Why Your Husband Doesn’t Like Your Sweatpants
When your husband agreed to take you in sickness and health, he probably should have added ‘but not in sweatpants,’ because there will be no taking of anyone when those shapeless pants come out of the closet.
Why you should sweat the pants
As much a signal as ‘sorry darling, I have a headache’, sweatpants are the passion killers of the garment world, and while sliding your thighs into a pair might make you sigh with delight, they will just make your significant other sigh.
We get it; sweatpants are comfy, and there is nothing nicer than coming home from a long day at work – or just a long day – and ripping off your bra, pulling a well-worn t-shirt over your head, and stepping into your sweatpants ... your own personal comfort zone.
Except …
Men just don’t like sweatpants. If you have ever seen the 2009 movie ‘Extract,’ you’ll remember the scene where Joel rushes home from work because he knows that as soon as the clock strikes eight, his wife will be tying up her drawstring and sex will be off the menu. Again. Jason Bateman is basically every man in that scene.
The thing is, men are visual creatures. What they see is what they – and you – get. And shapeless pants mean all you’re going to get is the cold shoulder when it comes to sex.
You have a favorite pair, right? Like memory foam, they have molded into the shape of your body, so the knees stick out a little bit, the butt sticks out a lot, and the fabric on the inside of the thighs has a comforting amount of bobbling that says ‘well-loved.’ The chances are, those pants don’t even get washed that often, because every time they go through the machine, they lose your unique shape and you have to break them in all over again. There’s a good chance they even stay on the floor where you dropped them, because then they’re ready and waiting to be stepped into again with the minimal amount of effort. That is, if they don’t get up and walk off by themselves in search of a laundromat.
You know what that says to your man? ‘I can’t be bothered.’
We’re not saying that we need to go back to the fifties when women put on fresh make-up and wore a posh frock to welcome their husbands home, but a little bit of effort will go a long way.
According to a study published in Science Daily “The emotion control center of the brain, the amygdala, shows significantly higher levels of activation in males viewing sexual visual stimuli than females viewing the same images”
In other words, men are wired to get off on seeing nice images, and those images include you, nice or not.
Comfort over copulation
We’ll say it again; sweatpants are comfortable, but so is an old pair of slippers or a sagging armchair, but your husband is not likely to want to make love to any of those, is he? (Unless, of course, he’s into forniphilia, in which case crack on, but that’s a subject for another day.)
Dressing in sweats implies you just can’t be bothered, and before you start protesting, think about it. You’re tired, you want to sit in front of the TV and chill, you don’t want the hassle of having to look sexy for your other half ... you just can’t be bothered. Now, we’re not saying you can’t be bothered looking nice for him per se, but that’s how it will translate; you don’t have the time, inclination, motivation, or energy to wear anything other than your comfies, and that’s what he will see.
Will he even notice?
Oh yes … he will certainly notice that you’ve decided your boring sex life is justified and you’re no longer excited for him. And perhaps you’ll be forgiven for a moment thinking that if you make an effort with your appearance every day, even when you’re at home, he won’t appreciate it the same. This might well be true. But nonetheless, you can bet that he will notice you wearing scruffy sweatpants and a shapeless tee, shows you’ve stopped trying with your appearance. You know and I know that the only reason you’re wearing your old favorites is because you’re tired and want to be comfortable, but to the visually-stimulated man, you have simply stopped caring.
Five reasons why men hate sweatpants
Men will never know the hell of wearing an underwired bra all day, or the torture that can come with 4-5 inch high heels, or skin sucking body shapers. He just won’t understand the ritualistic disrobing and changing into scruffs. The things going through each man’s mind will vary, but they will probably go something like this:
You’re not the woman he married. Unless you met at the gym, it’s highly unlikely that the first time your man saw you, you were sporting a pair of saggy sweatpants. Maybe you met at the office? In a bar? Reaching for the same sad ready meal for one in the grocery store? But in any of those circumstances, would you be wearing sweats? Not if you had any pride, no. In the first scenario you’d have been wearing your work ‘uniform,’ in the second you’d be dressed to impress, and even in the decidedly unsexy scenario of buying toilet tissue and tampons, you would still have at least made some kind of an effort - jeans and a tee give off a great girl-next-door vibe. It’s catfishing on a monstrous level, at least as far as he’s concerned.
It says you just don’t care. About yourself, about him, and about your relationship. If you cared, in his mind at least, you would still make an effort to wear something more respectable than a pair of pants that even Savers would turn their nose up at. He wants to know that you are excited about him coming home, so when you greet him from the couch wearing shapeless sweats, it tells him you probably didn’t even notice he was gone in the first place.
Familiarity breeds contempt. It’s a thin line between comfort and contempt, and neither of you will necessarily know when you step over that marker. Of course you need to feel at ease with each other, and being on your best behavior and dressing up to the nines would be exhausting every night for years on end; ain’t nobody got time for that. But there is such a thing as being too comfortable, which can very easily slip into the realms of letting yourself go, and before you know it, he could start to notice the myriad of other women who are still making the effort with their appearance, and wonder what it would be like if...
There’s no mystery. Half the fun of sex is the lead up. That delicious anticipation of what’s to come. But let’s face it; if you’re wearing your baggy sweatpants and holey t-shirt, the chances of you wearing Victoria’s Secret underneath are slim to absolutely not. I mean, sexy underwear is not designed to be worn for any length of time, right? It’s made with removing in mind. The fact that you are dressed to kill his hard-on means that you’ve probably got your comfiest panties on, too, because what would be the point otherwise? So, he knows there’s no point peeling off the layers because he’s going to get more of the same underneath. All of this reminds him that your not in the game anymore. You’re not interested in being seductive and ravishing him. Instead, you’d rather chill and fly under the radar, losing all seductive powers.
What else have you let slip? If you’ve given up the nice clothes, what does that mean for other things? Even if he wanted to, would your man be able to slide the pants off your legs, or would they stick to your unshaven legs like Velcro? Have you sauntered into sweaty Betty territory and decided to ditch the deodorant? When was the last time you had a shower? We’re not saying you’ve let yourself go, but sweatpants are the first stop on a train ride to Grossville, and you might just find he doesn’t want to go along for the ride.
Find the balance
You don’t have to ditch the sweats altogether, but there is a time and a place. Plus, sweats don’t have to be scruffy. If you really do want to have dress-down days wearing sweatpants and tees, make sure you buy some that are at least flattering.
We all need to kick back and chill from time to time, but try doing it while looking through your partner’s eyes and you might just get away with the occasional scruffy Saturday while keeping your marriage intact.