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In this livestream video from my Nice Guy Recovery group, we discuss the dilemma of our partners asking us “Do I look fat?” This question seems to be a trap, a shit test, where the woman won’t believe you when you say No and will be offended when you say Yes. Many nice guys and people pleasers feel compelled to lie or avoid telling the truth when this question is asked. But there IS a way to answer it that’s both truthful and helping to maintaining a healthy relationship or marriage.

Full transcript (unedited)

All righty then, once again, we’re back wondering if it’s working. Living in technological heaven, known as Facebook. Right, we’re just gonna check to see this has shown up, Looks like something’s happening. Well crack into it, get hidden, give myself a like that work. It did not. Alright. Well, thank you, to those of you who come and check it out live, give me a little wave there. And also to those of you check out the recording later, I did some research and turns out there is no time that is appropriate for everyone. So I’ll just have to do it at a time that I prefer. And hopefully it matches some of you guys as well. But you can always watch the recording later. All right, let’s dive straight in, and our floorplate. So today, we’re going to be covering a message I got from one of the group members here at nice guy husbands. And I want to put it out there that if anybody else has deep dark questions you want answered or you want to hear me rant about something, just flip me a message. And it goes on to the waitlist for these live streams. I’d much rather these live streams deal tackle with issues that you guys actually have right now. And what resolved, then for me to just make something up or bring up stories from my past, which I can do. And I’m happy to do. And I’ll probably do anyway when asking your questions. But yeah, don’t hold back, you know, just get in touch. And you can have your ship answered life. I’m just gonna choke on my own split for a second. Okay. I’ve also, I’m in the development of a group coaching program that’s coming up. And I’ll talk about that at the end of the live stream. So you can stick around for that will not talk to you. Cool. So tell me about a fun one. I think it’s fun. It’s not fun when you’re in it. But it’s fun to look at from the outside. And that is the kind of classic question that guys and relationships get from the woman that they would hit around relationships, I guess. Something along the lines of Am I fat? It can have a lot of delicious variations. Is my AST too big? Do I look fat in this dress? Am I putting on weight? And then it can expand out to other things? You know, do I still look pretty? You know, it’s basically a question, do you find me attractive? That’s what they’re really asking. Or, at least that’s what I think they’re really asking. They think they’re actually asking you if they fit. So I’m gonna read what I got sent through from one of the members word for word. And then I’m going to tackle what, what he’s asking you. Cool. Here’s my woman, who quite often asks how she looks like. And if she is fair. She feels quite insecure about it. She struggles, you know, to stay in shape and stuff as she’s getting older. She’s got hormones and everything coming through lots of different diets and exercises, but doesn’t really help. There’s some health problems as well that make a difference. She’s about 46 That goes about 49. And I have really no idea about what to answer. If I honestly say something like, well, you really added some weight, she’d put on about 10 kgs. And last two years, that would make her really unhappy. And if I don’t want that, if I keep being silent, I just hug her. That makes her unhappy too. If I say something like I like you anyway, which is true, that makes her unhappy, too. And if enough odds are you’re still in good shape, which is not true. I just can’t force myself to say it. So how do you connect true honesty with such questions? What I like is that this is actually a deeper question than just how do you say, in how do you answer the question, Am I fat? The deep question is, how do I be honest, when I know for certain my honest answer is going to hurt their feelings. Right. And this is a tough question for all socializing. You know, sometimes you imagine that the honest truth is going to hurt people and you’re wrong about that. But sometimes you really know someone or you’ve done it before you’ve answered the question or given feedback before and it’s gotten a really bad rap. And particularly when you’ve multiple times been honest about the same thing and every single time it’s gotten a bad reaction. You’re not really imagining Hey, this might go badly. Again. So, but I’ll stick to the am I fair question because it’s kind of like the fun one. But bear in mind, this is almost like a metaphor. We’re talking about being honest when you know, you just know the emotional answer. The the emotional reactions going to be what you call negative, and you’re worried that they will hurt your relationship with the main issue actually has occurred prior to the question being asked, okay, this this problem actually existed prior to the question. The question is just like, I call it flicking the match, there’s a box of fireworks waiting to go off in the question and flicks the match into their fireworks. But here’s the thing, the box