This is a touchy subject, and I almost didn't record it. What do you do when you have real feelings about your wife's changing body? Maybe it's weight. Maybe it's the way pregnancy, stress, illness, or just the years have changed her. Maybe you feel guilty for even noticing.

This conversation is not about your wife. This is about what's happening in our own hearts as husbands. In this discussion, I'll share why your wife's body is not a project to manage, what it looks like to love her the way Christ loves the Church, and whether a husband can ever bring up health without leaving his wife feeling one ounce of shame (there's a way that heals and a way that wounds).

I'll also share something Sarah said recently that prompted me to talk about this particular topic in the first place.

If your desire feels more complicated than it used to, you are not alone. There is a holy way forward.

Grab a cup of coffee and let's talk about it.

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Okay, guys, I want to talk today about something that I think a lot of men feel that almost nobody knows how to talk about.

Well, what do you do when you have real feelings about your wife's changing body?

Maybe it's weight gain.

Maybe it's the way pregnancy, birth, nursing, stress, age, illness, or just life has changed her.

Maybe you're not proud of your reactions.

Maybe you feel guilty.

Maybe you feel frustrated because desire used to feel easier, and now it's something in you that feels a lot more complicated.

This is a really tricky topic, and I want to tread very carefully, but it's a really important topic.

It would be easy to ignore.

But this is Holy Desires.

It's about intimacy inside and outside the bedroom.

And this is a big one.

So even more than ignoring it would be so easy, right?

But I don't want to pretend that this topic doesn't exist, so we're gonna tackle it.

Catholic husbands.

That's us.

We.

We need a holy and productive way to think about and talk about this issue.

These feelings, this topic.

Your wife's body is not an abstract concept.

Her body is the body of the woman who you vowed to love, honor, cherish, and give yourself to.

Her body is part of the sacramental reality of your marriage.

So, quick note here.

This.

The point of this episode is not to give medical advice, fitness advice, none of that.

And it is definitely not a strategy for managing your wife as if she were some sort of project that you could project manage.

That is not the not it.

This episode is actually not about your wife at all.

This episode is about you.

It's about what's going on in your heart.

And that's where we're going to start.

If your wife's changing body is stirring up disappointment, anxiety, fear, comparison, resentment, loss of attraction, whatever it is, those feelings need to be brought to the light.

We need to start with our own hearts.

Those feelings need to be looked at honestly.

They are just feelings, though.

Feelings don't control us.

We get to choose what we do with those feelings.

But we do need to acknowledge them and be honest about them.

If we don't, those feelings can influence us in ways that we don't even realize is happening.

So the first step, really take a step back and really reflect on what's going on in my own heart.

As husbands, we have to be willing to ask these hard questions of ourselves.

What story am I telling myself?

Am I telling myself that my wife has stopped caring?

Am I assuming motives?

Am I silently building a case against her?

Where have I absorbed a Secular vision of what bodies should look like?

Am I measuring my wife against images, memories, expectations, pornography, social media, Hollywood, or some fantasy version in my mind?

How have I trained my own desire?

Have I cultivated a capacity to see beauty with the eyes of love, which is seeing the whole person?

Body, yes, but mind and soul as well?

Or have I trained myself to see physical beauty only?

Was beauty something that I consume, that brings me pleasure?

Is that my concept of what beauty is?

What are my feelings right now?

So name them.

We named a bunch at the beginning of this section.

Am I afraid?

Am I afraid of losing sexual attraction?

Am I afraid of growing old?

Of mortality?

Am I ashamed of my wife's appearance?

Am I sad for the loss of how she once looked?

Mourning that?

Am I frustrated that perhaps we don't have the same level of commitment to our own physical health?

What are your feelings around this?

And be honest.

Name them.

And what is my responsibility right now?

Did this reflection bring up something I feel I should repent of?

Maybe something I should bring to confession?

Can I choose a better story to tell myself?

Can I train my mind in a more holistic view of beauty?

Basically, brothers, in what ways do I have agency in this situation?

I can't control my wife or my wife's body.

I can control my own mind and my own heart.

What can I do?

Where do I have agency?

Here we typically want to get immediately to how do I bring this up?

Or how do I get her to change?

