I’m just starting online dating. I use the “Plenty of Fish” website. So far the profiles have been pretty good, some less than others, but all in all OK. Then I stumbled across this gem:

“Well my name is Tony and i’m looking for a great girl i can chill with and maybe get into a relationship with. I don’t want someone with kids tho,because i don’t believe in raising some other dudes child. I don’t do any drugs,and i would prefer the same,with who ever i meet. Please don’t message me if you do not have a pic.

And also..Im on here fishing,not harpooning whales.
so NO fat girls please!!”

Is this not the most offensive thing ever? Oh M G.

So, I wrote to him!

“Hi Tony,

Although it’s likely that this isn’t going to have any effect – and that you won’t write back – I just want to say that your line about “not harpooning whales” is really offensive.

But on the other hand, it’s good that you’re letting people know that you have no tolerance for fat, so at least awesome fat chicks know not to waste their energy on you.

Cheers,
Leah”

Anyway. Just wanted to share that.

In any case I would definitely meet him if everything else seems cool. This is looking pretty far ahead since you don’t even know if you like him yet, but you may get a chance to plant the seed of FA/HAES, which is a good deed if nothing else. And speaking for myself, if I were dieting and suddenly offered the chance to enter a relationship where health and happiness were emphasized and nobody worried about calorie counts or my “health” as a surrogate for my appearance or character, and I could eat and move exactly as I wanted to (come to think of it, that pretty much describes my marriage), I think that diet would go out the window pretty quickly. In other words I agree with Aunt Fattie that fat hatred may be a less permanent component of this guy’s “personality” than other preferences and traits. After all, most of us here were fat haters (or at least haters of our own fat) at some point.

Of course you have to protect yourself. If one dinner blows too many SW points for your comfort, then he’s not worth it, but you already know that.

I have to give antonova a little props, too. I don’t agree in the strictest terms, but no one should hesitate to be picky, because you can find you will have wasted a lot of time and your very valuable energy by being generous and open-minded, as well as racking up embittering experiences. The more confidence you have in what you want and that you deserve to be picky, the greater the quality of partners in love who will be attracted to you, too, I believe.

My husband is a tall, skinny guy who used to think that there was something he was doing ‘right’ that made him that way. Granted, he is fit, exercises a lot and eats pretty well. But after having met me, he has become much more aware of the role genetics play in our body shapes, and about the huge negativity pressure on people to change their bodies creates. This is something he literally never had to think about before, but all he had to do was listen to me, and he grew to understand. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so proud when he told me that he had been having a conversation with his grandmother, who was commenting on his 12 year old cousin getting fat etc, and he gently made comments along the lines of “what’s wrong with that” and “eating healthy is more important than what you look like” etc. Honestly, I nearly cried when he told me! If just one person – particularly someone who has never had a weight problem themselves – can open the eyes of others by just giving them a different point of view, who knows how much emotional damage they’re helping prevent?

Anyway, that went a bit off-topic, but I’m just echoing what others have said – it’s the type of person you meet that’s important, not whether they already share identical views to yours. If they’re open, and thoughtful, and caring, then even if they can’t quite ever manage to work HAES for themselves, they might be able to not inflict their own problems on you. And that could work just as well in a relationship, if everything else turns out to be great!

As sweetmachine said earlier, it sounds like body image issues is a warning bell, rather than a definite “no”, to you. (However, if you have a list of must-haves, such as “wants children”, there’s no point in meeting someone who doesn’t want them ever as you’ll end up splitting up down the road.)

However, Godless Heathen is right – don’t feel like you have to fix him because that’s what we expect women to do, and certainly don’t convince yourself that he’ll change if you just work hard enough. If he does, great; however, don’t expect it to happen or think that it’s up to you to make it happen. As GH said, you will probably end up with the burden of the work if you let it happen.

I’d also caution that if he’s trying to lose weight and does succeed in losing a lot, he might well be tempted by the prospect of a lot of flirtation and attention that he hasn’t had in the past. Suddenly being considered conventionally attractive when you’ve been hating yourself for a long time can turn a person’s head and make them behave in ways they wouldn’t normally.

If you click when you meet and build a relationship where you have love and respect for each other, you can get through most things. However, as you say, many people with body image issues end up projecting their feelings all over you, and someone who is newly thin and invested in the fantasy of how their life will be as a think person may well end up doing that more than ever.

I did not discover HAES until we got married and I’m now loving it. But, I’m still “in the closet,” and have only been dropping hints about it (I sort of stumbled onto HAES: I discovered the goodwithcheese website, which led me to this one, while searching for some type of diet on google).

I think, at such an early stage, you need to give it a chance because you don’t know how he will react to HAES or even whether he will project his issues onto you. My husband may never really care about HAES, but he also does not project his issues onto me. So, I just try to let him know how amazing he is and hope that, little by little, he realizes how true that is. And, I know he does the same to me with respect to other insecurities I have.

I think that if you have the same core values (including respect for the other person), you can really overcome any differences.

I’ve met lots of good male friends through online dating, We just didn’t “click” but we got along just fine, no chemistry but with the current BF well… We just clicked, we really enjoyed each other….

But my current man has body image issues kind of, weird though he thinks he’s too thin… we look goofy though he’s all tall and thin and I’m all fat. Adding to that he’s black very professional and I’m ghost pale white with piercing and stuff like almost total polar opposites.

But we’re both nerdy and love politics(even though our political views clash A LOT) the room reeks of nerd when we’re in it. So I’m happy :-)

I really do think it depends on the person, it’s all chemistry anyway right? That’s why we have friends and lovers :-)

Second, if you haven’t met him in person yet, it’s hard to say how much of his fat hatred is true self-hatred, and how much of it is trying to lower your expectations of what he looks like. Because ‘liking bigger guys’ could mean any number of things, and he might be a little insecure that who he is is what you’re looking for.

Case in point:

My husband and I met online, and he kept stressing, before we met, that he was fat. Turns out by any measure, he’s just a little overweight (with a full face), but I think he wanted to reassure himself mentally that I knew that I wasn’t meeting up with a washboard-abbed chiseled Adonis, and by saying it, he could guarantee that I knew it.

His body image issues IRL: zero.

Now, who knows what will happen with this guy, but hell, it’s a date, not a marriage proposal. If you think he’s interesting otherwise, go on a date and see what happens!