Husband Belly Expansion Fetish

Hello,

I am quite desperate and confused which is why I have come here to seek advice. I recently discovered that my husband has (what I think is) a belly expansion fetish. His porn searches include belly expansion, bbw expansion, weight gain, bbw trying on tight clothes, and similar topics. He doesn’t know I have seen these and I am not sure whether or not to tell him I have.

At the same time, he is slowly but surely encouraging me to gain weight. The comments started a few months ago and he’s gaining more confidence in what he tells me to do. It started with, I love your curves. Then, eat a spoonful of peanut butter to make your *** bigger. Then eventually he asked me to eat a whole carton of ice cream. A few days later, he bought me a dozen donuts and challenged me to eat them all. He clearly wants me to gain weight.

On the one hand, I want to please him and gain weight, but on the other hand I feel like this is all unhealthy. I have gained some weight and in some ways I like it, but in other ways I feel like I’m being judged by friends and family and I look like I’m “letting go”. I have always been in great shape and had an athletic body. Now I am definitely chubbier than I have ever been. He loooooves it. He loves to see me gain weight and try on tight clothes. He gets extremely turned on which subsequently turns me on.

What confuses me most is his belly expansion porn viewing. Where does this come from? Will I ever truly satisfy him with my minor weight gain compared to the massive weight gain he watches in porn? How do I confront him about this without embarrassing him?!

Please share your experiences with this from any perspective. I want to understand this belly expansion fetish because i just don’t get it.

Hello Earthmama: Thank you for bringing your concern here to PC. I see this is your first post here. So... welcome to Psych Central. One additional forum, here on PC, that may be of interest to you would be the relationships & communication forum. Here's a link:

https://forums.psychcentral.com/rela...communication/

I'm afraid what you are dealing with is something I'm not familiar with. So I can't be of any help with regard to it. Hopefully there will be other PC members who will have some insights & / or suggestions they can offer. In the meantime, however, here's a link to the "Sex and Intimacy in the Digital Age" blog here on PC. There are quite a few articles in this blog that deal with the issue of internet porn:

https://forums.psychcentral.com/rela...communication/

Personally, I don't know if there is any way of bringing this situation up with your husband without causing him embarrassment. However there are ways of helping to ensure you're communicating effectively. Here are links to 2 articles, again from PC's archives, that offer advice for communicating effectively in relationships:

Conscious Communication, 1 of 2: Eight Attributes of Conscious-Talking

Conscious Communication, 2 of 2: Five Attributes of Conscious-Listening

I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

Thank you for your reply!

Sounds like he's a chubby chaser. He's obviously not the only one, since there are so many videos online just for that. There's no explanation for it, he just likes what he likes. It's the same with people with foot fetishes or whatever. The point is he's very attracted to you and loves you, and you get to chow down on delicious food while your sex life gets better. Seems like a win-win to me!

The women he's seeing in porn aren't real, and you shouldn't feel the need to compete with them. The same goes for women who find their husbands watching porn videos featuring blonde bombshells with humongous boobs and tons of collagen in their faces. It's just a fantasy and he's not comparing you to them.

As far as confronting him about the porn, there is no right way to do it without embarrassing him, so I would ignore it. As far as the fetish goes, maybe you can just ask him why he's into you being a lot curvier lately compared to before. You said that you had an athletic body when you met him and he was obviously into that. Ask him what changed?

Thank you for your reply. I think you are right not bring up the porn; it won’t really accomplish anything. And maybe I should try to enjoy this a little more than worrying so much about it!

When I have asked him about my thinner body when we met, he said he has always loved my body and I will look good no matter what. Though that it is flattering and I somewhat believe him, the influence from him to gain weight is gradually getting stronger. I guess I worry when the line could be crossed, and what that line is.

Hello Earthmama,

Thank you for sharing your truth here. I encourage you to trust your initial instinct. This is unhealthy. I learned about this phenomenon a while ago through a reference on TV and did some research. I believe the slang term for men who engage with a partner the way your husband is would be "feeder." The dynamic is that the man encourages the woman to eat more and more while watching her grow to obese levels. This is not a simple appreciation of curves; it stems from an unhealthy need to control and dominate. In some cases, the men enjoy seeing the women get to the point where they have difficulty getting out of a chair or moving independently due to the obesity.

