Featured on @StorylineReddit: November 4, 2025
Some relationship shifts are loud. Others collect in the background—through fabric that fits differently, through habits that change the air in a room.
Here, the tension doesn’t begin with confrontation. It begins with hesitation. She loves him, and she says so plainly. But she doesn’t want her friends to see him like this. Not heavier. Not smelling like smoke. Not dressed in neon shorts that used to be occasional and are now everyday.
The conflict isn’t framed as betrayal. It’s framed as drift. Private affection remains intact, at least in language. Public presentation does not. What unsettles this story is not simply weight or nicotine. It’s the quiet recalibration of attraction when someone stops resembling the version you first chose.
No one announces that recalibration. It shows up in small refusals. In delays. In introductions that never quite happen.
The conflict develops through gradual misalignment rather than a single rupture. She experiences his physical changes and new habits as erosion—fast food, smoking, looser routines—while he appears stuck between stress and inertia. Attraction doesn’t vanish, but it shifts under pressure.
Social visibility becomes the pressure point. He integrates her easily into his friend group. She does not reciprocate. What begins as logistical explanation hardens into avoidance. She frames her concerns around health and motivation, and at times around depression, but beneath that sits a quieter threshold: she wants him closer to who he was before extending certain forms of exposure.
There are attempts at influence—fitness bets, walks, indirect nudges. He changes jobs, experiments with vaping, promises resets tied to future milestones. After interviews. After probation. After the stress passes.
The escalation does not spike cleanly. It builds, stalls, builds again. Eventually, dissatisfaction is spoken directly. Improvement becomes explicitly tied to continuation. The relationship shifts from managed discomfort to stated conditions.
Text Version
My [23F] boyfriend [26M] thinks I’m embarrassed of him, and he’s kind of right
INCONCLUSIVE
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/waallet
My [23F] boyfriend [26M] thinks I’m embarrassed of him, and he’s kind of right.
Thanks to u/toketsupuurin for help with the comments
TRIGGER WARNING: Body shaming, smoking addiction
MOOD SPOILER: <!Cautiously optimistic!<
Original Post July 28, 2016
My boyfriend of ten months is upset that I won’t introduce him to my friends. There are a couple reasons for this.
First, I don’t have a defined “friend group”. Most of my friends live in different states or countries. The closest ones are an hour away, and they’re very busy – med school, weekend shifts, etc. My point is that seeing my friends is precious one-on-one time. The only group events I attend are my ex’s friends’ reunions. They invite me, but they’re not my friends. So, in general, my SOs don’t meet my friends.
Because meeting them is super important to my boyfriend, I’ve realized I am kind of embarrassed by him. I thought he was cute and fun when I met him, but over the last 10 months he got comfortable and gained ~50 pounds. It’s not a medical condition, it’s a bad diet of no exercise and constant fast food. He gets too tired to even have missionary sex. He went shopping recently for a rave, and now wears his rave clothes constantly because they’re the only things that actually fit him. These are things like black shorts with neon stripes. A friend of his laughed when she saw him and snap chatted him “looking like a gangster”. He also picked up smoking behind my back, and grew from a social smoker to several a day. He smells and I hate it.
Overall, if I met him now I would never consider dating him. But I’m in love with him, I just don’t want to introduce him until he’s back to his early-relationship self. Am I being awful? On his side, he has a very defined friend group that all live in the same city and throw group events constantly. It’s been easy for him to include me, and we hang out with them often.
tl;dr: I haven’t introduced my boyfriend to my friends, partly because I rarely see them and partly because he’s become really unattractive.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
ApatheticAnarchy
He probably didn’t really change. He was probably putting on a good show when you met him, and this is who he thinks he wants to be.
OOP
I know he played baseball from elementary school through high school, and last year played a lot of tennis and disc golf with his friends. This seems like such a drastic change that I can’t imagine it’s his “true form”. He’s said he’s unhappy with his weight, but admittedly hasn’t made any efforts to fix it.
themaincop
You can play baseball and disc golf and still be an obese smoker.
OOP
You can, but he wasn’t. At the start of our relationship he was reasonably in shape and only occasionally smoked at parties. At some point he started smoking when I wasn’t around, and now he’s a full blown smoker.
~
AintNoSunshine55
How does one gain 50 lbs in 10 months?
OOP
He’s tall, so most of the changes aren’t very noticeable on him. He also quit and restarted a medication and blamed some of the weight gain on that, but looking back it had little to do with it.
I think he eats roughly 2000-2400 (Edit: people have noted that this guess is too low) calories a day. Which, with his height, was probably a good amount when he played sports in high school and college but is too high now.
[deleted]
Actually, 2000-2400 cals/day should have a taller man losing weight (2500 calories is considered maintenance for most men). Either he is eating that many calories–and should therefore go to a doctor to figure out what’s going on–or he’s eating more like 3000-3500.
OOP
That’s interesting. I came up with that number by adding up a usual dinner for him at about 1400 calories (Taco Bell quesadilla, bean burrito, other entree, and a soda), and then guessing that he eats another 1000 for lunch. But maybe I’m missing some items, or he does have a medical issue.
I’ll talk to him about that!
Iamamaloca
How do you know it isn’t related to the med? Some meds really do cause you to pack on the pounds.
