We love being a mixed weight couple. I outweigh my husband by 50 pounds.

• My husband and I met in 2012 and married nine years later.
• I grew up fat. He was thin growing up but is considered average weight now.

I've been fat my entire life. I spent my youth wearing plus-sized clothes from stores for women three times my age. I remember being a middle-school student and wearing an animal-print one-piece bathing suit probably meant for a grandmother to a pool party.

My weight has fluctuated, but my husband has been by my side supporting me since we met.

Growing up, I didn't date much

I've felt ambivalent about my weight my whole life. I did get bullied here and there but never enough to truly bother me. Growing up, I was always happy and never let my weight get in the way of things I wanted to do. After the sometimes-tough middle-school years, I went to an all-girls Catholic high school and thrived there.

I never dated in high school and only briefly dated for a few months in my last semester of college. It wasn't until my 20s that I began dating a bit more regularly and found that many men didn't care about my weight.

In my 20s, I lost about 100 pounds. I often wondered if a man was into me because of the way I looked. Still, I often felt fatter than I was, and my confidence was low because of that. That self-doubt I carried in the far corners of my mind would sometimes rear its ugly head.

My husband helped me realize the number on the scale doesn't matter

In my 30s, I have gained almost all the weight I had lost back but have learned so much more about who I am. I gained weight but also gained confidence and self-assurance.

I met my now husband in 2012 when I was 27, and nine years later, we got married. He has stayed with me through all the ups and downs of my weight struggles and insecurities. It took me forever to realize that being healthy, exercising regularly, and having positive relationships with myself and others is what matters — not the number on the scale.

My husband grew up naturally thin and was tall and slender throughout his childhood. As he's aged, his body has settled on a weight considered average for many men his height and age, and he's stayed that way. He has spoken about his own weight struggles to me, which I always appreciate because it helps me remember I'm not alone. When he opens up to me about his weight, I always feel closer and even more connected to him.

We're in a mixed-weight relationship

Right now, I outweigh my husband by about 40 to 50 pounds. When we're out in public, uncomfortable situations can sometimes arise, like me having to ask for a seat-belt extender on an airplane. I worry he's embarrassed by instances like this, but he instantly reassures me that he loves me exactly for who I am — and the anxiety I have that I'm bigger than him instantly melts away.

For example, I came back from a doctor's appointment last summer for a knee injury. The doctor did not weigh me but took one look at me and chalked up all the pain I was having to my weight. Never once did he listen to the fact that I had injured myself. I called my husband from outside the doctor's office, crying. He said I should find another doctor. Most importantly, he reminded me that he loved me very much.

It wasn't until I was perusing TikTok that my algorithm popped a video into my feed starring Alicia Mccarvell, a woman with nearly 1 million Instagram followers. I started doing some research and found out that she went viral because she followed a TikTok trend where people posted about partners "10x hotter" than they were.

Mccarvell is a plus-sized person and her husband is not. After checking out her TikTok and Instagram profiles, I found women in similar situations, such as Leah Stanley and Alex LaRosa. It's refreshing to see women like these three who are in happy, fulfilling relationships. With more research, I learned about mixed-weight relationships.

It's reassuring and refreshing to see relationships like mine, based on real, deep, true love.

Thanks to things like social media and increased visibility around fat politics and body liberation, people are seeing mixed-weight relationships as less unusual.

My husband and I didn't limit ourselves when seeking a partner. It ended up bringing us together, and we're so incredibly happy it did — no matter what we look like as we continue to age!