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Comments
What a load of bullshit!
Fat is fat and ugly is ugly. Almost always they go hand in hand.
Personally I find that while 99% of the time I'm attracted to, both emotionally and sexually, smart, creative, confident and active women. But sometimes, particularly in between relationships when I'm at some bar or club wasted, I can find myself drawn to women who fit the "slutty blonde bimbo" stereotype. Sorry if that sounds like slut shamming, I'm actually attracted to and respect smart sex positive women, but by "slutty blonde bimbo" I mean the kind of female characters you see in cheap straight porn, young, dumb, sexually irresponsible. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's a position I find myself in. I suspect a lot of men find themselves feeling the way I do, and maybe this thing for the 'fat trashy ugly" girls BATL has is his personal manifestation of it.
Or maybe he's just attracted to overweight women and is ashamed of it. I don't know.
Dude may still not be attracted to them so much as getting off on how little he's interested in them when he "uses" them for sex. Might not even be possible for him to have a healthy relationship with the same fat girls he's seeking out.
If he gets comfortable and respectful with them, his libido might drop again to where he is now.
I love Dan's advice, and would be interested to hear how he talks about issues of sex, sexuality, and class status!
@6: Right, and all that is about meeting a fantasy, it's not actually carrying it through to a relationship and beyond.
I myself, alas, am a black guy that white guys want to cheat on their boyfriends with, and they all love keeping me as a dirty little secret. Until, that is, that they find out that this little trashy piece of black plays in symphony orchestras, composes theatrical scores, is college educated, and (especially) moves in many of the same social circles they do.
It's all good, though, because I don't date seriously anymore, if for no other reason that I am no longer interested in keeping my expectations up, and it gives me free time to learn stuff that will make me even more undesirable to dinge queens.
You've really offended Danny.
You know, his mom was a thick trashy gal.
And the advice should be the same - tell the wife, and see if she's willing to open this particular door in their relationship. Or, just do it on the sneak.
As for all the moralizing on behalf of the fat, ugly, trashy bumpkins, please, can we cut the hypocritical bullshit?
As an aside, I was dragged to some shitty bar in the unincorporated Kirkland area a few years ago, and Jesus Christ what a crazy night. If you're a guy just looking to get laid, those are the places to go. They had all variety of hick there - fat, thin, ugly, hot - and all of them are ready to go. Like, walk up and just start kissing them ready to go. Downside - the cab ride home was like $75, during which we passed two very busy DUI check points.
Honestly. No point in hanging on so long you become as judgemental and bitter as H.L. Mencken.
Doesn't he know he can be deported from places like Saudi Arabia for being too attractive. And doesn't that put a whole new slant on desirability?
Dan, rock on. This was great.
"hoping that I'd become sexually attracted to my wife"
He married his wife under false pretenses. He was NEVER sexually attracted to her. He knew, going in, that their marriage was on shaky foundations. That is so incredibly unethical.
Who are you even arguing with? Of course that's why he's terrible, that's what we've been discussing.
Please let her go and figure out your crap without taking any more hostages of any size.
It is when you're fat "phobic" yourself, like most of the people here including Dan. And by "phobic", I mean that you're simply turned off by fatness as a physical attribute.
the casual implications between being overweight and trashy or dumb that the LW draws are extremely problematic
LW simply stated that he gets a boner from women who are fat, trashy, and dumb. He didn't say that all fat people are trashy and dumb, nor has he made any other generalizations about fat people.
As abusurdist1968 points out it's entirely possible that these 'thick dumb girls' are intelligent, educated women who just committed the unforgivable crime of not being pretty enough.
To use an unrelated, less.socially charged example: I am turned off by body hair. Does my preference for smooth skin make me hirstute phobic? Of.course not. The same goes if my preference for (or against) was hair color, height, or any other trait. People are allowed to be turned on by what gets them going without criticism (as long as their partners are.consenting, and are capable of giving consent). It is how you treat others that makes for a phobia, not who you want to fuck.
The tricky part is that anything LW does might cut off the option Fit Wife prefers. If he just keeps on saying nothing, she may be desperately unhappy. If he leaves her because she deserves better, she may be happy settling for him or perhaps even prefer a marriage without attraction. If he confesses to her and lets her choose, she may like things just fine as long as the truth is unspoken.
Mr Bruno - It's all in the subjective nature of "good". If one has sufficiently low standards... and anyway, we only have his description; she might not agree with the adjective. But if we're going to suggest contradictions, I'd nominate his declaring himself madly in love with his wife
I am sick and tired of size being used as an indicator of health. Assumptions get us nowhere here.
Finally, this seems like a good time for one of my favorite quotes from the movie Kinsey. "I always thought ugly was an ugly word."
Welcome to Savage Love comments.
@48 - You don't have a good sex life - but when you're young enough and the testosterone is ragin', pretty much anything will get you a boner, and you close your eyes and imagine.