Brothers, we've got to slow down before you say anything to your wife.

And likely you might not say anything to your wife at all.

You need to know what is happening inside you, inside your own heart.

One of the most important things to say clearly here is this.

I said it at the beginning.

Your wife's body, your wife generally, and her body is not your project.

You are not the project manager of her body.

You are not the inspector of her body.

You are not the consumer giving feedback on whether the product still meets expectations.

Right?

All of these metaphors are just laughable when I say them out loud.

You are her husband.

That means that you're called to love her.

And loving her body is part of loving her.

That's part of her.

But love her as the whole person that God entrusted to you.

This is deeply, deeply Catholic.

We do not believe that the body is disposable.

We do not believe that the body is some sort of shell with a real person living inside of it.

The body is not incidental.

It is essential.

The body matters.

The body reveals the person Body and soul, body and mind.

It's part of who we are.

And that's, you know, our doctrine of the resurrection of the body points to the fact that it is eternally significant.

And yes, our glorified bodies will not have any of the maladies, any of the difficulties that we struggle with here in this mortal life, but that's for our next level of existence and the resurrection, right?

That's not now in marriage, here and now, we are called to love our wife wholly and completely, body and soul.

In marriage.

You gave yourself to your wife, including your body, and she gave herself to you.

That gift is not limited to a season when you both might have been feeling young and fit and energetic.

Right?

What were the words that we said in the vows?

For better or for worse, rich or poor, good times and bad, till death do us part.

That last bit necessarily also means you married for young and old as well.

Let me share something that Sarah said recently, and this honestly, this really has stuck with me and it's really the the entire motivation for recording this episode was what she shared.

We host as a couple.

We host theology nights for engaged couples in our parish.

So an engaged couple will come over to our house before their wedding and then we share with them the Church's teaching on sacramental marriage and sexuality.

We also feed them dinner and have a great time and we get into some really great conversations with with couples.

Recently a couple was over and Sarah shared something that just really struck me.

She said something like this.

When Nathan loves me and just accepts me the way that I am, that helps me understand and receive the love that the Father must have for me.

She was speaking there about how hard it is for women to accept themselves.

They so often have a self critical internal monologue that is filled with criticisms and critiques and self reproach.

One of the graces of marriage and one of the calls of husbands is to love our wives as Christ loves the church.

Right?

That's what St. Paul tells us in the letter to the Ephesians, chapter five.

Brothers, this has a profound impact on our wives, more profound likely than we can really appreciate.

And Sarah opened my eyes to it when she shared this comment.

This kind of love, it can teach her how to be accepted.

It can teach her how to receive love.

It can literally open her to the grace of God more fully.

And that's really our role as husbands, right?

Sanctification of our wives and ourselves, get ourselves to heaven.

Loving in this way is what does it Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church that is the call.

Christ didn't love his bride by standing at a distance and evaluating whether she is still attractive enough to deserve his tenderness.

Christ knows full well that his bride is far from perfect.

Isn't it like, yeah, that's us, that's us.

That's the church.

And the church is very far from perfect.

Christ loves the church.

Fully, completely, totally.

He's all in.

He gives himself for her.

He draws near to her.

We are called to do the same.

So practically speaking, how do we do that?

And when we do it, just know.

Keep, Keep this in mind.

Hold this in your hearts.

That when we love our wives in this way, it is profoundly, profoundly healing for them.

So how can we do this?

I want to give you at least one great way to think about this.

Part of seeing your wife truthfully is remembering what her body has done.

So for many brothers listening, your wife's body has carried children.

Your children.

Her body has endured pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, nursing, exhaustion, late nights with no sleep, hormonal shifts, years of hidden sacrifice.

As men, we can only have a dim, dim understanding of what that really entails.

We can be present, we can be attentive, we can be supportive, and we should be all of those things.

But we can never really know the way other women.

The way women know.

We can never really know from the inside what it's like to carry in your body your child and then give birth.

Right?

That is.

That is a gift and a blessing and yes, a sacrifice that is given to women.

And we're on the outside looking in.

But even apart from motherhood, her body has carried stress.

It's carried the work of your home.

It has carried maybe grief, aging, sickness, fatigue, the ordinary wear and tear of a life poured out in love.