of fireworks is in you, not in your pattern. When she says Mr. Fetch, she’s flicking the match you and you’re the one who explodes. Because you’ve trapped yourself with a belief that’s very common to nice guys, and just common to people in general, but certainly the nice guys, which is we must take responsibility for the way other people feel. Okay, now, almost everyone except me sort of really callous or psychopathic, people have a bit of this this idea like, I’ve got to do something about myself to try not to harm others, you need to Cosmopolitan idea of just living in a harmonious world as best I can say at least, even the most confident least people pleasing people have some consideration for other people’s feelings as they take action. Nothing wrong with that, nothing unhealthy about them. With nice guys, it’s much more down the other extreme end of the spectrum, which is how other people feel is my job to maintain. And I must maintain it in as narrow band of happy, comfortable emotions. So basically, what a nice guy does, prior to this question being asked as have a belief, it’s my job to keep her happy. It’s my job to make her loves herself, it’s my job to make her like enjoy her life. It’s my job to ensure that she feels as constant wave of pleasure. Or at least not displeasure. It’s my job to make sure I help her avoid emotions, like pain, suffering, depression, low self worth, frustration, confusion, basically, any fucking emotion that exists other than happiness. So when you get the question, Am I fed what you really feel like you’re getting a request to fix their emotional state? You’re getting a request to say, you know, she’s basically saying that she’s not saying, Am I fair? She’s saying, I feel bad about myself. Can you fix this? And that’s how a nice guy perceives that question. That’s how I perceived questions like that for most of my life, I no longer perceive them that way. So as soon as a question is asked, you don’t fall. Because you can’t write. In a way, it can be true, you might actually be not be being asked to fix her. She might be throwing this at us saying, Please make me feel better about myself. And sometimes, maybe often, that is what they they’re doing. Not always, but sometimes, someone’s just asking, Do I look fat? I’m not sure. But a lot of time, they’re saying, I feel bad about myself. I’m gonna throw this at you and see if your response changes. They’re feeling trapped, because there is no good answer is my man he identified when he sent through everything he responds with, it’s honest, and kind and compassionate and loving, makes her unhappy. While he thinks it makes her unhappy, like she went from happy to unhappy, like she wasn’t already unhappy. And it’s just noticeable now. And he thinks the only way he can make you happy as a lie, but he doesn’t want to lie. He’s Of course, assuming that lying would actually work. So we feel trapped because there is no good answer. And that’s the truth. No woman with body confidence will ask you this question. There is no woman on this planet, comfortable with their body happy with who she is physically, who’s going to ask you if she’s too fat. If she’s putting on weight. She doesn’t need to ask you. She’s got scales. She’s got their measuring tape thing that’s supposed to be used for sewing but they used to measure their waist and legs, their arms and stuff. She doesn’t need your opinion on this. She can figure out the answer for herself. So why is she asking you? Well, because in a way, that is what she’s saying. She’s saying I have confidence issues. I don’t like myself. And if I throw this at somebody else, maybe they’ll be able to fix it for me, maybe they’ll be able to say I’ll do something that relieves the suffering that I’m having. It comes from the conditioning that programs me to see, probably quite healthy level natural body fed as some disgusting, unattractive thing that makes me a worse person. You know, now I’ve known a lot of women in my time asked this type of question, because they have this kind of belief. And the ones I’ve known deeply, you know, pretty much, nine times out of 10, maybe 10 times out of 10. They were raised by a mother who criticized the way they look constantly. Some of them literally like specifically criticized the weight in the size of the body. Other times, it’s just picking it anything, you know, your eyebrows are two, there’s a cantilever going on their dress, embarrassing me in public when you wear those shoes, so on. And so they’ve just, you know, been conditioned to think there’s something wrong with the way I look and somebody else’s job to give me feedback on their critique on their ethics form. It’s not just women who do this, by the way, obviously. But I’d say it’s probably more so woman wear the physical appearance as the thing that’s fixated on guys and might be more like strength and machismo and skill, something along those areas that they get criticized and shit on for being too emotional. Some woman definitely specifically get the body thing a lot. And if they don’t get it at home, they get it from social media, normal media, friends, TV, whatever, right? There’s just this constant thing about girls especially. Yeah, I don’t need to go down that path. It’s it’s an old worn path. But no woman with body confidence issues is going to ask if she’s to fear and no answer is going to resolve her trauma. That’s the tip of the iceberg. That’s