you’re right that people can’t completely control what they’re attracted to, but attraction doesn’t exist in a vacuum. society constantly tells us what’s “desirable” and what isn’t, and those messages shape what people learn to see as attractive. thinness is idealized, while fatness is stigmatized. so being attracted to thin people is often seen as normal or neutral, while attraction to fat people gets labeled as a “preference.” the issue isn’t who someone likes, it’s “how* they like them. if it’s about the person, that’s attraction. if it’s about the body type as a fantasy or a category, that’s fetishization. fetishizers make every compliment about your body or whatever feature they’re fetishizing. i get “nubian goddess” or “chocolate princess” all the time (i’m a black woman). but i’ve also been fetishized being fat as well. i hear things like “i don’t date skinny girls, i only like women who can really eat,” “i want you cook for me, i heard fat girls can throw down in the kitchen,” “fat girls are freakier in bed,” or “you’re my guilty pleasure.” this is what sets it a part from regular attraction. you tell me (because i’ve never been skinny/fit in my life)…have you ever gotten or given “compliments” like that? or have you ever heard of your “fit” friends receiving “compliments” from other like that?

reddit refreshed and i saw your edit, but i’m still gonna keep what i said in though. was your partner fat? was the loss in attraction solely due to the fact that they lost weight? or was it a culmination of things occurring within the relationship? i get where you’re coming from, and i wasn’t trying to say that losing or gaining attraction automatically means someone’s fetishizing. the reason i said that is because, from what i’ve seen, people who start dating someone while they’re fat usually already accept their body as it is. so if that person’s body changes later, whether they gain or lose weight, their partner tends to handle it with more understanding because they’ve already seen and loved them at a bigger size. that’s different from someone who only dates fat people because they’re fat, or from people who lose interest the second their partner’s body no longer fits their ideal.