You said you had an athletic body. Unless you decided yourself that you'd like to have a curvier body, it is not appropriate for your husband to try to change your physique. It's one thing to ask a wife: "Would you wear your blue dress to dinner on Saturday, that's my favorite" but it is something entirely different to endeavor to change an "athletic" wife into an overweight wife. Aside from the physical health implications (higher cholesterol/increased risk of cerebrovascular disease from tubs of ice cream and boxes of doughnuts) if you submit to your husband's pressure here, you will be getting into a very unhealthy dynamic which is likely to continue becoming more extreme. Perhaps he is living with an addiction. How do you feel about your body being the medium for his addiction?

Think about how this came about. Did he sit down one day and ask: "you know I have a thing for curves....have you ever thought about filling out a little more?" (Though that would already be on the border of appropriate since loving someone means accepting their body as is but at least it would be an open and honest chat) Instead he is going about this in a rather underhanded manner....gradually trying to gain more and more control of your eating habits.

As for the porn searches, it is not okay to check a partner's private history on their computer. That's a boundary violation. I understand that you are feeling concerned but I encourage you to speak with your husband directly about your concerns about the obsession with weight gain (not the search history) rather than spying on his private actions.

The first step would be to tell him you are not comfortable with him trying to get you to gain weight. See how he responds. If he apologizes and never brings it up again, great! However, if he does not respond well....tries to shame you or refuses to discuss it or suggests that you are over-reacting, I recommend talking to an experienced therapist.

Trust me, I am very open about sex and I am well aware that men and women can have all sorts of sexual desires which are harmless. However, based on what you posted and what I learned about "feeders" I encourage you to step back and think about this...I think it's a serious problem. If your husband is a "feeder" I believe there is an element of abuse involved with his current actions toward you regarding your eating habits.

I hope you and your husband can have a good talk about this. Remember that there are therapists out there who are trained to deal with this sort of issue if you feel that you folks need that. Best wishes to you as you navigate this confusing issue.

If he's into you no matter what, then you shouldn't have to make yourself gain weight just to please him. Set boundaries on how much weight you're willing to gain. It's more important that you love the way you look and feel more than your husband.

your hubby trying to force you to be unattractive may be more jealousy driven than a fetish. do other men compliment you in front of your husband? you should stand tall and avoid this abuse. once you fattening up he will push for more liberties to change your self image and beliefs. this is a test of your self esteem and values. I am sure you would be uncomfortable asking him to lose weight for your enjoyment

Thank you for your reply. These are good things to consider. I do find myself worrying that it is a form of abuse and control. My husband is very skinny and eats very little. He is a very picky eater and only eats for survival; very rarely for enjoyment. I wonder if and how that is connected to him watching women eat and gain weight in porn as well as wanting me to eat more than I need to and gain weight.

The worst part of it all is that I used to be so confident in myself. I managed to go through my entire teenage years without having self esteem issues or eating issues. Now I constantly worry if my body looks okay and if I should eat this or that. I see myself in photos and can’t believe how chunky I am.

I think you’re right about stepping back and really considering this before moving forward. I have let him have a little fun with it and played along in his fantasy, but I can’t keep up with this my whole life.

May I ask where you found your research about this? I have searched everywhere on the internet and can’t seem to find more information on the topic. Thanks!!

Thank you for your reply. I have wondered that myself. Is he making me fat so that I can appear less attractive to other men? I’m not sure this is the case because I know he is seriously turned on by thick women. It may go ever deeper, however, that the attraction is imbedded in the control aspect of making someone gain weight. I wonder if it is me being chubby that turns him on or if it is the act of making me gain weight that turns him on.

Sorry Earthmama, for some reason I am only seeing this post now. I watched a documentary about folks with this fetish a long time ago. I'm sorry I don't remember who made the docu. As for other research, here are some ideas for you...
Feeding an Addiction? | Psychology Today

Feederism - VICE Video: Documentaries, Films, News Videos

Feederism: Why Some People Are Turned On By Erotic Eating And Weight Gain — Sex And Psychology

Well, I don't know if Earthmama is still around to check replies, but I for one was disturbed by the story of her husband.

