This Is Why She’s Tired Of Compliments About Her Physical Appearance

Telling her you’ve started checking out other girls’ breasts because, you claim, they’ve got nothing on her perfection – don’t worry babe, it doesn’t matter, because I don’t fantasise about them – is just a backhanded insult.

She wishes she was brave enough to tell you that she spends hours in the shower scrubbing herself clean, wishing she could somehow scrub herself flawless one part at a time.

The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

“I like your eyes and your face and your smile and your hair and your hips and your smell and your legs and your…”

When was the last time you said you liked her? Her entirety. You break her down into a zillion jagged pieces and then try to put her back together. Playing at jigsaw with her body is fun isn’t it, except when you complain about cutting yourself on the wrecked bits of her soul. You fragment her and expect her to heal herself, but no amount of superglue will hide the cracks. The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

 “I think you have beautiful cheekbones – you know, maybe if you lost weight, they’d make you look like a princess.”

No. She wants to look like herself. If you can’t treat her with the same degree of reverence right now, if you can’t woship all the orifices of her body because you think she needs to be sculpted and moulded and chipped and shaped, it will never stop. If she works on herself and somehow turns into Cinderella, you’ll want her to become Venus next. She’s losing herself going down that path, because she’d rather have a soft body than a hard heart. The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

Tell her you love the stretch marks on her thighs, by all means, but don’t tell her you love her in spite of them.

Tell her you love the birthmark on her chin, but don’t tell her you love her inspite of it. Tell her you love the shape of her feet, but don’t, just don’t break her down clinically. She’s a person, not an experimental study on the perfect body. The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

Sometimes, what goes unsaid makes for the best compliments.

The spaces in time when you hold her gaze and feel her eyes widen and cheeks pop with colour, those will ring with love songs you could never, ever compose with your words. If you’re looking for answers, search for them in her eyes, in the crevices of her body and between her legs. If you’re looking for answers, ask her questions with your hands and your mouth, conjure up an electric storm with your fingertips.

And if you run out of ideas, just kiss her with your wine stained lips and tell her you see her for who she is, and that is enough for you.

Because the whole is always greater than the sum of it’s parts.