With the high ratio of male to female lifters how is it possible a female gets in a relationship with a non-lifter?
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Concur. All this “he may be really worried” stuff is nonsense. He feels like less of a man than you (and he is) and he’s trying to drag you down to his level. He also feels threatened that you will dump him as you get more attractive/fit. It’s passive aggressive male bitchiness. Wives do this to, but by sabotaging diets with casseroles and beer.
All young men are susceptible to this a bit. When I was in high school, many moons ago, I dated a really, really, rich girl. Her daddy had a jet rich. I was poor. As in, Indian on the reservation and free government cheese poor. She claimed it didn’t matter, as I was nice to her – plus I was the “hot guy” in my little school and a good student and athlete.
It still ate the shit out of me, so I did everything I could do to make her feel bad about being rich. Total bitch move, and an insecurity I have either matured out of (or managed to resolve by becoming successful, your choice).
The only five solutions are:
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He becomes more awesome. He needs to drink a gallon of milk, squat, and deadlift, about 4X a week. With effort, he will be stronger than you, just by human physiology. This will return things to the default position of life, and he won’t be threatened by your awesomeness.
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Dump him, if #1 fails.
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You lower yourself to his level and hate yourself and him, as you gradually grow to resent him and eventually kill him and bury him in the garden and we all get to watch you on the ID channel.
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you hide your awesomeness by lying about how much you lift. This will work until a better guy comes along and you dump this guy.
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He suddenly becomes more comfortable in his own skin either through maturity or becoming super successful in some other way.
In seriousness, I seldom see relationships where the woman is more of a catch than the man working out, specifically in finances and physical ability. It can work if the man is really rich and ugly and the woman hot and poor, but that’s about it.
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Yeah that would be awesome, but I don’t think this would fly, LOL! He seems very resistant to taking my lifting/diet advice in any form.
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oh my gosh I don’t think I could ever say anything even remotely close to this 
If I am the man, I’m most def a man baby… 
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oops I guess I should be tagging instead of quoting…
@thefourthruffian I don’t think him getting into heavy lifting is on the table any time soon, especially since his bro told him deadlifts can make people paralyzed and now he refuses to do them. EEps.
I also don’t think I could ever dump him as I’ve been in love with him for well over 3 years. I also don’t know how easy it would be to just find someone else because again this is the first boyfriend I’ve ever had and I am almost 31 so that’s a heaping pile of proof that I have a really hard time with men.
But he could mature over time, god knows he’s come a hell of a long way since the first time I met him.
But he is wayyyy more successful than I am. He makes tons of money and I’m hoping to go back to school full time with student loans.
I certainly don’t see myself as the catch of the relationship, anyway, far from to be honest…
Sounds like you both have insecurities. Why not just go to the gym without him? Or tell him to focus on his thing and let you focus on yours (powerlifting). He won’t be able to left as much as you anytime soon so forget about splitting sets with one another.
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The flaw in the approach is Spock is a human female.
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I anticipated as much. So don’t try! Don’t give him any advice whatsoever and just let him do his thing.
Well, that’s the “man is really rich and ugly and the woman hot and poor” scenario. Works for Melania Trump.
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His bro is an idiot… but don’t worry about it. I do not by any means think you should dump the guy for this type of thing–again, people being people means that they won’t see everything the same. In fact, it might be boring if they did. In any case let him do his thing in the gym, and do your own thing. Don’t let him sabotage your gym life in any way though, even if he is well meaning.
As for this: A) no it is not proof of anything and B) I don’t think anyone here would want you to dump someone you are in love with over a basic difference in human personalities and experiences (talk about the Apex of immature advice if that were to be said to you!).
That said, the fact that he is very successful is probably one of the driving reasons this “powerlifting” thing bothers him so much–people who are successful usually work hard and are often also talented, so not being good at something is a HUGE pill to swallow. Strikes at the base of who they see themselves to be, regardless of how it happens or who the experoenc involves. So yeah, it’s a blow. Still not a reason to act or say things to make you feel like you do, but definitely a real experience that is hard to deal with. I’m speaking as a recovering perfectionist
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My ex-wife did the same thing. She had real control issues.
Would counseling help? You may both have some security/self esteem issues, or am I reading too much into this? You’re 31 and never had a relationship and say you have a hard time with men, and he’s intimidated by the fact that you can lift more than him. Maybe you’ve just been focused on school/career/lifting and that’s why you haven’t been focused on men, and maybe he’s been focused on career so he hasn’t been focused on physical performance?