So when you look at her body, what do you see?

Do you see the ways that it differs from how it used to be?

Do you see only what has changed?

Do you see how she falls short of an ideal that you have in your mind or an ideal that Hollywood portrays for us?

Do you see the ways that it does or does not stir immediate attraction in you?

Or can you learn to see the history of what she has done?

A history of love, a history of service, a history of pouring out.

Can you see the sacrifice?

Can you see the body of a woman who has given herself day after day to your family and your marriage?

I don't mean this to be merely a sentimental reflection.

This really is, brothers.

This is a training manual for how to shape your heart with respect to your wife's body and how to shape your heart.

I think, I believe, how to conform your heart more closely to the heart of Christ.

Because that's the call we are to love our wives the way Christ loves his bride.

And this is how he does it.

Okay, so a fair question is this.

Can a husband ever talk to his wife about health, weight, fitness or habits?

Like, does he have to just not bring any of those issues up?

I think the real question is what is the motivation for doing so?

There may in fact be real health concerns in a marriage or that you have on behalf of your wife.

There may be patterns that need attention.

There may be a shared desire to get healthier as a couple or as a family.

And there may be times when an honest conversation is appropriate.

But the question is what spirit you are speaking from.

If you speak from criticism or disappointment or shame, that will come through.

Even if your words are as carefully chosen as possible.

She will feel it every time, I guarantee it.

A better starting place, I believe, is to talk about your shared life and not about a desired for outcome in regards to physical appearance.

Just avoid that one.

That's, that's never gonna go over well.

And honestly, that shouldn't be our goal anyway.

One of the guiding principles for my wife and I is not about physical looks, but it's about what we want the second half of our lives together to look like.

And we're, you know, approaching that second half of our lives that's staring us, it's around the corner.

We want to be able to do things like this, go on hikes and adventures with our kids, with each other, and God willing, someday with our grandkids, if we are blessed with grandkids, we want to be able to run around and play with them, be active with them.

We want to be able to travel, to enjoy life, to explore, be adventurous.

When we're retired, when we've, you know, done all the work and we hit that happy time of retirement, we want that time.

We want to be healthy enough in our bodies to be able to enjoy that time together.

We want it to be a golden time.

All these things require a healthy body to do.

So how to gently start that conversation?

It can start with sharing shared vision, right?

Do some dreaming together.

What do you dream about?

And maybe this is really long term dream for you.

Maybe it's 20, 30, 40 years away from for you.

That's fine.

Make a dream.

You can dream for the future that far in the future, no problem.

What is your dream?

I want us, you know, that's your.

Why Is not the physical appearance, but is the shared life that you have together.

And parts of that shared life will entail the physical doing things.

Because that's who we are.

We are bodies in this world.

So once you have that identified and a vision identified, and hopefully that you both agree on, this can be multiple conversations.

Right?

But if you can identify that as a shared vision, as a shared dream, then you can work backwards and say things along the lines of, you know, I think we should work on taking better care of ourselves.

I have a. I've been feeling convicted about my own habits.

Right.

You can start with yourself, which is always a good place to start.

We can find.

Oh, can we find ways to move together, eat better, have more energy as a family.

Things along those, nature along those lines.

For all of those, add in your why.

So that we can enjoy our life together.

So that we can grow old gracefully together.

So that we can, you know, continue to have adventures so that we can go on adventures in the first place.

Right.

Whatever those why's are that involve some physicality, bring those in.

Okay, I want to end here with a few ideas for how to reform form your own vision and your own heart.

We started with what's in your heart.

We started with a reflection.

What stories are we telling ourselves?

What is my belief about my wife and about her body?

What am I comparing her body to?

Am I comparing her body to other things?

You know, these, these reflections?

I want to end with some ways to be proactive, to take agency about forming your own heart and forming your own mind and forming your own thoughts about your wife's body.

Number one is to thank God for her body.

Gratitude is literally the opposite of criticism.

Criticism and gratitude are opposed.

Where there is criticism, gratitude can't really exist.

But where there is gratitude, criticism is banished.

Right?

So you can pray in gratitude for your wife's body.

