Feeling very inadequate

I am sending a great big hug to you. I'm not sure what to suggest except maybe doing a little couples counseling to help you both through this difficult time? It is painful and will get better.

You are going to master ALL the strength you have and be the leader in this...if she makes a play for your husband make what she perceives an asset unimportant. I mean REALLY are a pair of huge boobs that hot, think of the back problems she will have in the future, the little areas of sweat and redness under them as they droop later in life...well you get the picture.😉

Your goal is to focus on all that is good between the two of you.

You can do it - look at this forum...you have us all in your pocket, holding each other.

Your husband came home with YOU and told YOU he loves you.

Please don't think I am underestimating your grief (or mine when I lost them - mastectomy, no recon) - just keep focusing on all the great things about YOU that YOUR husband fell in love with.

In the mean time know that on some level we all have been there - terrified,it's the pits, but you are alive and he is your husband!!

(())

happy12day, I am so sorry you are in this pain. You are good enough. You are just as much a woman as any other. You are beautiful. You are The One he loves.

I think probably most of us mastectomees who are sighted tend to notice breasts -- breasts, breasts all over, all the time, everywhere we go, everywhere we look, breasts and more breasts. Somehow our not having them can make them conspicuous as they never were to us when we had our own.

I am wondering about this group of your husband's friends -- are they close enough friends of your husband that they are aware that you have had mastectomy? Without embarrassing your husband by making reference to his having looked, you might tell the one/s among them closest to you two about the insensitivity and discomfort of that scene -- that what could have been an enjoyable get-together was a very difficult time for you because of that woman's insensitivity and conduct. Respectful, caring persons, once enlightened about your situation and your suffering in that scene, would be thoughtful enough to use influence and/or exclusion (of that woman) to keep that from happening again.

We have a great supportive Community of "flat" members right here on BCO, in the Living Without Reconstruction After A Mastectomy forum section__

https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/82

(((Hugs)))

Happy12day, seems most are assuming you won't have reconstruction. But I did not read that in your post. I had a lumpectomy, and definitely felt mutilated and freakish until I got reconstruction. Not saying that fixes everything, but at least for me, it helped with my self-esteem (guess I am petty, but trying to be honest here). Of course, breasts do not define us, but it takes awhile to get past a lifetime of programming about this body part, IF you are not having reconstruction.

And, as an aside, when we age most of us have insecurities about younger women. A caring and committed husband will not do any more than look, if that. They are also getting older and have their own insecurities. Sounds like that's the kind of guy you have! Me too, btw!

happy12day, can I ask how long it's been since you had your mastectomy? How has he been in dealing with your newly altered body since then?

My hubs and I have been married 40 years. Both of us look--we always have. If there's something particularly view-worthy, we'll mention it to one another. "Hey...look over there, it's really something..." An attractive rack, killer shoes, muscled legs, unbelievable bikini, strange hat--the sight is worth sharing.

This didn't change when I had only one breast, or when I had new belly-fat breasts. More so than women, men are visual, and unless a man is ogling or leering, a look is just a look.