What to Do When a Partner Becomes Less Physically Attractive to You

At first, new habits are like dirt paths-- hard to find and hard to travel.

Source: Deborah L. Davis

Over the years, our bodies age and change. So it’s not surprising if you find that your partner is becoming less physically attractive to you. Perhaps they’ve gained some weight, or fallen out of shape. Maybe they don’t seem to care about being as well-groomed or well-dressed anymore, now that they’ve settled into a steady relationship with you.

In a previous post, I suggested one strategy: Stop focusing on your mate’s appearance and focus on your own self-care and well-being. This has the side benefit of making room for your mate to be in charge of their own. And over time, this consistent show of respect (instead of your control or intrusion) can have positive effects on both of you, such as renewed confidence, motivation, and harmony.

A second strategy is to “retrain” your mind to see your partner differently. Or as a reader featured in my previous post put it: His other annoyances are easy to look past but how can I retrain my mind to overlook something that is physically unappealing?

Retraining your mind is a matter of building new pathways in your brain. Here’s an analogy: if you want to become less judgmental and more accepting of your partner’s appearance, practice exiting the superhighway you’ve built through Judgment Land, and explore the new territory of Acceptance. At first, it’s difficult and uncomfortable because there’s no established route and you must cut a narrow path through unfamiliar terrain. You might even get lost. It would be so much easier to continue zooming down the Judgment Superhighway. But over and over, as you practice exiting the highway and turning into Acceptance, the new route becomes more familiar and easier to travel. And the more you travel that route, it gets wider and smoother, and soon you find yourself zooming along effortlessly. It becomes its own superhighway. In the meantime, as you gradually abandon the Judgment Superhighway, it simply decays and drops off the map.

This process of building a new route through Acceptance is easier said than done. But you can do it. Like many habits, you can acquire it over the course of just a few weeks or months, depending on your dedication to building that new highway.

Here are 4 practices that can pave the way toward seeing your mate in a more attractive light:

Focus on your partner’s inner beauty.

When you first fell for each other, your attraction was partly based on outward appearance, but also on attraction to inner strengths such as kindness, intelligence, humor, special abilities, and talents. Perhaps you’ve had firsthand experience with feeling attracted to someone while overlooking their physical imperfections. Review past and current crushes, and note how you’ve found some people adorable or appealing in other ways—for who they are rather than what they look like. You can try to summon that ability with your mate. When you focus on what’s inside, it’s easier to see past outside appearances.

Cultivate your own inner beauty.

When your mate feels drawn to your strengths and responds to you with respectful admiration or kind attention, you may respond by feeling drawn toward them. After all, it’s natural to feel attracted to someone who can see the best parts of ourselves. Again, stop seeing outward appearances as a problem, even in yourself — that is, don’t get caught up in your own outward appearance, or look in the mirror with judgmental eyes if you don’t visually measure up to supermodels or sports stars. Instead, identify and radiate your inner strengths, whether that entails being a good listener, showing faith in your partner’s abilities, having patience, accepting them as they are, adopting a spirit of goodwill, or planning fun times you can experience together.

Hold realistic expectations.

There are zero people who think that their life partner holds every attribute that is important to them. None of us — including your mate — get to have exactly what we consider “the ideal partner.” Instead, when you choose to build a life together, you’re making this pact: “I’ll accept your quirks and imperfections as you accept mine.” This pact benefits you both, because it lets you be you, and lets them be them. By letting go of ideals, you get to know yourselves and each other more authentically. Relationship satisfaction ensues.

The more you practice traveling a new path, the better it gets.

Source: Deborah L. Davis

Practice gratitude.

Make an effort to notice what you admire about your partner. You can make this a daily practice, perhaps starting when you wake up in the morning, feeling gratitude for their positive attributes. Or, with your mid-morning tea, practice focusing on what they add to your life. Or, as you get ready for sleep, ponder what you appreciate most about them. This mental habit will increase your satisfaction because it increases your focus on what you find attractive about them.

These two strategies—being in charge of your own well-being and retraining your brain to focus on what you find attractive in your mate—together are a powerful combination. Both can retrain your mind to accept your partner as they are, just as you want them to accept you as the one you are.