Dear Prudence: Help! My Boyfriend Says I’m “Only an 8.5.”

[minoanmiss]

He says he’s happy to settle, but I don’t know how to feel about it.



I’ve been with my boyfriend for about six months. He’s been wonderful with my 4-year-old son (who has started calling him daddy!), and we recently started living together. The problem is he just told me he considers me only an 8.5 on the hotness scale and doesn’t think our sex life is the best he’s ever had but that he’s happy to settle based on the whole package. I think we’re very well-matched (hotness-wise), but I don’t compare him to other men in that way. I’ve also tried to improve our sex life, without much luck. My question is: How should I feel about his revelation? Do I deserve more from a partner, in terms of feeling sexy and loved? Or should I stick with it for the sake of my son?


I’m trying to imagine how this came up in conversation. “Darling, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I’m so happy to be able to tell you … you’re a solid 8.5 out of 10. Very nearly a 9. I understand if you want to take a minute and call your parents. Also, I’ve had better sex in the past. I won’t bother you with the details but … it’s been better. I’m not going to dump you over it. It’s definitely good enough for me. Anyhow. An 8.5. A solid 8.5.” I don’t think it’s a requirement that a happy, fulfilling relationship also provide the best sex of all time, but I do think it’s incredibly odd and casually cruel that your partner thinks it’s necessary to a) rank you on a 10-point scale of hotness, b) inform you of your ranking, and c) describe your sex life as something he’s “happy to settle for.”

It sounds like your boyfriend is interested in making sure you feel like you’re not quite good enough and that he’s doing you a favor by overlooking your physical and sexual inadequacies. These are some deeply damaging and manipulative games he’s playing. Meeting your child and moving in together at six months is awfully fast. I don’t think it should be a point of pride that your son has taken to calling him “daddy” so quickly. You deserve more from a partner, and your son deserves more from a potential co-parent. A longer screening period will go a long way towards protecting both you and your child from guys like this.—Danny M. Lavery

Comments

[minoanmiss]

First reaction: [redacted]
Second reaction: this reminded me of an essay written by a Finn which I read recently, where they quoted a friend as saying "The problem with Americans is that they haven't seen their grandmothers' tits". By which they and the friend meant, because Finns go to the saunas and so on with family members, they see how normal human bodies age and sag. Without that experience, many people (including men involved with women) compare their partners' bodies to the only other people they've seen naked, porn and other actors, who are not average people. So they become disappointed when ordinary people (including women involved with men) don't look or stay looking like those very particular examples.

Food for thought.

Also, [more redaction].

[jadelennox]

that's a really smart friend.

[seperis]

Funny story: I did live in Finland as an exchange student and those five months comprise three quarters (maybe four-fifths) of the total number of people I've seen naked. My host family (five of them), my boyfriend, my entire study abroad class (>30) and a few other relatives/people naked running into icy lakes; visits to people and sauna/naked/cold lake happened. Proportionally, I spent more time naked there than anyplace in my life, but in my defense, there was a sauna in the shower and fuck yeah I sauna'ed before showering. IT was like being home in Texas.

Five months: so much naked. In a country where I lived in a latitude north of goddamn Moscow. It genuinely did inform how I viewed human bodies (I was seventeen) and my scale for 'normal'. Though most useful was actually seeing so many naked girls and boys in my age group from like ten to twenty countries + Finland. Honestly, I kind of credit that for burning out a lot of possibility for body issues and weight in college and later; my sampling group was like barely five feet to six feet and change and from 'pole' to 'very plump peach'.

But you just made me flash back on like thirtyish of us chatting in a sauna in the country, all naked, maybe five other native English speakers of various nationalities, practicing our Finnish naked (since this was my study abroad group and not native Finns, we were segregated to respect each other's cultures. Before going out to jump in a almost-but-not-yet-frozen-lake and then take a group bucket bath.

(This is way cooler than it sounds; there was a room for this, with hot and cold faucets and dozens of buckets and treated wooden stuff (benches?) to sit on and do your face and problem areas with honey. While naked. Practicing your Finnish with your peeps you just met like an hour ago and can now identify moles even your mother and doctor didn't know about. Good times.)

[minoanmiss]

this is GLORIOUS.

[cereta]

1. Holy shit, what an asshole.

2. If a girlfriend who is an "8.5/10" isn't good enough for you, buddy, you have a very, very high opinion of himself.

3. Asshole.

4. What is he doing to improve their sex life?

5. Having your child call a man you have only met "daddy" is a recipe for future therapy. Also, while I absolutely believe that there are successful blended families (my sister's is one), statistically, the most dangerous person in a child's life is an unrelated man living in the same house. Six months? WTF?

5. Also, dude is an asshole. Get out now before he starts berating your child for getting a B.

[jadelennox]

If a girlfriend who is an "8.5/10" isn't good enough for you, buddy, you have a very, very high opinion of himself.

