound to you like he is planning on leaving her over the weight? Or does it sound to you like he is planning on sticking around and only the marriage issue rests upon the weight?

And if it is the latter, my line may have been more blunt but tell me what the actual difference is between the two viewpoints?

Graylodge:

We have, of course, no way of knowing whether they are living together or apart.

From DP: "We were friends in high school, then met again after college, and started living together almost immediately."

Graylodge:

He had the gall to say, "I won't marry you because you are too fat" and he is instantly some kind of demon.

If she had told him that she wouldn't marry him because he was too poor, would that be better? The reason people are objecting to this is because he's stating that her appearance is the most important trait for her to possess as his wife. People age, it's life. People generally don't look as hot at 40 as they did at 20. Why marry a guy whose only going to dump her in 10 years because she can't lose those last 5 baby pounds?

In short, he's demonstrating that he has absolutely no idea how marriage works.

PhysicsGirl:

Graylodge:

We have, of course, no way of knowing whether they are living together or apart.

From DP: "We were friends in high school, then met again after college, and started living together almost immediately."

Got me. I missed that. Now how much weight has she put on since then?

PhysicsGirl:

Graylodge:

He had the gall to say, "I won't marry you because you are too fat" and he is instantly some kind of demon.

If she had told him that she wouldn't marry him because he was too poor, would that be better? The reason people are objecting to this is because he's stating that her appearance is the most important trait for her to possess as his wife. People age, it's life. People generally don't look as hot at 40 as they did at 20. Why marry a guy whose only going to dump her in 10 years because she can't lose those last 5 baby pounds?

C'mon, PhysicsGirl. You and I both know damn well that women refuse to marry men because they are too poor all the damn time. I may not like it much, but it is generally accepted that this is normal and acceptable, since a rich man can better provide for her offspring than a poor man can. For the same reason, men tend to be attracted to younger, healthier women. They can better provide him with offspring to provide for. The real difference that a man who called women whores for the former would be reviled (justifiably) for doing it, and a woman who called a man a dog for the latter is (unjustafiably) seen as absolutely right.

Biology is such a bitch. The reality is that while there are women who don't give a rat's ass how much money a man has and men who don't give a rat's ass how old or fat a woman is, they are the exception and not the rule. I'm not nominating the guy for sainthood. I'm just saying he's not necessarily a complete demon either.

PhysicsGirl:

In short, he's demonstrating that he has absolutely no idea how marriage works.

At 24, I doubt either one of them has any idea how a real marriage works. At 54, I'm still not entirely sure that I do. I am, however, pretty sure that a quickness to judge and condemn each other based on the fact that they were honest about how they feel is the kiss of death to any marriage.

Graylodge;

I do understand what you mean. And I agree that this is not the right relationship for either of them. The truth of the matter is that when you are to the point of marrying someone there should be no ifs. No "I would marry you IF you made more money" or "I would marry you IF you lost weight". Otherwise in my opinion the marriage is doomed. I think too many people ignore the ifs and think that it will be better after and that's why there is so much divorce. And the truth of the matter is that those ifs aren't likely to change. Actually they're likely to become a bigger sore spot for the person. In fact I have read other advice columnists that always advise and remind people that the behavior is usually best BEFORE the wedding and it goes downhill from there. If he finds her weight objectionable, and she finds his tact objectionable they need to separate and find someone who lives up to the standards they've set. Everyone has different deal breakers. The only thing I would say about the guy's behavior is that he went about it all wrong. He just needed to be a little more tactful about his request.

My point to you was just that blanket statements never work (and from reading some of the other responses, I'm betting you now appreciate my calm and reasonable arguement) ;o)