It's natural to want to please your husband, but your husband trying to make you fatter and fatter to please his sexual desires (while you don't want to get too fat) is psychotic. Would you please him if he wanted the opposite - you starving yourself to near death?

I think it would be a good idea to bring up the porn searches to your husband. Frankly, I don't think it would even be that embarrassing to him, especially since he's trying to get you to satisfy his fantasies already.

This man has weird psychological issues and needs therapy, I think, especially if he wants to salvage his relationship with you. His need to only eat to "survive", his skinny body, and his fetish for fat women all suggest he's got a deeply rooted mental issue about food and body size. I also think there's an abuse angle to this, as well. And the abuse is being targeted on you. Probably himself in a way, too, since he doesn't eat for pleasure, but loves women who do.

I hope you don't make yourself fat and miserable for your husband's sake. Get a therapist and work out these issues. If you can't handle them and him, consider divorce.

I appreciate your response !! This is still going on and I needed to reread this thread.

So sorry Earthmama - this sounds really distressing for you. Despite what you may indeed get from your husband's focused attention, you sound miserable.

It sounds a lot like you don't feel in charge of your own body and that you are being objectified in a way which diminishes your sense of value. I think that perhaps you recognize that in some way, you are being abused.

I don't think this is a harmless chubby-chaser/BBW appreciation issue, but a serious concern about being abused by a partner. Just because you get something from it, doesn't mean it isn't abuse.

Fetishes in relationships tread close to the line where consent ends and victimhood begins - flying close to the flame is a big part of it.

Consenting from a care for the specialized desires of a partner sounds generous on your part, but if you have no specified "safe word" (so to speak) where you can voice your own choices, sustain your own dignity and assert your self-respect when you want to, then victimization is likely. Your husband's interest in feeding and sexual arousal from it's results could be a displaced expression of rage toward you, or toward women, or of his own powerlessness as a child - it may be disguised from himself within his own history. Whether it is or not, you need to see a professional who can help you regain ownership of your body. You deserve to be happy on your own terms. Be sure to take care of yourself.

It's a fetish. Everyone has a fetish. I bet you do too. It's normal in that sense. Why do you think porn sites have all these categories? They wouldn't be there is there was no demand. Now is your husband's particular fetish normal in the sense of it being common? I don't think so. I mean, relative to the other, more common, fetishes.

But I have a friend who has an armpit fetish, and so many people have foot fetish. Think about that? Foot and armpit fetish. The only reason it's not a big deal is because it's so common. If it weren't so common it'd be pretty weird.

As long as it's not criminal (e.g pedophilia), or moraly wrong (nectophilia, beastly) then it's all good...but then, what's morally right or wrong is subjective. Who determines if something is moraly acceptable or not?

So yeah, if everyone you asked and you asked a million people, all said "yeah it's pretty normal". I bet you'd suddenly feel better, like a huge load off your shoulder. But then, ask yourself why?

It's you who has to set the boundaries for yourself. If it's something that does not align with what "you" personally consider acceptable, then it's not OK.

Test yourself this way... Ask yourself, if %70 of the country said it was %100 normal, how would you feel? Now consider that was the case and go with that answer.

hey @bunnyhabit

Quote:

Originally Posted by bunnyhabit your hubby trying to force you to be unattractive may be more jealousy driven than a fetish. do other men compliment you in front of your husband? you should stand tall and avoid this abuse. once you fattening up he will push for more liberties to change your self image and beliefs. this is a test of your self esteem and values. I am sure you would be uncomfortable asking him to lose weight for your enjoyment

If the husband wants her to gain weight because he is turned on by that, how is he wanting her to be unattractive?

It is controlling....
sigh
bizi

Interesting! This subject has so many angles. Agree with comments about boundaries between acceptable fantasies/fetish and controlling behaviour.

Many years ago, I worked with a woman who had a pregnancy fetish. Something that's more common than I realised. At home she'd frequently dress up, simulating various stages of pregnancy. Admitted the next stage was labour and birth, her state of mind even prompting pains. Wanted to take it further and go outside, but feared getting caught by people she knew. Being single and childless probably fed this need.

Porn site accessibility has provided the opportunity to publicise these activities. As the saying goes, what we do behind our front door.....