QUESTION:
Why won’t my boyfriend let me see him naked? Sometimes after making love, he will sleep naked, but if he ever gets out of bed, he’ll immediately cover up. We’ve been together for five months, and we have yet to shower together. I just hate that he seems to feel so shy around me. I’m pretty open about being naked which he seems to enjoy a lot, but I’d like a little reciprocation here! I would bring it up, but I just don’t want to risk embarrassing him or making him even more self-conscious. What should I do here?
–Puzzled
Dear Puzzled:
Sounds like he’s got an advanced case of modesty. Nudity can make people feel emotionally exposed and it’s almost always manifested in a feeling of inferiority.
The modesty typically starts with a home indoctrination of nudity as a fully clothed wrong. Sometimes it’s a result of being ashamed of some characteristic—a birthmark that attracts unwanted attention, a flaccid penis that looks like a baby cashew, or a hair pattern that makes your genitalia look like the last chicken in the shop.
Sometimes trauma powers the modesty into full-blown body shame. Like mine, for example. When I was a teen my brother asked me, “Hey, would you wear shoes if you had no feet?” I said of course not. “Then why,” he asked, “Are you wearing a jockstrap?”
My point, and I do have one, is that body shame often starts with a single humiliating event that compels you to “cover up” the source of that humiliation. And the trauma doesn’t have to be based in truth, either. I mean, I’m hung like a rhino.
Spreading the Shame. Usually it’s women that have a problem flashing the flesh. In a recent study making the rounds in England, surveyors found that a quarter of a billion dollars worth of new bathing suits purchased by women go unused because the buyers are too ashamed to wear them. That’s a lot of body shame. And unfortunately, men are well on their way to joining women in the hand wringing.
So how do you get Never Nude Dude to disrobe? Teach him through word and action that you’re a safe haven from embarrassment or humiliation. Start slow. Avoid putting him up on a table, pounding the lights on and making him dance. Do that and the only way you’ll ever see his thing again is to stick your finger up his butt and yell “SNAKE!”
Start with baby steps. For example, make out while you’re standing, undress each other, back up a half step or so and tell him how much you like his body. Everything, not just Mr. Happy. Then step in and kiss him. Keep in mind that the more distance you put between you and his nakedness the more uncomfortable he’ll feel, so keep it close.
Also, invent reasons to walk around naked. Make a late night raid to the fridge when you’re nude under the covers. Grab his hand– and this is important– walk side-by-side. Don’t race ahead and make him walk to you. He’ll feel like he’s walking the plank.
Take any opportunity to be naked and figure out how you can step it down a notch to accommodate his self-consciousness. A shower? Forget it. Too bold. A bath? Perfect. He can submerge the telescope at will. The point is to gradually make him comfortable with nudity by giving him more and more experiences of “safety.” Eventually his self-consciousness will recede and then you’ll have another problem—getting him to cover up when that table at Bacchanalia finally opens up.