How Can I Help My Partner Be Better At Encouraging?

I would love your advice on a relationship issue.  I love my partner with every fiber of my being--we've been together over seven years now, and I don't intend to change that--but it's hard to know what he really thinks about my gaining.

I started gaining two years into our relationship, and he gave me his approval.  He very obviously wasn't into it and really didn't understand the appeal, but he didn't try and stop me.  He struggles with weight problems and always took issue that I gave up my skinny toned body for a fat one.  He likes fat guys (sometimes), but very much prefers the muscle look.  As I gained, he'd get into it somewhat when we had sex, but most other times it just clearly wasn't a thing for him.  After a certain point, though, he started to get more into it.  He'd encourage me to get extra food or jiggled my gut sometimes, and on more than one occasion the sight of me shirtless was enough to initiate sex--but still, sex was really the only motivator behind all this, I feel.  He'd talk about how big he wants me, or whatever, while we're doing it, but any other time--especially immediately afterwards--he'd have to force that kind of talk.

So, I can tell he's sexually attracted to me and when he's turned on he'll turn into super encourager, but once the deed is done, he seems to regret it.  This all kind of culminated with us having our first real feeding session last month.  We were chatting at work about how he wanted to start playing a more active role in my gaining, which I was head-over-heels about, and told me to get a dozen doughnuts on my way home.  We had the most amazing session that was beyond anything I could have expected from him.  I can tell when he's forcing something, and he was genuinely, 100% into it, and it blew my mind.

I thought this was going to be the beginning of him being a more active encourager, but after that night he sorta drew away from it.  Eventually he confessed that he felt really conflicted about the whole thing, that he was worried about getting me sick and that if I did, he'd feel responsible.  He wants me to be happy and wants to want to help me, but his concerns about my health are keeping that from happening.

I thought this was going to be the beginning of him being a more active encourager, but after that night he sorta drew away from it.  Eventually he confessed that he felt really conflicted about the whole thing, that he was worried about getting me sick and that if I did, he'd feel responsible.  He wants me to be happy and wants to want to help me, but his concerns about my health are keeping that from happening

So I suppose my question is, is there anything I can do to help him get over these concerns so that he can take a more active role in my gaining?  Obviously there are risks in gaining that I've come to terms with it (and I do what I can to minimize them, like going to the gym, walking to work and such...  I could go to the doctor more often, though), but I worry that he'll never be able to put his worries aside and get into it outside of sex.  Should that be enough for me?  Is it right to try and corrupt him, so to speak? 


*************************************************************************************

This something I have often seen in couples.

For a number of individuals, there is an ideal of having a partner behave in a specific way, and have a simultaneous emotional response.  In your case, as I understand it, you would like your partner to have a specific behavior (feeding you/encouraging you/having sex with you) with a specific emotional response (“to be into the behavior”). Just so, you are getting the response you desire (although not as frequently as you’d like) but not the emotional response.There’s a gender stereotype a number of therapists quote—“A man will provide love in order to obtain sex; a woman will provide sex in order to obtain love.” Ideally, both receive from each other what they need, and their relationship is established and maintained in a healthy way.

I am curious what exactly it is your partner wants from you (both in behavior and emotional response).  It may well be your partner is satisfied with the status quo, especially after being together for over seven years. I will also suggest many couples' sexual involvement tends to decrease over time.  This is true for all couples, but in the American Couples Study with 20,000 gay, lesbian, and straight couples, over time, lesbians tend to experience the greatest drop in sex, and gay men tend to experience the least. 

If he (and you) would prefer to have more sex with greater intensity, this might be a motivation to initiate behavioral change, which in his situation would include doing more encourager-related action. What might you offer in return?

I would suggest you approach him with the idea of “re-charging” your sex life as a win/win arrangement. This would also mean exploring with him what sort of specific behaviors he would like from you, just as you need to be as specific about what you desire from him as you’ve been with me.  Then you negotiate with the awareness neither one of you may get 100% of what you want—that’s what negotiation involves.  But it seems to me that if you get say, a 25%-75% improvement than what you have now, you’re both better off.

Let me also explain what a lot of therapists discover—most people have grown up with the idea if you can change someone’s emotional response (for example, with an inspiring and motivating speech), then their behavior will change.  For a very long time, this is how a lot of therapists tried to change a patient’s behavior.  If you had a substance abuse problem, for example, therapy might involve reviewing the harm you would face, which would give you the motivation to stop abusing the drugs or alcohol.  Frankly, in many cases, this resulted in failure. Historically, addiction treatment programs are not outstanding in terms of getting patients “clean” over an extended period of time.

