To look at this another way, you are losing the privilege* of fitting in and being of a widely desired appearance. You have lived a life where any looks you got were usually appreciative (or occasionally envious, or unfortunately maybe occasionally predatory). You did not stand out for being extremely tall, or having a big birthmark on your face, or (presumably) having really thick glasses, or having a neural-non-typicality that made it impossible for you to blend in, nor being fat, or having an identity that you couldn't repress that drew attention, or whatever. You may have had deviant (by general social standards) desires but people can't see that in your head.
* privilege in this way meaning that you have options, and won't be judged in this area.

Obviously a lot of people don't have that privilege (including the guy you are seeing -- even when he is not with you, he will get stared at, criticized, judged, etc)

Ultimately, you have to decide: do you want to fit in and retain your thin/desirable demographic privilege? Or do you want to be with who you want to be with, at the cost of giving up some of that privilege (and dealing with people who think you are insane for giving it up)? It sucks that it is a bit of an either/or choice, but at least you have the privilege of making that choice, rather than having it forced on you.

I'd say all of that is dead on from what I've learned, too. The one thing I want to add is that you cannot control where that subcutaneous fat goes -- that seems to come down to a mix of genetics and hormones (which themselves are somewhat genetically influenced). LOTS of people wish there was a way to control this, but I've never seen any credible information that it is actually possible.

Gaining quickly can be quite expensive (a lot of extra food, larger clothes), but gaining more slowly is a lot cheaper.

Start paying attention to the calories in your food (read labels when buying, educate yourself on what sorts of food have more calories) and make higher calorie choices, which are not always much more expensive. Can also add some calories fairly cheaply (add a little extra oil when cooking, and on vegetables, etc). Look for opportunities for free food (like when someone offers you something to eat, say yes!). A lot of this comes down to planning and discipline, just like people need to lose weight on a 'reducing diet' you need to think about what you are going to eat and how to add calories on your 'growth diet'.

Gaining more slowly means that as you regularly get new clothes you can size up, and so not be forced to buy as many extra clothes.

Slow gain may be frustrating, but think of this: if you can gain 10kg a year, in five years that is 50kg which is a huge gain!

Good luck, and I hope you can continue to see your body grow to more how you want it to be.

I haven't regained, but I have been losing while consuming a lot of cream. Basicsally after a type 2 diabetes diagnosis I heavily cut out carbs from my diet (I have a little bit, but all low glycemic index). It turns out that carbs was a huge amount of my calorie intake, so although I've been adding fat and protein like crazy my weight has dropped by over thirty pounds in five months. A lot of that fat has come from cream (more often table cream (18% fat) rather than heavy cream (35% fat), but occasionally the latter.

What has been interesting to me is that I've lost most of the weight in visceral fat, I had quite a large ball belly, to the extent that I ended up with abdominal muscle separation like pregnant women often get. That has gone down very substantially (about four inches off my waist), but the subcutaneous fat seems about as abundant as ever. With less ball belly under it, in many ways my remaining gut looks flabbier than when I was at my heaviest. I feel sad to be this much smaller, but at the same time I'm glad to still have a fair bit of softness.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting to see how cream could help re-sculpt the body, even during weight loss.

In fantasy/fiction (as in that I don't live all of these, and some of them I'd explicitly never want to live out as they are either impossible or unethical)

- loss of masculinity (in almost any way). Not always femininization per se (although that is one way to show it), to some degree I maybe prefer androgyny, although femininization can be hot. Loss of strength, lack of endurance, change of role in relationships, moving away from traditional male clothes, even inability to easily perform sexually so relying on fingers and mouth to pleasure a partner.

- hedonism. Not just the enjoyment of food, but placing physical pleasure of all sorts as a high priority

- role-reversal. This can tie in to the loss of masculinity (above), but not always. Becoming the fat friend to someone who was the fat one in your friend group, becoming the fat, lazy, boss that you used to complain about, getting in a relationship with someone very fat and out of condition and helping them to lose some weight and get more active, while you get fatter and more out of shape than they ever were, etc.

- Fat/gaining positive community/institutions, basically the thought of essentially being incented to get fatter because you get even better treatment, so that getting bigger results in a gain of privilege instead of a loss (like a college that starts handing out elevator passes, then preferential and larger seating, and eventually mobility scooters for students as they get fatter). In my fantasies it is often going through adolescence in such a community where many peers are also fat and there is support and encouragement for getting even fatter.

I've done this before. Rather than naming the meals, I just aimed for the equivalent of a modest meal every couple of hours or less. (sometimes it was more large amounts of snacks than a traditional meal). By the end of the day it was struggle to fit the last evening snack in, but overall it was pretty glorious. (actually I did this for 48 hours, and was up 10 pounds at the end compared to the beginning -- after a few days only two of that stuck as fat, so the other 8 was food in my system, so you can imagine both how stuffed I was and how swollen out my belly was)

Sounds like a dreamy vacation! I hope that the bathing suit view was all that she hinted

Too bad Well, hopefully you'll see some of the others around.

I admit that this has been something I've fantasized about.

That is a great one! Certainly no shortage of big guys in most of those games. You almost need to go back to where you used to play some time, see how many of the same people are there

This is also me. The result for me was going back and forth between gentle gains and gentle losses, with a net of slowly growing over the years -- each time I hit a heaviest and decided to lose some, it was easier to get back to that size and larger. More recently lost a bunch due to dealing with health stuff, not sure yet what the future will hold, but I can tell you for certain that after losing over thirty pounds my desires are almost all towards the gaining side.