A No-Win Question You Never Want to Hear and a Couple of Tips
Being Honest vs. Saving Your Ass
The Trap
The scenario goes like this: You and your significant other are in the bedroom getting dressed to go out -- not even for an evening on the town but maybe to the grocery store or local Taco Bell. Your wife/girlfriend (I'll just refer to wife henceforward) is getting dressed and stares at herself in the mirror. Just because you happen to be in the room, a bombshell drops into your lap, with the question, "Am I fat?" You have noticed that your wife has put on some pounds, and despite the new wardrobe of loose-fitting attire, you can see the bulges. It's not really an issue with you because you are carting around a watermelon-sized bulge in your abdomen. It matters even less if intimacy has flown out the window ten years earlier.
You're confronted with a dilemma -- to tell the truth or to simply make up some half-assed lie. Now, I tried telling the truth. I felt I had to because it looked like my wife had doubled her size since I married her, and I thought a lie would be too obvious. I said something to the effect that her body had taken on a pear-shaped figure. This was not very accurate, but the comparison to a pear REALLY pissed her off. (Maybe I should have said she had the overall shape of a potato?)
There were a number of follow-up questions, like "Am I a cow?" You know the routine -- at least you older guys who have been in the same relationship for a long time. You're wife wants your opinion, but she really doesn't want it based on any true eye-ball measurement (after all, you haven't seen her naked in ten years, so everything is a pure guess). For the younger guys, if you get tossed this can of worms, and your honey is slim, just make a "pfffft," sound.
Somewhere I heard that women see a worse picture of themselves in a mirror, and men see a better one. God, I hope that isn't true because I think I look pretty awful. But, the point here is that women have a worse opinion than what is reflected, so they are basically looking for reassurance.
Reflexively, I'm the type of guy who just tells the truth, and I have to work on that.
For the rest of the day, into the evening, and as a last gesture before shutting the door to her bedroom, I got this snarly grimace of an expression. Neat stuff, eh?