'AITA for mistaking my girlfriend's weight accidentally? I didn't mean it in a bad way.'
"AITA for mistaking my girlfriend's weight accidentally?"
So I (21m) was driving with my girlfriend (20f) earlier tonight and we were talking about ideal protein intake based on your body weight (about 1.5 grams for kilogram of body weight). She was saying how that would mean she needed like 150 grams per day, which by my mediocre on the spot math at the time meant that she was about 250 pounds. Which I didn’t believe for a second.
My girlfriend is about 5’7 and looks to be a completely normal weight. That being said I remembered a few months ago that my girlfriend say that she stepped on the scale and told me that her weight in pounds started with a 2, which again I didn’t believe, as I assumed she was around the same weight as me, if not maybe a bit heavier.
(I’m 5’4 150lbs and she’s a bit taller than me so I figured it was around 160-170 for her at most) but she seemed pretty adamant that she was over 200 pounds, so I believed her even though it didn’t seem to add up to me.
Flash forward back to tonight. When she said she was 250 pounds, which I knew was an over exaggeration, I said “you’re obviously not 250 pounds, at most you’re like 190 (which again, I didn’t really believe but I was going off the number she’d given me a few months ago, minus a few pounds as I think she has lost a little weight since then).
What you need to know about my girlfriend is that she is VERY self conscious about her weight. Even though I think she has an incredibly attractive body, she always says how she’s “huge” and sometimes refuses to eat meals because of her fear of being overweight (I wouldn’t say she has an eating disorder, but she definitely does not have a healthy attitude towards her body and eating).
When I said that guess of 190, she got incredibly upset at me and started crying and asking for me to bring her home, and said that she couldn’t believe that I thought she was that heavy.
I apologized and told her I was only going off the number she had given me a few months before, which she said she had been a joke (from my recollection there was nothing about her tone at that time that suggested it was a joke, even if I didn’t fully believe her.)
I apologized again, and told her that I didn’t really think she looked 190, and that I when she told me she was over 200 I didn’t really believe it but went along with it because a) I’ll be honest, I’m not that confident in myself when guessing people's weight, and b) it is incredibly hard to know when my girlfriend is joking.
She rebuffed me and said that I should be good at guessing weights as I used to work at a gym, and she said that “it’s no wonder [I] got fired” (for the record, I wasn’t fired, I just got my shifts cut down for reasons out of my control).
I reassured her that she looks beautiful and doesn’t look overweight at all, and she seems to have calmed down now that we’ve gotten home. Still I just want to make sure that I wasn’t being a complete AH to her, because I care a lot about her and try my best to support and reassure her about her body.
The internet did not hold back one bit.
0215rw wrote:
Wait. She flat out said 250. You guessed 190 and she’s mad at you for guessing 60lbs less?
How much does she weigh and why was she claiming 250?
OP responded:
No clue how much she weighs (definitely not asking now for obvious reasons), but she said she was joking about 250. I kind of assumed she was joking about 250 as it was such a ridiculous number based on how she looks, but her saying 200 a few months ago seemed like it wasn’t a joke from her tone and how many times she confirmed it after I called bs.
chaserscarlet wrote:
Based on your story she never said she weighed 250 pounds. She said she’d have to eat 150 grams of protein a day - now that could have been a joke or she could have just been bad at maths. You were the one who started guessing her weight. You should have just told her that her maths was off (and so is yours btw).
OP responded:
I said that “that would make you…250 pounds, based on my sh#$ty math you are obviously far less than that” and she said “yeah I am 250 lbs."
jjb2117 wrote:
I’m surprised by the responses here
In my opinion, it’s a clear NTA. Listen, you are not responsible for her insecurities. It is not your responsibility to handle or heal her from what she doesn’t see in herself.
As crude as that sounds, it is true. As much as we want to carry the burden of that, we simply cannot. It’s not a healthy dynamic to have and that’s how we lose ourselves in relationships.
We are responsible for our own feelings and reactions, nothing more.You spoke in good faith. She responded being vindictive. Personally I was not a fan of that. This can be amended, of course. We’re not our best when we feel attacked or are angry. But tread carefully.
over_the_woods wrote:
Jesus Christ. NTA. Some people weigh more than they look like they weigh. I know lots of healthy, muscular women who are in the 190 range. Personally, if I told my boyfriend how much I weighed, and he was like ‘no way you weigh that much,’ I feel like I would be offended that he thought my weight was a lot. You couldn’t have won this. She totally set herself up for that. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.