However, we’ve also found if you change a person’s behavior, a human being is quite prone to change his or her emotional response, because, well, people are “wired” that way. Once the behavior is established, to keep mental consistency, the person will discover his or her emotional response will have changed to match the behavior.

This does mean, however, it isn’t “fair” for you to “demand” as part of your initial negotiation, that your partner “feel” a certain way about his behavior.  The negotiation is about specific behavior(s)—not about emotional change, because frankly, a person’s feelings are his or her own.

I think this may be what you are experiencing now--he is attempting to please you, but just as you share with me you feel he is only "pretending" to be sincere in his encouraging, he may be getting powerful non-verbal feedback from you that you're unhappy with his performance--which you report you are.  Does that make sense? You're obviously happy with elements of his behavior, but you're unhappy with what you perceive as his lack of "true" emotional support for you growing the belly you want.

There is  another thing I would suggest, since I don’t know what sort of communications you have between the two of you.  Based on what you’ve shared, I suspect it tends to be relatively uneven, and a lot of “mind-reading” (something I’ve written on here about before) goes on.  This means you might feel you “know” if he’s “into” encouraging you, but you may be “reading” a different response than you think you are. For example, on one level, he may very much want to encourage you and please you, but his own self-image issues and guilt (over potential damage to your health) may “kick in” and that’s what you immediately detect.  To put it another way, it’s quite likely your partner is a complex person with complex responses. When you “read” his hesitation or discomfort, this response may be strong enough where it masks the other responses he’s having. As a metaphor—I’m from the American Southwest, and grew up with very spicy food. When I serve a traditional meal to someone not used to spicy food, he may be focused so completely on the chili peppers, he doesn’t notice the other spices that are also in the food.  In other words—you may already be getting what you want, but you weren’t aware of it.

Here’s an exercise I used to use with couples who had problems with cleanly expressing their sexual interactions. Since you’re obviously very skillful verbally, I would recommend both of you choose a non-verbal behavior that has a specific meaning for the two of you.  I don’t want to recommend one, because each couple should come up with their own.  There isn’t a “one size fits all” for this.  For example, one family I worked with had a step-father who had trouble clearly communicating with his two step-children when he was not happy, and when the kids had “crossed a line” and needed to be disciplined. After a discussion, they mutually agreed that when the gentleman put on a green stocking cap he owned, it was a non-verbal signal to the children he was upset, and they needed to “back off” from what they were doing. What had been a “messy communication” between them became a very “clean” one.  They decided as a husband and wife to do something very similar, where it would be clear when one of them wanted to initiate sex.  As I recall, they did this by putting an artificial rose (you use what you have) in-between the teeth.  I want to emphasize, in this case, a partner has the option to refuse the sexual initiation—perhaps one has other responsibilities, or isn’t feeling well, so the response is not precisely “no,” but is “not at this time.” Again, the two of you need to brainstorm what your mutual “signal” will be.

So—you might mention to your partner you’ve been reading up on a crazy American Indian Couples Therapist, and you found some of his ideas interesting and wanted to explore them with the man you “love with every fiber of my being.” The goal is to re-charge a relationship that’s over seven years old (and I know it’s tempting to do the cliché thing about the “seven year itch,” but that was just an old movie. “Seven Year Itch” was an actual disease from the early 20^th century that really did involve an actual “itch” that lasted for years) and be in a win/win situation where you’re both happy with your relationship now and see there’s a possibility you can both have it become even more positive and rewarding. I would also recommend you look through some of my older posts—you can google “ProfessorFatology” and “Sensual Feeding”—this is a very enjoyable experience for couples and can be a very concrete way of having your partner encourage you in a way that often ends up in a sexual expression before the night (or whenever you choose to do it) is over.

The bottom line—if you are able to get him to change his behavior in specific ways that you have mutually negotiated, it is very likely his emotional response will also end up eventually changing as the behaviors become established. Remember also you will need to be extremely clear if the altered behaviors are indeed pleasing you. This is also one of those things where you don't just say it once, but you reward his desired behavior by positive feedback each time it happens.

I wish the both of you the very best of success.