'The Man' explains how you can handle the tricky situation of body image and desire... when a reader writes in saying she isn't as physically attracted to her partner anymore. Ouch!

Dear The Man,
 
I have a wee problem relating to my partner’s weight gain. When I met him he resembled someone you might see on the cover of a men’s fitness magazine. I found it incredibly sexy. I understand that he’s become comfortable, but now he has gone up many sizes in the time we have been together and shows no sign of dropping the flab. There’s no question he’s the love of my life and I try to look past the weight thing, but I just don’t find myself getting as turned on by his overweight body. It makes me feel he is lazy and greedy which are two major turn-offs for me. It doesn’t help that when we got together he introduced me to exercise and I have kept it up and have worked hard to maintain my shape. I adore him and I don’t want this to become an issue for us. Is it my problem to get over or is it his? How on earth can I approach this without hurting his feelings or breaking something? Oh and I do try at my end – only cook healthy food for meals.
 
I feel like a cow, but he shows no sign of losing weight and every sign of gaining even more!
 
Dear Fatty-phobic.
 
Oh man, this one's not easy.  It’s not easy, really, because its one of those situations that presents us with an awkward clash of idealism vs. reality.  It’s a veritable line-up of celebrity boxing matches.
 
In the blue corner: the notion that love overcomes physical form.  In the red corner: the reality that we're attracted to what we're attracted to, and that kind of subconscious hard-wiring is difficult to overcome.
 
In the blue corner: honesty and disclosure in a relationship as a fix-all for any underlying problems.  In the red corner: the fragile male ego and its ability to withdraw or lash out at the slightest provocation.
 
In the blue corner: your need for your emotional attraction to your man to match your physical attraction.  In the red corner: the truth that we will all change many times over our lives, both internally and externally.
 
Let's make some basic assumptions before we continue.  I'm going to assume that you love your man on a level deeper than physical attraction.  I'm going to go so far as to assume that if your man was involved in some horrible accident tomorrow, that you'd continue to stay by his side as long as the emotional relationship was workable.  I think a lot of people might shuffle awkwardly at your question, maybe even accuse you of shallowness or flightiness, but I also think they'd be likely hypocritical.  Physical attraction is important; it’s hardwired in at a base level, somewhere between evolution and horniness.
 
Obviously, your situation is not unique.  We've all been in the situation where a partner has changed on us, slowly or suddenly, and it’s unnerving for a bunch of reasons.  In your situation, obviously you’re missing the six pack that's been replaced by the keg.  But it could be possible that you're suffering from anxiety on another level.
 
Let me explain.  Imagine that Suzy meets Billy.  They fall in love, they're perfect together.  They have the same values, the same tastes, the same lust for life and for each other.  One day, a couple of years down the track, they're on a roadtrip.  One of those sickeningly romantic roadtrips that those perfect couples always seem to take.  Suzy's driving, and Billy's scrolling through her iPod to find the perfect soundtrack to their perfect holiday.  As he scrolls through a music selection that is now very familiar to him, he comes across a band he's never seen on there - Slipknot.  Something moves uneasily in his gut, and he's not sure why.
 
"Heh," he says, "How did you get Slipknot on here?"
She laughs dismissively, "Oh yeah.  They're cool."
There's a moment in the car before Billy speaks again.  "Man, really?  How long have you liked them?"
"Oh, ages," she says.
"I didn't realise that you liked Slipknot," he says, a subtle element of accusation entering his voice.
"Oh yeah," she says.
 
And that's all it takes.  Billy's presumed understanding of Suzy has been challenged on the slightest level.  Something's moved in there, a flake of dust has crumbled off at the base of the foundation of the comfortable assumptions between two partners.  This won't mean anything now, but a couple more dozen of these sorts of discoveries, and we begin to grapple with the uncomfortable realisation that our partner is a full, complex human being, with a history that precedes us, a present that isn't ours exclusively and a future which would continue independent of us.