EmmaLiz, the assumptions behind your use of “meaningful relationship” [emphasis mine] and “the possibility that you will grow” are so vast that your unwillingness to acknowledge them is making me twitch. Who says this is how relationships must be? With disclosure and probing and demanding and knowing—or “communication”, as you call it. Where’s the respect? And anyway, why is this the only way to have a healthy, meaningful relationship with room to grow? There’s all kinds of different ways to build a dynamic with someone, and the only acid test is, what will stand the test of time? In my opinion, someone must not just be tolerant of but accept a person’s quirks in order to be in a meaningful relationship with them. There will always be many of them. Quirks, I mean. The people who demand to know why you are this way, or what purpose it serves, when you’re not ready to talk about it, or worst of all want to change or cure you of behavior they don’t like, are toxic and not to be committed to. LW sounds like a cat scratching and fretting at a closed door that she wants opened, a door her boyfriend has made perfectly clear he prefers to keep closed. In other words, obsessive and disrespectful.

Ya, the boyfriend is odd in his request. It clearly means a great deal to him, so for now just respect it. If you [LW] can’t deal with that, and have to know, that’s your issue; and if you want it to change, obsessing about it is probably the worst way to go about it. Let it go, and if you can’t, then leave. He deserves someone who listens to him and respects his quirks.

The man is communicating EmmaL @ 101. He gets flustered when the LW brings it up. Pretty clear message there. If she cares enough about this man, then she respects his obvious boundary and as Late says, let it go, take the focus off the shirt on. Trust that in time he will feel intimate enough with her to share his truth under the shirt with her.
Trust comes from feeling heard and not judged too harshly. She needs to hear his anguish and back off. Or, finish the relationship.

@99 we absolutely have evidence of trauma. It's impossible to miss.

How have you helped partners through similar things?

Do you not have anything in your past or currently that it would absolutely destroy someone else to have to hear?

@51 if what we are trying to do is learn from those who have experienced similar pain, telling them to see a shrink and calling it a chip on ones shoulder is not generally conducive to learning because it says to those sharing their pain under similar circumstances that they are crazy or their emotion is misplaced, when what they are expressing and what we are trying to learn is what a pain we may not have experienced feels like at a visceral level. You want to learn you don't shut people w personal experience down.
One thing that could have been learned from that statement is that the societal script of fat people being worth less than thin people is internalized by all concerned - she wouldn't have dated him when he was fat. She herself isn't fat. She may not personally consciously feel like she's better than fat him, but unconsciously? Does she feel like thin him is better than fat him? Does he? She is after all treating his real pain like it doesn't matter, like the wound isn't deep, may be approaching it jokingly, like it's a game instead of an open wound. Because he's hot now right so why can't he get over it? And more importantly and in this case w certain accuracy, the one thing we know is true for this responder is that they themselves are made to feel less than, and that is absolutely happening to them regularly. Thin people often dont bother to hide their disgust. Maybe you didn't like how the information was presented but it was honest and relevant. This is the kind of insight the LW needs, not the supposedly more objective analysis of other thin people.

@No- Yes there are things in my past that I don't want to talk about. I'm capable of saying "there are things in my past that I don't want to talk about". We can disagree (as Late Bloomer above makes good points) but you keep pretending I'm saying he should be forced to talk about it and you are responding to that rather than to my words, as I said. I see no impossible-to-miss evidence of trauma, come on. It's one of several possibilities, and not the one that the LW, who actually knows him, thinks is the cause.

@LateBloomer, naturally there are all sorts of ways that people can have happy relationships and the LW's bf might find someone who will accept the shirt stays on with zero information or inquiry. But that is not the case for this relationship, and I think it's really limiting for a person to put themselves in the position that they can only be in a relationship with someone who either totally unquestionably accepts that they will not take off their shirt with zero explanation OR the otherwise respectful and well-meaning person must break up with them. There are other possibilities. As to what I meant by "meaningful relationship"- it's nothing so vague or esoteric. I'm sure he's capable of finding partners for casual sex or dating. That could be meaningful in it's own way so perhaps I should have said "long term"- I just meant the sort of partner that you actually plan to live with (go on vacations with, look after one another's health, share intimacy and trust) rather than someone that you just have fun and have sex with while leading an otherwise independent life.

EmmaLiz—I should start with the caveat that the only times I seem to post these days are when I’m a) dog tired, and b) responding to a bugbear of mine only tangentially related to the matter at hand. And so it was with this one. Apologies if I came on a little strong. In this case my bugbear is the notion that without talk talk talky talk, and talkity talkity talk, a relationship is doomed. It seems to be a notion dear to a certain personality type and to all counsellors everywhere, and it’s got its merits, but it’s not the be-all or even the only-all. (I speak as the more verbal partner in my marriage, and a refugee of several unfrutiful attempts at marriage counselling.)

I agree that communication is the cornerstone of a successful relationship (“relationship” is also an interesting word, and one of my favorite past exchanges was with nocutename on what she meant by it). However, buildings have several cornerstones. And communication does not always have to be verbal. Also, talking things through is not always to be valued above, say, forbearance, or respect, or indulgence, or love, or acceptance, or etc. There’s a time and a place, and pitching one’s obsessive need to peer into a partner’s past or psyche as, “We can’t grow without this process,” is self-serving, and places one’s own (possibly neurotic) needs above the legitimate relationship style and/or personality style and/or emotional needs of one’s more reticent partner. Each person’s needs, whether for insight or for privacy, connection through talk or connection through shared silence, has to be balanced, and one is not necessarily better or more pressing than the other,

And some people are just really fucking nosy, and lack respect for boundaries, and dress it up as concern.