question for a significant body confidence issue, which is still tip of the iceberg for our significant self confidence issue. You think you’ve got an answer that’s going to fix all that. You think there’s some magical thing you can say that’s going to undo all the years of trauma and bad parenting and peer criticism and bullying and media fuckin conditioning, you think you got a like a sentence? That’s gonna correct all that, like, if you do, please become a psychotherapist. Because you will be the best one in the whole world. There’s nothing you can say. There’s nothing good. You can say what I mean by that. There’s nothing you can say. That is going to give you a consistently happy reaction. And you got to ask, why would you want that? Because the thing is, sometimes you can come up with something you say that gives some temporary relief, lying might do that might kill me. Like I think you’ve lost weight, you look fantastic, blah, blah, blah, right? You can do that. Which is usually a lie. Or even if it’s true, they don’t believe it. But then we’ll give them what few minutes, three minutes relief, maybe. And then the voices are going to stand the heat again. You know, but yeah, but looking at big bow on your neck and can’t believe your bangs are uneven. You’ve been walking around like that, you know, the voices that you can’t hear and they hear just constantly me. And the thing is, if you actually make them happy with your answer, you delaying the motivation to do something about this. I don’t mean do something like lose weight, but do something about the body confidence problems. So the problem is quite often the reason they ask this question is because sometimes they can give an answer that gives them a temporary relief, so that they don’t have to tackle this problem I’ve had the whole life which is why am I not happy with myself. And that requires real work. solving that problem that requires therapy requires changing your belief system might require coaching. It requires a total overhaul might require them confronting the mother finally and say, fucking hated the way you talk to me. It’s ruined the way I see myself. You know, there’s a lot of ugly, uncomfortable work that needs to be done. For someone, especially a woman to be able to look in the mirror and go that’s fine the way it is. A lot of work needs to be done so much easier to just go somewhere like say something makes me feel good about myself. So I can ever leave from this for 15 minutes. But there’s a thing if you want to motivate someone, you don’t make them feel better. That doesn’t motivate that D motivates happiness isn’t a motivational feeling. Happiness is actually quite the opposite happiness you wanna stay still, when you’re happy, let’s keep everything as nice, you know, motivates you frustration, guilt, fear, depression, anxiety, these are actually motivational sensations, but you have to fill them quite strongly before you move before you overcome the fear of change, fear of staying the same as worse. If you keep relieving someone from that feeling that uncomfortable feeling, they never get into it enough to have a crisis. Okay, fuck this, I need to do something about it. So let me turn the question back to you guys. You can comment below with your answers. What kind of thing would you say if your goal wasn’t to make them happy? But your goal was actually to kind of push the wound a little bit to help motivate them to do something about this. What kind of thing might you say? Now, we’ll come to that my opinion on it soon. But let’s say you at least answer honestly, who say yep, you’ve put on some way. Yeah, and I can see what you’re saying, you know, you know, you asked me if your bums getting a bit bigger. Obviously, it is your pants are tighter. Things I genuinely don’t give a shit. Like, I’m still attracted to you. But maybe you might need to say something else maybe like, Yeah, honestly, I’m not as attracted to. These are very harsh answers. They seem like very harsh answers. But if nothing else, at least, she knows you’ll tell the truth. Which, once you’re in a position, this is just general social skills, which is if somebody’s going to ask for your opinion, they’ll know that they’re going to get it, which is going to make them wonder, Should I ask or not. So when somebody knows that, you’re always going to try and placate them, and you’re always going to give them compliments, and always try and make them feel better, then I’ll ask you shoot like this all the time. Because you’re like the drug, they’re coming to you for a hit. But if they know, hey, if I asked him, he’s gonna fuckin tell me, they might have to wonder, Should I ask? Which will probably relieve the amount of questions, you know, I don’t get asked these kinds of questions as much as I used to, because I used to just make them feel better. Every time I was good at making good lies, to respond to these, you know, it’s going to redirecting. So I don’t know if you put on weight, but I can the new hairstyles are amazing, you know, so hard. I can do things like that. But it was a form of light. At least with honesty, they’ll trust you. And that means later, when you do give them compliments, they’ll believe them. So that what you’ll find is a common problem. The kind of guy who answers a fairly No, no, you look great, blah, blah. And she knows he’s lying. Because her pants are tighter, right? He’s not, you know, they’re