Join Dr. Greg for today's audience-inspired episode about body image, feeling attractive, and how we can avoid critical and contemptuous conversations with our long-term partners.
Send your questions to @abetterloveproject on TikTok and Instagram! Love each other fiercely.
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Transcript: First, I want to acknowledge that there is a lot of suffering in our world today related to body image. It is disproportionately impacting women and young girls. However, young boys and men are not immune to having body image issues.
My professional views on how to navigate these issues in a healthy way are directly informed by the fact that I was trained as a psychologist by the military. I spent 4 years on active duty in the Marine Corps and another 3 years in the Navy.
The Marine Corps and navy as well as the other branches of the military have very specific height and weight requirements that will mean something very different to each and every service member. Yet, the overall mission of the military demands a level of physical fitness including strength, endurance, good nutrition, etc.
The bottom line is when I'm talking about anything related to one's body in couples therapy. I'm talking about it in the context of Health, Wellness, and my clients' values.
Yet, recent reporting on the impact of social platforms on particularly young girls and women, calls each of us to consider our own relationship to our body and its impact on our overall health. Why?
Let's start with the message we communicate in our own home around food, nutrition, eating, body weight, and all the other things related to body image.
And I want to focus on right now, even though I know for many of my listeners it's the case that they themselves heard critical messages around either their bodies or other people's bodies. If that is the case, are you currently talking about and thinking about these things differently? In a way worthy to be passed on to your kids or those who look up to you?
If we think poorly of ourselves when we look at ourselves, how could we not be shaped by that? I’ve worked with many who restrict themselves, who binge, who sometimes are only drinking water. It’s so important that we understand the mind x body connection here and get medically evaluated and commit to individual therapy to address these issues.
In our relationships, we need to understand our partner's experiences. If her husband or wife struggled with being picked on in high school or middle school for their weight, for instance, we’ll more easily understand the importance of our words, how we touch, how we love. Sadly, that’s often not the case.
With some of our listeners on Tik-Tok and definitely with folks that I've worked within the past, partners can be cruel. They can be insensitive. They can be unthinking. The worst: making their love conditional, predicated on the partner going to the gym or losing weight or whatever.
In my view, it may be in foreign 4 that a partner who is feeling less attracted to their wife or husband gets some emotional validation around that experience from maybe a close friend or an individual therapist. Yet, when it comes to the relationship, it's critically important that conversation around this be contextualized within the couple’s values about living a long, healthy life centered around a lifestyle they both value. If that includes cooking healthy meals together, going on Long hikes throughout the week or running together, going to the gym together, then cool. But if that's not you, it's okay too. These things will likely lead to many psychological and physical benefits, including balanced nutrition, better sleep, better sex, etc.
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