Submitted by ThrowRAgoodboobs t3_10u9z14 in relationship_advice
My (33M) wife (31F) has been crying on and off all afternoon because she found out she has 'deformed' boobs. Just typing that out makes me angry ngl.
Some background: we've been together for 10 years, married for 6. We were each other's first serious relationship and overall we've been pretty happy together. I find her incredibly sexy and attractive. We have a pretty good sex life and are both happy on that front, not super kinky but we like to try new things and have fun.
She's always been self-conscious about a couple of things about her body like having some cellulite or her stomach not being flat but it's never gotten in the way of our bedroom activities. It's just been I guess a normal amount of insecurity, which I mean is not great but I think it's common for most women to be a bit insecure about some part of their body right?
However, one thing she's always been insecure about since we've been together are her breasts. Now, I don't see anything wrong with them. They're big and soft and sexy and I fucking love them and tell her that. But she's always said she doesn't like how they look because they're a 'weird' 'ugly' shape. Her insecurity about them has gone up and down over the years but it's always there. Sometimes it's only a little bit, sometimes a lot.
It's true that her breasts don't look like the "perfect" boobs you see in movies and porn that are round and high and perky but I also don't see them as weird and ugly like she does. They're normal boobs to me and part of her and she's sexy so that's how I see it.
Well, recently her insecurity about them has been more intense and she started googling and researching. She spent most of the day on her phone today and that's what brings me here. Basically she stumbled alon something called tuberous/tubular breasts and realised she has this. She showed me pictures and diagrams and from what I understand this condition can vary in severity? From what I could see her breasts do look like the mild end of the spectrum, not at all like severe cases, but again, I don't care. The reason she is crying is that everything she has found about this condition talks about it as a 'deformity'. That's the actual word that keeps coming up again and again on every site she opens up.
So she's already pretty fragile about her breasts but now she's been told by the internet/plastic surgeon sites/medical sites that she's also deformed. I think it really did a number on her and she just looks broken and I'm hurting a lot to see her like this and not knowing how to make her feel better. I reassured her several times that she's not deformed and that I still find her incredibly beautiful and sexually attractive but it doesn't seem to help. She just has an idea in her head that she's disgusting and this thing she found today just cemented that idea and I don't know how to get through to her. What do I do? How do I help her to not think of/see herself like this?
Relevant info? She's slim/healthy weight, never had children. I even saw her looking up plastic surgeons in our area today between crying which really worried me because she's never expressed a desire for this before and used to talk about how terrified she would be to go under the knife. She also has chronic health issues that would make surgery a risk for her so for her to go this far really worries me. If she wants to get surgery I'd support her but it's out of character for her the way she is acting right now.
Edit: her chronic health issues do not have an effect on her breasts or appearance. I don't want to go into her medical history here.
She has been/is going to therapy and she's talked about body image issues before but it hasn't really seemed to help..I've gone with her a couple of times at her request and she says she knows people come in different shapes and sizes, she knows those perfect breasts and body types are not common and that the images she sees on tv and online are photoshopped, she says she believes me when I say I find her attractive but she says she doesn't know how to find herself attractive. She says she just feels disgusted when she looks in the mirror at her breasts. She says it's like she doesn't know how to make her brain find herself attractive. I don't know how much therapy has really helped or can help. She says she knows she should accept herself and love her body but that she just feels gross when she sees them and doesn't know how to not feel gross.
TL;DR: wife has great but imperfect breasts she's always been self-conscious about to some extent. Found out through googling that she has (mild) tuberous breasts which keep being called a 'deformity' online and this seems to have broken her self-esteem and she now refers to herself as deformed and disgusting and has been crying a lot. How do I help her see that she's sexy and beautiful and attractive despite her breasts not being perfect tv/porn breasts and that she's not deformed?
Edit 2: for some reason reddit won't show me many of your comments. It's extremely frustrating. I get the notification of a new comment and when I click on it, it just says 'Wow such empty'. I've tried refreshing the post and clicking view all for comments but many comments are just not showing up for whatever damn reason. Thanks reddit.