This dude's issues are all around insecurity. It's easier to really let loose and enjoy himself with someone he's not intimited by.
I will add, though: "never make a pretty woman your wife" - you know, good looks are not a great indicator of good lay. And often women who's bodies don't conform to the current cultural norm/ideal are way hot in bed, let loose and are ultimately much better lays. Of course, you can even discover - heaven forbid! - that someone you have a good intellectual, spiritual and emotional connection to is a much better lay because of it.
I'm gonna say the LW isn't really all that madly in love with his wife, though he might be madly in love with the image of her as the "right kind of woman".
I told myself that he deserved my pity and I held out hope that over time the truth would win out.
It never did.
When he learned after my senior year that I had applied to graduate school, he told a mutual friend that I should have consulted him first because if he couldn't get in, I sure wouldn't. I was at the top of our college class, won countless awards, earned two complete degrees, and got a full fellowship to graduate school. He was a B student and a mediocre writer. It never occurred to him that I might have been intelligent.
He never saw me as a person. He only saw the self-hatred he projected onto me because he couldn't deal with the body type that turned him on.
It was the most hurtful relationship I've ever been in, but the upside is that it taught me to pay very close attention to what potential dates and even friends do or do not say about women's bodies. The tiniest whiff of fat phobia (which, yes, is not a matter of preference but a matter of presumptive contempt) and I break things off and don't look back. There's a big difference between not being sexually attracted to a certain body type and presuming than any fat person is a worthless, incompetent, stupid and lazy second class citizen.
If you are only attracted to people you have total disdain and contempt for that is just an indication that you are royally fucked up and damaged. If he loved fit, pretty, blond model types but saw them as all vapid, selfish and vain and not worth his time outside of bed it would be just as fucked up.
People don't have to be madly in love and sexually attracted to each other to marry. But if they are not (and especially if one is acting as if he was), he needs to disclose long before saying, "I do" and give her the choice as to whether to have that kind of marriage. And, if someone is "hoping that I'd become sexually attracted to my wife", the wife-to-be needs to be in loop and decide if SHE wants to roll those dice because the odds aren't good. I don't know any couples where that hoped for attraction developed. Affection sometimes, tolerance or resignation to an imperfect status quo more commonly, and, often, the unattracted partner dumps the undesired victim at an age of about 40.
@42: I don't think that was the point of the letter, but on your automotive analogy: "like trading in your Ferrari for a Ford Festiva", perhaps better would be, "ignoring your racing bicycle to go cruising for the night in a very used AMC Pacer."
Step 2: get into therapy.
Step 3: explain the situation to your wife; face up to the likely divorce.
Step 4: more therapy.
Step 5: meet a smart chick with a big-butt & big-tits.
Step 6: tell her your fantasies, and watch her role-play dumb hick just to turn your crank.
Step 7: appreciate the hell out of her and satisfy her fantasies.
I personally wouldn't describe those women as "predatory and objectifying", but if that's what you think of people trying to get laid, I'm not going to argue with you. I certainly never felt threatened by them.
@41: Not being attracted to fat people is not the same thing as fat phobia. It really isn't.
Let me try again. Dan et al berate LW for not having the courage to date women whom society considers to be undesirable. And yet if Dan et al encountered LW and his hypothetical fat girlfriend in a social setting, they would judge her, and they would judge him by his association with her. That's hypocritical, and I also believe it's also fat-phobic, although certainly not in its most extreme form.
Huh? A group defined as having attributes A, B, and C is mutually exclusive with a group defined as not having attributes A, B, and C. A person can't have an attribute and not have that same attribute at the same time.
What you're trying to say is that LW has implied a correlation between A, B, and C. But that is nowhere in the text you quoted or anywhere else in the letter.
This guy is desperately afraid of dating a woman smarter than himself. It's not really about her size in the end (pun unintended.)
And while all of you railing on this guy may well be right about his character flaws, but I can't help suspecting that many of you would be more forgiving of, say, an educated career woman who had a fetish for subliterate, "trashy" men that she would never want as a husband.
1) He wasn't honest about his sexual attraction to something his wife is not and probably never will be,
2) his lack of attraction to his wife, and
3) his affection and appreciation for his wife is not in question, nor is it for the married gay guy - they each married someone they respect and love as a friend, but don't find sexually attractive.
The LW says he's "madly in love" with his wife and in that, it's better than the mixed-orientation marriage in which the uninformed spouse may be "in love" while the closeted spouse is "in like" only.
Maybe it's just me, but what I consider "in love" hasn't happened for me with anyone I wasn't attracted to. So I wonder if he is really "in love" with his wife or more in love with the concept of being married to the hot, societally-approved wife.
Did anyone else read it the same way?
Good on Dan for calling this guy out on his bullshit. Having such disdain for the people you're attracted to is pathetic and seriously creepy. I sincerely hope this guy's wife has divorced him and that no chubby 'hick' chick ever gives him the time of day.