This is a throwaway because I legitimately feel like a huge pos for making this post. So let me start off with saying:
I know I am 100% in the wrong here and I want to change it. I am grateful for every help I can get. Feel free to rip into me but I really want to change the way I think but I don’t know how.
I have had troubles with finding a partner for forever. Only thing I ever did with someone was making out with a girl at a party but nothing beyond that. I also never had a relationship and I am in my mid 20’s. Up until a week that is. I got into a friends with benefits situation with one of my closest friends. She knew I was completely inexperienced and took my viriginity.
Ever since that happend it has been great. I am at her place as much as possible and we both really, really, really like each others company. I sincerely mean it when I say I enjoy every minute with her as long as it is with her.
And she feels very similar. I think she might like me even more than I do her and that means a lot. We have both acknowledged that we are drifting towards a relationship but she is a lot more outgoing about it than I am. Because I have some hang ups I need your advice on.
She had a lot of bad experiences in her life and bears a lot of scars from it (both physically and mentally). I don’t want to get into it tooooo much but [CW:SA] an ex-boyfriend tried to choke her to death and one of her grandparents raped her multiple times (and her family blamed her for it etc.). She had A LOT of different relationships and flings over the years and while some were good or even great for a while, it turned all to shit for her eventually. I was around for the fallout(s) for the last years and I sincerely think it wasn’t her fault, she just had very bad taste in guys apparently.
She repeatedly told me no other guy she was ever with treated her has nice as I do. Which makes me feel even worse for what I am to type.
I am really attracted to her personality and what’s in her head but I do not have a lot of attraction for her body and I feel horrible because of that.
I am a bit of a gym rat. I work out 4 times a week, track pretty much every crum I ingest and I am pretty jacked. And while going to the gym started as a way to improve my chances at finding a partner in the past, it is now something that I really enjoy doing just for the sake of doing it. I want to stay fit, healthy and active for as long as possible in my life.
She isn’t. In fact she is in very bad shape, with other words: very overweight. I know why that is the case. With what she went through again and again it makes absolute sense that she needed an outlet and couldn’t be bothered with staying at a healthy weight. And she is ready to loose weight. She actively asked me if she can workout with me. And I highly appreciate it. I want to help her get more healthy and it’s amazing she shows so much initiative. So I am positive that she can reach her fitness goals with me.
She is also a big fucking nerd just like me and has very similar taste in music and shows which is amazing as well.
But I am afraid of the future. I am afraid that if I start dating her now I end up regretting it later in life.
I am afraid I will regret never having had a “hot” girlfriend and that I will be judged by my pears and family for my choice of partner but on the other side I literally never met someone like her my entire life. I never had a relationship because I never met a girl that I got along with enough. The chemistry just wasn’t there. But it is there with her and I want her in my life so bad.
There is also the issue paying the bills and getting children. I recently left my well paid corporate job for a significantly less paid job that I really, really, really love. The pay isn’t horrible and if both of us had roughly the same pay we could pay the bills without many troubles but she has a minimum wage job and her chances of getting out are really slim. She has no A level and didn’t go to college. It’s not her fault. She is on the spectrum and has ADHD so school or university wasn’t really her world. And she isn’t dumb either the education system just wasn’t able to accommodate for her. We would get around well enough for the time being but with everything going to shit in the west I don’t know how long we can manage. I do have the chance to get better pay in the future but I am not sure if the same is true for her.
Which leads me to my last point. I always wanted to be a father but this is pretty much out the window if we get together. Due to a birth defect her ovaries are non functional. Which wouldn’t be a problem for me since I am also more than open for adopting but she can’t bring herself to ever adopt or see children since her crazy religious family drilled into her head that she is not a woman since she can’t bear children. Having a child in her life would make her fell constantly lesser and she can’t cope with that.
I obviously don’t want her to feel that way. All I want her to feel is happiness and help her make up for all of the shit that happend in her life earlier + with the money situation being the way it is having a child isn’t a good idea anyway.
So yeah TL:DR: I am in my mid twenties and are getting into my first relationship ever with a girl I have known for years and have strong feelings for but I am deathly afraid of making a mistake and regretting it later in life. My main hang ups being her weight, her minimum wage job and her inability to have children.
Was anyone here ever in a similar situation? What can I do? I don’t want to loose her but I don’t want to wake up one day and think “Damn I fucked up.” either.
P.S. I don’t blame her for any of the faults I mentioned. Her circumstances are the fault of capitalism and a fucked up child hood. There is nothing she could have done about it under this system and with her family.
💜
spoiler
I will first and foremost echo others and say the best thing you can do is just enjoy it for what it is and live a day at a time with it.
Listen man, I spent 7 years, age 19-26, my entire adult life, my entire life outside of the home, in one relationship. I poured everything into it. It was destroyed completely, I lost everything we had built. And while it was a fiery hell to get through it, I don’t regret it. Just like I don’t regret when I dated a narcissist, or someone who bullied me and purposefully sabotaged my high school social life. I’ve been with a girl who was 90 pounds, and a girl who was 450 pounds. I don’t regret either. I don’t regret having random flings last year, most of which were big wastes of time and money and eroded my self esteem. I don’t regret falling in love again a few months ago just for them to leave me because they’re too suicidal to be with me. I just don’t.
No matter what path you choose, there will always be something to regret. OR, you can look at it as, no matter what you choose, there will be good and bad and maybe even great or terrible; either way, it will be an experience that you will grow and evolve from. Your life can be colorful and enriching no matter which direction you choose.
Other than that:
I think it is cool that they express a desire to lead a healthier life, however. You might need to accept that this might happen, or it might not. Would you consider it wasted if you dated and experienced love but she never lost weight? Losing weight, especially a significant amount of weight, especially a significant amount of weight while carrying severe trauma and having a poor financial situation, this is NOT easy. I understand you being mad at yourself and not wanting to be fatphobic, but as I said below, love and unlearning Americanism can only manipulate who we are primally attracted to so much. Ultimately one hoped she is motivated to help herself, not just to try and beautify herself for you–this would be a bad recipe.
The kid issue sounds like, well, an issue, but as others have said, just relax, you shouldn’t try to knock up your first girlfriend in the opening honeymoon anyways 😅
All in all, I would just reiterate: you are not doomed to regret if you choose to give it a shot. I think the experience would be a very good idea–even if it doesn’t work out, for this reason or that reason (and that’s okay! Shit happens!), you will discover things about yourself, about romance, about other people, about how to love and be loved, you will discover things you like and don’t like, you will get practice with everything from compromise to kissing.
My only advice in closing? Try not to get pregnant so fast 🤣 with her, or anyone. Trust me, I get it, love makes us stupid, I would have dropped my entire life and moved a continent away for my most recent relationship, and I would have done it within the first month. My 7 year relationship? We moved in together on day three. So I have NO room to judge. But a baby? That’s not so easy to shrug off if things don’t work out, especially, as you point out, with how dire things are becoming here in the West.
Don’t be too hard on yourself, you sound like a very empathetic person and you illustrate a great understanding of how trauma fucks people over.
Take it easy my friend. Relax. Enjoy it, whether it’s a gentle boat ride or a rollercoaster or a bit of both. Nothing is wasted. Best fortune to you.
agree regret is counterproductive but don’t have kids until you are with someone you are genuinely fascinated by, for a long enough period of time to be reasonably confident that it is real because leaving after the fact - even if it is the correct move - fucking sucks