blind. When he later says, like, Oh, you look so beautiful to lunch. He always says show how much push tonight? Right? So if you want her to be able to believe your compliments, she has to hear the criticisms. Right? It doesn’t mean you go and be critical, but she’s going to ask the question give the answer. Right. I’m gonna stand there toward the sizing my wife with every little floor, I can think of to notice that if she asked me a question, I give her an answer. And if she doesn’t want that answer, she shouldn’t ask the question. But I’m going to give you the best answer. It’s the break a common rule, which is you answer a question with a question. Now I don’t like questions. in certain contexts, I don’t like questions when I’ve when I’m, you know, I made a video about this and comment below if you want to see the video about why you shouldn’t ask questions. But generally, questions are manipulative, you’re forcing an answer out of somebody, you’re putting them in a very situation was very uncomfortable, not to give you information. It’s very manipulative question. And so I think it’s unfair when people ask me questions like us, you know, and so I won’t get pulled into it. I refuse to play this game, I refuse to be your source of confidence. Because that disables you as well as annoys me. Like you should learn to get your own confidence, I can get it from me. Because in the personal context and coaching, there’s heaps of questions all the time, that’s fine. That’s all that context. So if someone’s going to ask me a shitty question, I’m going to respond with a shitty question for their own benefit, not out of vengeance, but it does relieve the pressure off me in the best answer, I think to am I getting fat? Is Why do you ask? That’s how I would respond or respond with exploration into where this question is coming from, rather than answering it. If they say just tell me so no, I don’t want to answer a question like that I fucking hate questions out there. Why are you making me the person? Who’s supposed to make you feel good? Why? Why are you asking me this question? Why are you not going to a nutritionist and a PT? Why are you not going to a therapist and saying, why don’t I like my body? Why are you asking me to fill that space for you? Right now doesn’t have to come across. They’re harsh. But it depends, you know, in the situation, that guy brought up, it sounds like he’s been fucking barraged with this kind of shit all the time, he’s been put in a position to hold her self esteem up. That’s a very unfair position, and very unhelpful. It’s not going to help her for him to be that person in real life. You know, when you’re the partner, you’re not the coach, you’re not the therapist. And you’re not the source of their happiness, as much as they might want you to be. Okay. You’re the partner. You’re beside them as they go on their journey. But you’re not the one making the journey happen. Okay, you’re the cheerleader, the encourager. Now cheerleading and encouraging doesn’t mean making them feel better. It means nudging them towards the direction, you know, what’s best for them? The direction they know what’s best for them. You know, someone asked, am I too fat? As Why don’t you talk to a therapist about your body confidence issues? You know, why don’t you finally deal with this properly? Worst case scenario, you say something like stop outs, stop asking me that question. I’ll give you the truthful answer if you want it, but what you’re really saying is that you have confidence issues, and I’m not your therapist, don’t put me in their position. And I won’t put you in that position either. Now, if you want to actually work on these confidence issues you’ve got I’ll be beside you, or help you find a therapist or a coach or a program or whatever, I’ll do the research with you. And we’ll find someone together who can help you with this. So you can finally break free of this back and self hatred. You know, something very powerful, you can say if it’s true, is actually the only thing that’s unattractive, is you know, loving your body. Right? You want to be more attractive to me, find a way to love yourself, that’s hot. And it is. And as there might be one or two women watching this, by the way, if you want to know what’s hot as a girl who loves her body, and that doesn’t matter what their body is, really, you know, we often think I owe those girls in the magazines. That’s what guys want girls to look like. Not exactly. It’s just those girls in the magazines, they seem to really be confident in themselves, the way they hold their body, the sultry sexy poses and facial expressions gives us impression like I like this shit. The thing is a woman of basically any shape or size can do their hand get away with it, Anna is hot. Not all guys feel the same way. But put it this way, in my old life, and visited the odd strip club or to wasn’t actually a thing I was then into, but it happened using the beads, stag do stuff. And the hottest stripper in the place was not the most athletic one. It was the most confident really, she could look anything, she could be the least aesthetic girl there. But that all gets overridden by the confidence, by the certainty in herself that the certainty that she’s 60. Right. So the best thing you can do is to help encourage support, and nudge your woman towards the kind of work she needs to do to feel like that about herself, which actually