Thank God for the ways that her body has loved, has served, has suffered, has given life, has embraced you, has carried your family.

Like all the different ways that your wife's body has reflected the light of God himself.

Right?

Like she is a light in this world, just as you are called to be.

And how has God shown through her and through the use of her body and how she has lived in the world.

Give great thanks and gratitude for that.

Second, repent of comparison.

If you are comparing your wife to other women, to porn, to social media, to Hollywood, to younger versions of herself, to an imaginary ideal in your mind, you know, you can bring all of that into confession.

Don't coddle it, don't nurture it.

Don't, you know, nurse it in your mind.

Don't let it live in the shadows.

Just bring it to light and repent of it.

Practice reverent attention.

So this is like being really aware of her.

Look at her with love on purpose.

Notice beauty on purpose.

This isn't just like a technique for your own mind.

This is truly an act of love.

And find a part of her, a part of her body that you genuinely, honestly, truly without reservation see as attractive.

Might be her eyes, maybe her hair, maybe her hands.

Whatever it is, maybe it's a gesture, maybe it's her smile.

Whatever it is, find something that you truly appreciate and find beautiful about her physically, and focus on that.

And then speak delight to her more often.

Tell her she is beautiful.

Once you've identified that one thing, or hopefully several things, tell her about it.

Tell her what you love about her.

Be specific.

Tell her those things.

Don't reserve the compliments for moments when she looks the way you prefer, dresses the way you prefer, you know, whatever.

Let her experience your delight as steady, constant, not conditional, not occasional.

Always, like, really ramp up your affirmation towards her.

And compliments is so, so powerful.

It's powerful for her and it's also powerful for you.

Of course, it's a great gift for your wife, but it also helps train your own mind and your own heart.

And finally, ask God for help if you struggle with desire and you either need to purify your desire to focus your desire more on your wife and not on others, if you need to rekindle that desire for your wife, whatever the struggle you might have in this area, ask for God's help explicitly.

This is, this is the work of prayer.

You can ask for these graces.

Ask for the grace to desire your wife as she is, and God can work through that prayer.

This is formation, literally forming your heart, changing the shape of your heart to be more like the shape of Christ's heart.

You are learning to see with Christ's eyes and to serve with Christ's hands.

So that's a.

That's a difficult call, brothers.

I know we're called to love our wives just like Jesus loves his bride.

We're called to see our wives with Christ's own vision and serve our wives with Christ's own hands.

And that includes her body.

It includes her changing body.

It includes the body that will get older, just like yours.

You know, let's be honest.

Do you look the same as you did when you were 18 or 20?

Probably not.

Unless you are in fact 18 or 20 and listening to me, I certainly don't.

We've all changed.

We all do change as we get old, as we age.

And part of that is, you know, the call to age gracefully.

And part of that is, you know, all the things that I've just been talking about.

And includes, you know, our love for our wives, includes her body and includes her changing body.

It includes the body that has carried children, endured exhaustion, age stretched, softened, scarred, sacrificed.

Your wife does not need you to pretend that nothing has changed.

What she needs, what she deserves, what she desires, is a husband whose love is deeper than just the change.

A husband who loves her not as she was, but as she is right now.

And actually whose love is deeper now than it was before, even though her body might be different, is different.

Your love should actually be deeper because of all that you have experienced together.

Because of love grows and deepens over time.

That kind of love can become a place of healing.

It can become a place where she learns in her own body that she is still loved and received as she is.

She is delighted in.

She is loved and lovable.

And praise God, that kind of love forms you too.

It conforms your heart to the heart of Christ, teaches you to desire more deeply and more truthfully, and it puts the basis of your desire.

Yes, there's always a physical element, but as I've been emphasizing, we are body and soul.

Mind, body, spirit, right?

It's the whole package.

So our desire can be grounded not just in the physical, but also in her character, in her soul, in her spirit, in her mind.

All of that can be the grounds of desire for us.

I hope that that has been a helpful reflection for you.

It has been helpful for me just to simply articulate these things which have been swirling around in my own mind for a little while.

And I do hope and pray that there is something in here that is helpful to you as well.

Send me a note and tell me about it.

Otherwise, grab a cup of coffee and I'll see you next time.

God bless.