Does Negative Body Image Affect Romantic Relationships?
If you’re pursuing a potential relationship or currently have a long-term partner, it’s important to know how your relationship with your body, or your body image, may be impacting your relationship.
Dating can be challenging! Between social media influences, online dating pressures, harmful stereotypes, social expectations, and a looming fear of rejection, there are many ways the dating world has become a daunting place. Having a negative relationship with your body can make dating and being in a relationship even more challenging!
Poor body image impacts romantic relationships.
The perceptions and beliefs that you have about your body can impact your self-esteem, confidence, and overall mental well-being. Your relationship to your body not only affects how you perceive yourself, it affects how you believe other people perceive you as well. Here are ways negative body image can affect romantic relationships:
1. Self-esteem and Insecurity
When struggling with poor body image, you might often feel insecure, inadequate, or just not enough. This can cause you to become uncomfortable in your own skin and withdraw in your relationship and social interactions. You might find that you don’t want to go on dates because you don’t want people to see your physical appearance or you don’t feel confident enough to take that first step to go on a first date because you’re insecure about your body.
2. Communication and Understanding
If you struggle with poor body image, you might find it difficult to communicate negative emotions about your body to your partner. You might find it challenging to be vulnerable with your partner and express these emotions.
It’s also common to misdirect emotions when you feel uncomfortable with your body or appearance. An example of this is yelling at your partner if they don’t take out the trash when really you’re upset about bloating after dinner. Outwardly, it might look like you’re angry about the trash, but inwardly you’re having a hard time navigating all of the intense emotions that are arising.
Another example is: You get invited to dinner, and you decline because you don’t like the way you look in your clothes and/or you feel terrible about your body shape/size. Your partner or date might think you’re uninterested in them or unhappy in the relationship, when in reality, you're just struggling to communicate your emotions about your body image.
These misdirected emotions cause breakdown in communication and result in confusion from the other person you’re in a relationship with or dating.
3. Mental Health and Well-being
Constant preoccupation with your physical appearance can cause anxiety and stress about how you're perceived by your partner or person you’re dating. You may feel a sense of sadness or hopelessness about your body and feel the impacts of this on your mental health. Poor body image can also increase symptoms of depression and anxiety.
4. Social Comparisons and Jealousy
Having poor body image can lead to comparison of yourself to others. You might find yourself comparing your body to your friends, your family, strangers on the street, etc. These types of social and physical comparisons can cultivate a feeling of jealousy. This can impact situations when you see your partner around others who you perceive to be better looking than you and how you respond to this. Social comparisons can put a lot of strain on your relationship and dating life.
5. Internalizing Rejection
You might find yourself internalizing rejections in your dating life if you struggle with negative body image. If someone decides that they don’t want to pursue a romantic relationship or is no longer interested in seeing you, you might believe that there’s something wrong with you physically. When this happens, you start to question your own self-worth, and you might even begin to think that you’re not good enough.
6. Fear around Intimacy
If you have a negative relationship with your body, you might find it easier to avoid physical intimacy than to be physically vulnerable with your partner. You might feel self-conscious about your appearance or ashamed of your body. This reduces the frequency of physical intimacy in your relationship and can also affect the quality of intimacy. Instead of focusing on your partner and the moment, you’re preoccupied with your appearance and how your partner is perceiving you. Poor body image often means you aren’t enjoying intimate experiences to the fullest.
3 Ways Cultivating A Positive Body Image Can Elevate Your Intimate Relationships
Cultivating a different and more positive relationship with your body can take time. And, with time, here are some things that it can lead to:
More ease around vulnerabilities: Opening up to your partner about your body image struggles can do wonders for your relationship. It can increase emotional intimacy between you and your partner, and it can give your partner the opportunity to provide a safe, supportive environment where you can open up about your challenges with your body image.
Reducing insecurity and jealousy: Working on your relationship with your body can help reduce insecurities and jealousy in your relationship. You’ll be less likely to compare yourself to others, and you’ll develop the confidence to know that your partner loves you (and your body) for a reason! As a result, you can experience more happiness and security.
Improved emotional and physical intimacy: Developing a positive body image can enhance the emotional and physical intimacy in your relationship. You’ll feel more confident and feel more willing to be vulnerable, both emotionally and physically. You can find greater comfort in yourself and your appearance, and you’ll find more enjoyment in intimate moments. Instead of fixating on your appearance and how your partner perceives you, you can focus on the intimate moment itself!
You deserve to feel confident, comfortable, and worthy in your dating experiences. Whether you’re looking to find a relationship or are currently in one, having a positive relationship with your body is so important for your experience.
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Cultivating a positive relationship with your body can be challenging work. It’s tough to love your body after years of harmful messages from diet culture and society. We want to help!
At Bravespace Nutrition, our dietitians and body image experts know it’s a journey to find peace with your body and food. We are caring, nonjudgmental dietitians here here to help support you in healing your relationship to food and your body. To get started, schedule a free 15-minute discovery phone call today!