probably requires almost no physical development. She doesn’t need to exercise more, eat better. She needs to see yourself differently. That’s actually the the shortcut. So those are my thoughts on how to answer that question. If he gave me a thinking there was some quick easy answer. Sorry about that. There wasn’t one. Now I’m going to talk a bit about the program coming up. So if you’re not interested in that you can sign off now. It’s still in development. And I want to start with thanking all the people who have completed the survey that I sent out a few chosen individuals to give me feedback on what this program should be about and how to tackle your issues as best as possible. Or basically design the program based on the answers to their survey and put it out there right now if anybody wants to be considered for the first round for this program, which will be by invitation only. Let me know in the comments below. You can just say respect, or you can message me personally and I I will send you the survey. It’s only people who have done the survey that will be eligible for the program, just to let you know. So it’s basically a new style coaching program doing that it’s going to be a mixture of like teaching content that’s filmed and recorded, and you watch at your own time with exercises and homework. Combined with group coaching, where I actually coach people live, and everybody as part of the group. The program is called respect, because that’s the result that will be delivered. Right? It’s a program that will last about eight weeks, and it’s going to get you to a place where you respect yourself and the relationship and your partner respects you. Okay? Now, we can’t guarantee that the partner does anything. But if you do what’s in this program, you’re going to have the best possible chance of being respected not just by your partner, but by workmates friend, total strangers, we’re going to be looking at essentially a focus on being confrontation in the healthiest and most effective way possible. Being able to speak powerfully, and being emotionally shameless, as well as looking at how you react, or how you respond to their reactions. Once you do stand up for yourself. And once you do, I will lay down the law with respect, how to not take things personally, and how to interpret what I call artistic language, which is my term for feminine communication style. A feminine, I don’t necessarily mean girl, because there are feminine dyes, no masculine gills. But by feminine, I mean, the artistic language we didn’t, it’s not what they literally say, there is a kind of subtext. All right. So we’re gonna start with emotionally shameless, we’re gonna look at how there’s no such thing as bad feelings, and learn how to be shameless about all emotions, and no wrong attached your emotions. And we’re gonna look at how to practically express feelings in a simple way so that you never hold anything, and it always comes out. But it comes up in an unhealthy way that doesn’t provoke conflict. Okay? Then we’re going to develop powerful communication skills. So we’re going to look at what’s called responsible language. So it’s how to speak about what bothers you, and what you want, in a way that you take total ownership of, and you’re not placing that burden on other people, all the time partner. And then we’re going to look at how to be more bold and concise. So how to speak in a way that’s just easy to respect. Right, speak in a powerful leader type way. Speak with both. Essentially, there’s techniques, very simple techniques I’m going to be teaching. And then we’re going to move into the more advanced confrontations specifically. So we’re going to look at how to make sure somebody is always aware of what you prefer, what do you want, what do you dislike what you don’t want, so there’s never any guesswork. And then I’m gonna give you a step by step guide for setting very effective boundaries are very, very practical course we’re talking about here, where you can go out with like a template, and notes in bullet points and follow these step by step until it becomes natural for you. Nothing’s gonna be inauthentic. There’ll be no lies. No scripts will all be your own thoughts and feelings and truths, but structured in such a way that it gets the best possible response and makes you as understandable and succinct as possible. And then yes, then we’ll look at how to react once they react, how to respond to their reaction, so that the ongoing conversation goes as well as possible. You know, you respect them as well as they respect them. So if you’re interested in that program, we’re going to do is get in touch and I will send you the survey form to fill out. Give me more information about you and help me hone the program even further to make sure it’s suited to your needs and delivers what promises but also make sure if you’re right for the program, because very specific program for guys and long term relationships who want more respect, so we have to make sure that this is right for you. So if you’re interested in that, please get in touch comments, messages anywhere you choose. And I’ll get that information to you. Thank you so much for those who showed up live. Hope you enjoyed it to the people who watch the recording. And I’ll see you all next week for the next one. Which I don’t know what it’s going to be but if you’ve got a topic in mind, send it through. Alrighty, Cheers, guys.