Every now and then when I feel the need for despair I look at some of the weird incel/pickup artist crap on reddit, and this seems to be a universal truth for them. Or set of truths:

1. women shall be ranked on an objective 10 point scale for fuckability / social desirability
2. the only woman worth being with is one who is at least an 8
3. if you can't get an 8 you might as well... well. Redacted for self-harm warnings.
4. women own all the power and can fuck whomever they choose
   1. at least, all women who are eights or higher
   2. because no other women exist
5. women who are under an objective, universally agreed-upon 8 who talk about how they are getting laid are only doing it to troll you, or they are proof that women are terrible, because how dare they.
6. the best way to bag a 10 is have a prominent chin and to neg her.

And negging her is exactly what LW's awful boyfriend is doing. Yeet him into the sun.

[cimorene]

He seems to be doing negging wrong if he brought it up after they're already dating though. I mean, it does still come off as negging, but he may be trying and failing to think for himself strategywise here, if that is where he got the concept.

[minoanmiss]

Alas, continued negging during the relationship is employed by many people in order to keep their partner from mustering the self esteem to leave them. I remember a story I read where a girl's boyfriend kept complaining that she smelled bad. Finally she confronted him right after a thorough shower and he admitted that his father had advised him to tell her she smelled bad so she'd never have the confidence to leave him, and that this was how his father had held his parents' marriage together, by systematically wrecking his mother's confidence in this way.

Intergenerational disposal required, ugh.

[cereta]

Also, there is no such thing as a woman "incel" (even though a woman coined the term), because any woman can get sex any time she wants, and probably is. See above re: women under "8" not existing.

[mommy]

1st thought: Does this guy want to get dumped?

2nd thought: 8.5 is actually really high on the subjective 10-scale, but that's still not something that should be said to your partner.

3rd thought: I hope this woman dumps this guy.

[twospots]

Huh. This is kind of fascinating because... it highlights how very much the WAY the conversation happens matters.

My partner and I have had very similar conversations, in a very healthy way. We've frankly discussed how neither of us is The Very Best Or Hottest in most areas, but we are definitely a very good Whole Package for each other. We've happily laughed about our flaws, and the ways we are distinctly average, and praised each others' strengths, and discussed the things we appreciate about each other. These kinds of discussions are, in fact, part of what makes our relationship so strong.

25% of me wonders if this guy was... trying to achieve that, and failing. But probably he was just being an asshole.

[teaotter]

Anyone who implies that they are "settling" for their partner should be immediately dumped. If they do not feel immensely lucky to have LW in their life, they are not worth living with, much less raising a child with.

I mostly like the advice, but they could've been a bit more careful: "that he’s doing you a favor by overlooking your some physical and sexual inadequacies imperfections."

[colorwheel]

it seemed to me that the columnist was putting those descriptions into the set of things being implied by the dude, not reasserting himself that they're valid descriptors.

[conuly]

Wow. Wow. WOW.

Like, it's okay to think, honestly, that your partner is not THE VERY HOTTEST PERSON in the world. And it *might* be okay to say that, I guess, in some context where it's okay. I don't know what that context is, but sure.

It's not okay to then frame this as "I'm willing to settle because you have a great personality", especially with "And you're only so-so on the sex front".

[twospots]

I mean... as I mentioned above, my partner and I discuss this reasonably often. Contexts have included:

- General discussion of pros & cons of our relationship. We both have previous relationships where the cons were dealbreakers. We both care that we're attracted to our partner, but definitely don't care whether they're objectively attractive or a "10".

- Discussion of past relationships, and what attracted our partners to those relationships.

- We're both aware that human interaction is performance, to a certain extent, and that attractiveness, among many other things, affects that. We find this interesting in itself, and we also discuss the choices we make about it.

- We both have work experience in industries where attractiveness was a contributing factor to success.

- Discussion of bodies (eg body image, or how fitness is affecting body shape).

And that's only my current partner. I'm pretty sure this topic has come up with most partners I've had?

(I also don't think that saying that "the sex isn't the best I've ever had" is the same as saying that it's so-so or in any way unsatisfying.)

(Given the way it's left her feeling, I think the guy is probably a douche. But I don't think that the topics are inherently insulting.)

[minoanmiss]

All of these are sensible mutual conversational topics as long as everyone involved is comfortable with them but the idea of giving one's partner a single number score (how can one sum a whole human being up into one number?) and saying one is "ok with settling" for them gives me hives.

[starfleetbrat]

"Do I deserve more from a partner, in terms of feeling sexy and loved?"

Hell yes.

"Or should I stick with it for the sake of my son?"

Hell no.

[green_grrl]

“Wow, it took me far too long to learn your personality was a 2 out of 10. And since you’re not even working on our sex life, well, you’re not the complete package I was looking for. Kid and I will be moving out now.”

[sporky_rat]

I need to put Whole Man Disposal Services on speed dial.

[fred_mouse]

As do many of us. Also, appropriate icon is appropriate.

[lemonsharks]

All judgment of the boyfriend aside (AND THERE IS PLENTY), I am SERIOUSLY sideying the LW for bringing a man she has know for six months into her barely more than a toddler's life.

At six months into the relationship this dude should not even have MET the son, let alone being called "daddy."

And with the way he's begging the LW I do not trust him for 5 seconds to not get abusive with the kid.