But people did not always have to share every single aspect of their lives in order to be good husbands and wives, and build solid relationships, and grow. My dear sweet grandparents of the stiff british upper lip survived over sixty-five years together without needing to Discuss everything, and raised an incredible family under trying circumstances. This new-fangled Freudian craze to talk about everything, and share everything, and analyze and interpret everything has somehow become the default relationship model, and much as it suits my own temperament, I object to its being the only way to have a meaningful long-term relationship with room to grow.

PS I like your articulate and well-reasoned posts as a rule. I just happen to disagree with you on this one. One of these days, rather than jumping in when I’m feeling grumpy and churlish, I’ll post just to tell everyone how awesome I think they are.

Hey everyone I think you’re awesome!!

@107 LateBloomer. Yes. This.

@107. Agreed. No one else has a right to your pain. A good shrink would agree with that.

@Late Bloomer- no offense taken, and if memory serves, it's usually fun to get into the weeds with you. You have been more reasonable here in this thread than I have perhaps because I did start out (as I stated way back) with the intention of overplaying it a bit because I was so amused early on by the speculation of what could be under that shirt. I kept picturing the LW scratching her head "WHAT'S UNDER THE SHIRT!" And the internet exists for bugbears surely.

As for talk therapy, I agree with you and have stated such things in the past. Please note that it probably seems that I'm pushing for it WAY more than I intend because I'm pushing back against an opposite extreme- that people with any sensitivities around anything should never be questioned on them if it makes them even slightly uncomfortable without any explanation whatsoever. I'm not advocating for talk therapy or even that the LW's boyfriend should describe the causes for his insecurities in any detail. I'm saying that if he can't muster up even a small explanation plus request for boundaries right now, then he's not in place to form a long-term relationship (as opposed to a friendship or a casual fling). As I've said repeatedly, I don't mean he should explain the details, but rather just a hint of where on the spectrum between embarrassing tattoo to body image insecurities to scars of deeply traumatizing abuse he's currently living. This information is actually super important to a relationship, and while I don't think we all need to talk talk talk or tell someone everything there is to know about ourselves (in fact I think that is often damaging and obsessive), I do think it makes a difference if dude is covering up stretch marks that bother him vs if he's deeply traumatized and hiding scars from childhood abuse. This sort of thing actually matters.

Likewise, I disagree with the idea that it's never good to push someone's comfort zones. I think people can get stuck in them and that can (at an extreme) become a paralyzing sort of neurosis. That doesn't mean I'm advocating for a new partner to run about pushing back against every boundary- you must respect people's boundaries. But if you can't handle even a little give and take (and what we mean by a little depends on the context of the boundary in the first place- we'd all be more kids gloves with someone dealing with trauma than someone dealing with embarrassment over a tattoo) then you probably are not ready for a long term relationship. Which is OK btw- sometimes ltrs are over-rated and casual things have their place too which is why I said you are right, I shouldn't have said "meaningful". What he needs right now might be a casual but caring thing with someone who will not push him at all. But over the long run, if you do limit yourself just to people who are going to unquestionably and without the slightest bit of understanding of your reasons accept all your boundaries, then you aren't going to cause your potential relationship pool to have a large share of people who either don't care that much about you or have a certain codependency or who continue to abuse you (which one of the reasons is why abusive partners are sometimes a pattern in people's lives).

In short, I don't mind disagreements about this, but I feel like people are extrapolating way too much from the stance I'm making. I'm not saying the dude should share everything, talk talk talk, tell details, go to therapy. I'm saying that if he's ready for a long term relationship, then in almost all cases, he needs to be capable of articulating his boundaries with a short acknowledgement of the reason. Not a long detailed explanation, nor a promise to revisit/work on the boundary, etc. A simple "I'm uncomfortable with how I look naked so I'd rather keep my shirt on" is a light year away from "There's some stuff in my past that I'm not ready to talk about, but it makes me feel safer to keep my shirt on". How those two vastly different scenarios would be reasonably handled in a relationship are likewise vastly different and it's a good idea to let your partner know up front (and I don't mean super early- these partners have been together 4 months which is a long time in a new relationship, ha ha).

Anyway, I'm probably not going to come back to this unless the conversation takes a turn because I feel like I keep saying the same thing over and over and people keep responding to something I'm not saying. So either I'm being remarkably dense or we are talking past one another or both.

I had a short term relationship with an attractive man. He told me early on that he'd been seriously abused as a little kid. His step father had beat up this tiny 7 year old kid with coat hangers. The 3 kids would go to bed at 6:30 when their step father came home, so as to avoid this horrible man. When he was 9, his grandparents understood what was going on and took him to live with an uncle. The uncle didn't beat him up so my friend was glad to be there. BUT the uncle and aunt put him in charge of the house - clean & cooking & taking care of their 3 kids. At 9 years old! So he had a very rough beginning.

When I met him, he ran a successful if physically demanding business and was a youthful 58 years old. He confessed to having had very little sex during those years. He was hesitant to take his shirt off and said he'd never show his chest at the beach. He had lost 30 pounds in the last 2 years which left saggy skin on his belly. But I felt that his shame was much older than the last few years, that it went back to physical abuse.
BTW except for the saggy skin, he looked great with beautiful shoulders and delicious soft skin.
Sadly the relationship didn't last long enough that I might have helped him with getting thru some of this old stuff.
Anyway just a suggestion that physical abuse could lead to severe shame of your boy friend's body.