Over at Salon, Jennifer Joyner has written a heartbreaking account of what it’s like to be morbidly obese. It includes this tidbit on the difficulties of the physical act of love:
As if this weren’t enough, I now have to have sex with my husband. Michael is not the problem here; he loves me unconditionally and has stood by me for 16 years of marriage, even after I gained 100 pounds before our first-year anniversary. He actually, unbelievably, wants me. This I cannot possibly understand. He hugs me so fiercely, so lovingly, and I am repulsed for him. He is 5-foot-8 and 170 pounds. How can he stand to touch me? He kisses me with passion, and I try to lose myself in the moment, focusing on my love for him and the memory of our once insatiable sex life. But these days, our lovemaking is physically limited to one single position. You wouldn’t believe how we must contort our bodies to make sex work; suffice it to say the measures we take greatly interfere with achieving true intimacy. Once the act commences, there is no passionate kissing, no stroking of your lover’s face. Our being together becomes a perfunctory means to a physical end. The finale leaves me devastated.
No joke: I think that description left me devastated.