From my armchair and unqualifed viewpoint, my guess is this is an irritant for both of you, but it’s something that can be overcome with some work. No relationship is perfect and we all have our issues.
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@sunnbeaches105 I could ask him if he would be willing to try that. I most def would.
Okay so something new:
I am starting to wonder (I’m 110% sure) he’s started taking steroids. 2-3 weeks ago-ish…
Back around Canada day he mentioned something about it and of course I HATED the idea for multiple reasons, mainly in his case because it’s out of lack of patience/dis respect to the time/effort it takes in the gym to accomplish awesome things.
I told him to try plazma first because it’s amazing and he will start to see results and have kick ass workouts. He agreed and gave me money so I could order him some stuff, BUT THen his fasting stuff came into play and he works out at around 4am so he didn’t want to have to eat so he told me to just keep the plazma for myself. To which I happily obliged
But then it was never brought up again, and I kind of forgot about it.
About 10 days ago he started complaining about his hands going numb and night, and I have had carpal tunnel for as long as I can remember so I figured he had it too. I got him some wrist guards and he still had to remain still all night because they would go numb. He hasn’t been able to sleep all week, but he claims (because his buddy told him) it’s from deadlifting because its fucks with the nerves in your spine and this is why his hands are going numb. This is also where the becoming paralyzed shit came from. But according to buddy if you stop deadlifting it goes away in 3 weeks so he is just going to wait it out…
BUT THEN last night my mom emailed me (she is my best friend and knows everything) saying you know hand numbness is a very common side effect of taking steroids.
I don’t know if I am allowed to care about this? Like maybe this isn’t really my problem or business.
Except it makes me lose respect and I just think it’s super silly. Top level athletes or whatever I don’t hate steroids in general, I just hate that he’s taking them.
Hate is a pretty strong word. Not trying to turn it into a matter of semantics, but is hate an accurate description of the emotions that are being stirred?
A therapist once counseled me and my wife on using these types of extreme descriptors- Hate, love, never, always, etc.
Its interesting how much these powerful words get thrown around and permeate our communication within a relationship, and can really change the way what we’re saying is perceived. A real life example- Wife says to me “I love your cooking but I hate garlic.”.
Me “Then don’t fucking eat it.”.
When “I appreciate your cooking but don’t like that much garlic” would have been more accurate and gotten the response “Ok. I’ll use a little less next time.”.
Using better words to more accurately describe our needs has helped to avoid a lot of problems.
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Just throwing this out there. my fiancee has psyatica (100% sure this is the wrong spelling, but i digress) and nerve pain, and she does in fact get some numbness often in the hands and limbs after conventional deadlifting. Now, she has early-onset artritis, so that could be a factor.
She asked me about pulling sumo, so we worked on getting her familiar with it and now it’s the only way she pulls. She’s crushing PRs and hasn’t had these issues since the switch (or they haven’t been bad enough to tell me at least)
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Are you sure you’re not trying to find a problem where there is none? That is quite a long bow you’ve drawn on this one, especially if there are no other indicators.
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I havent read through the whole thread in detail, so maybe this has already been said:
My advice would be to separate out this portion of your life from your relationship. I used to date a girl that liked to train as well, but for some reason training together always created lots of tension. Solution was simple… We would go to the gym together, do our own things, and then leave and not talk about it.
My wife now doesn’t train at all and I don’t bring it up. When we started dating years ago she asked me for advice and we talked about it a little bit but I never pushed her into doing it
If the guy is “worth it” except for this one thing I would essentially find a way to just have the gym be “your thing” that he doesn’t need to be involved in.
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Sounds like you’re rubbing in the poor guys face.
@SkyzykS that’s a valid point, for sure. I guess its like that Louis CK skit where he talks about things being hilarious or epic that aren’t so hilarious or epic, Lol. Should keep that in mind, thanks.
@strongmangoals you could be right. I know he has done them in the past, but he’s changed a lot and I shouldn’t compare the old him to the new him who are seemingly unrelated .
@Lonnie123 Yeah, I once heard a really respectable trainer saying he couldn’t train his wife and had to hire someone else to do it because it was damn near impossible to do it without fighting !
@liftbear I have never once even come close to doing that, no.