Have you expressed concern about his weight and eating habits?
OOP
Because he’s been on the med for years, including when he was fit, and he was only off of it for about a month, six months ago. Some of the weight gain might be related to the med, but considering he’s gained weight since then I don’t think it was a significant factor.
~
Good_Advice_Service
If you are embaressed of him and dont like the way he looks or dresses, or that he smokes, or how he smells, and woudlnt consider dating him…. why havent you done anything about it or left?
“I love him” is a shit answer. If you loved him why would you let him have come to this?
OOP
I didn’t arrive here willingly. I’ve downloaded MFP on his phone and bet that the person who logged the fewest days buys date night. I’ve asked for hikes for my birthday and Valentine’s presents. I get him to go on walks with me, but he gets impatient after half a mile. I’m not a great cook or willing to spend a lot on ingredients, so it’s difficult to explain why he should cook and season chicken for a mediocre salad instead of go to McDonald’s drive through.
If I could do anything to stop his cigarette cravings I would, but I can’t. The clothes are a recent development, and I’m guessing he’ll buy better fitting clothes soon, but for now he says he doesn’t see the need to look nice on casual days. He normally dresses fairly well.
Update Dec 14, 2016 (5 months later)
So I told him I was worried about his unhealthy habits and asked if he was depressed. He said he wasn’t sure, but he did hate his job. This surprised me, because he excelled at school and enjoyed discussing related topics, but I guess actual programming was burning him out.
He also said he was just picking a fight about my friends out of stress. I suggested that he switch to the business side of things, and after some exploring he seemed interested. He soon after bought new clothes (so thankful), switched to vaping (so regretful), and started a job hunt. I let him focus on applying but tried to passively inspire him by getting into shape myself.
He eventually became a manager at a game company and was way happier… but I just got more frustrated. I had never really dieted before, but learned it’s actually pretty easy if you’re disciplined about logging calories. I dropped from a 22 BMI to a 19 BMI without exercising, then threw in some weights (thanks, r/xxfitness). Meanwhile, he quit his job after getting some interviews but did nothing except grow his nicotine addiction because he could now smoke indoors with his vape. Then he got a job and snapchatted all his coworker happy hours and new food perks. I know starting can be hard, but he kept moving the goal posts for getting started – after quitting old job, after interviews, after new job probation period.
A couple weeks ago, I invited him to a friend’s musical. We were running a little late but he said he needed to use my bathroom… and set off the fire alarm. Because he was vaping. I BLEW UP. I was so furious he planned to meet new people and then subject them to that awful smell for the next three hours. So I finally gave him the ultimatum that you guys suggested four months ago. It seems like it worked; he replaced his vape with nicotine gum, bought an elliptical, cut out soda and started cooking more.
I hope it all sticks, but if it doesn’t, I’ll be fine. I’ve grown more confident (and a lot hotter) since I last posted.
tl;dr: Finally gave boyfriend ultimatum suggested last time. Kids: Don’t smoke. Even if you swear you’re “not gonna do it that much, just once in a while when you’re drunk at a party” like my boyfriend did.
Edit: To address some of the comments, I admire a lot of things about my boyfriend. He’s smart and hardworking and graduated at the top of his class. He shares my sense of humor and many of my interests, he’s very willing to listen and communicate. He’s a great complement to my personality and I have a blast hanging out with him.
I absolutely love him and want him to be happy. That just wasn’t the point of the original post or the update. I don’t mean to make my boyfriend sound awful or to demean him. I don’t care if he ever has a six-pack; I just want him to be the average-weight guy he was when we started dating.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
OOP gives me detail about her ultimatum
I mean, that was the point of the ultimatum. If he was happy, I wanted to break up so that we could pursue our individual lives.
I haven’t actually told him to do anything, I’ve only said that I’m unhappy with his intense weight gain and smoking. The way he fixes those things are up to him, including breaking up with me if he wants.
Source
At first glance, this reads like aesthetic disappointment. The man she met played sports and dressed with intention. The man she is with now eats differently, smokes more, and wears clothes that no longer fit the same way. She doesn’t describe cruelty. She describes deflation.
Something subtle changes in her posture toward him. She logs calories. She lifts weights. She tightens her own routines. The comparison exists without being announced.
He, meanwhile, drifts. He dislikes his job. He quits. He interviews. He delays. The timeline for “starting fresh” keeps sliding forward. None of this is dramatic in isolation. It accumulates.
Then the bathroom scene.
They are already late to meet her friend. He says he needs to use the bathroom. The fire alarm goes off. It’s the vape. The smell hangs in the air while she stands there furious.
There is no abstraction in that moment. Just irritation, embarrassment, the sharpness of being about to walk into a social setting with smoke clinging to him.
After that, the language shifts. She stops hinting and names what she cannot tolerate. He replaces the vape with gum. Buys an elliptical. Cuts soda. Cooks more. The visible signs begin to move back toward alignment.
And yet something has been introduced that doesn’t disappear as easily. Improvement now sits under surveillance. Attraction is no longer assumed; it is negotiated through behavior.
She insists she wants him happy. She also makes clear she will leave if he is content as he is. He changes. Or he tries to.
Whether that restores what first connected them is less certain. The effort is measurable. The atmosphere between them is harder to quantify.
