If you lost weight for your spouse, did it help your marriage?

[Anonymous]

Who are all you women who just arrived on planet earth yesterday and don't realize men are more shallow

Than the aspiring hookers of DCUM? Money money money. His money. That’s pretty shallow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband of 15 years asked me to lose weight. He said that he wasn’t attracted to me and hadn’t been in a long time. I am a fairly highly paid professional, a good mom, a good partner and friend to him, and a creative and fun sexual partner. Why can’t he overlook this one thing?

Did you ask him to make more $ saying you weren't attracted to what he provides?

Completely different. Presumably he makes at least as much money as when they got together so he’s “improved” on that dimension. He’s simply asking for her to maintain what she advertised in the dating phase…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why isn't it OK to be blunt with your spouse that their weight gain is unattractive? I think there is a large category of men who just let themselves go and their wives don't say anything. I would be pissed if my DH grew a beer gut, and I would tell him to lose the weight if he did.

I agree. It isn’t heathy to be overweight and I would be completely turned off by it. Of course there is a gray area for a “few extra pounds” for various reasons. But to totally let yourself go and become 40+ lbs overweight, no, not ok

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband of 15 years asked me to lose weight. He said that he wasn’t attracted to me and hadn’t been in a long time. I am a fairly highly paid professional, a good mom, a good partner and friend to him, and a creative and fun sexual partner. Why can’t he overlook this one thing?

Did you ask him to make more $ saying you weren't attracted to what he provides?

Completely different. Presumably he makes at least as much money as when they got together so he’s “improved” on that dimension. He’s simply asking for her to maintain what she advertised in the dating phase…

+1. So remember women, if your husband:

Loses his job

Develops an illness that prevents him from working

Decides he’d rather spend time with his family than kill himself in a stressful career

You can leave or cheat on him. After all, that’s not what he advertised when dating….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:God, so many hypocritical women on this thread. You didn't care what your husband looked like when you met him and fell for him? And you would be sexually interested in him now regardless of his appearance? He could weigh 300 pounds, smell like old cheese, have zits all over, yellow teeth, and so on, and you would still be sextually attracted to him? Give me a break.

Your post is disingenuous, and you damn well know it. The OP described being overweight. That’s it. Nothing about how she smelled, skin, etc. Just being heavier than she had been, but otherwise attractive and a terrific partner.

My DH has gained weight through the course of our marriage and *because I still like him as a person* we’re still happily married. This idea that partners deserve to be maximally sexually attracted to their spouses for all time is BS. Grow the hell up.

I'm not the PP, who is being over the top. But a woman gaining 40 lbs is big weight gain. I doubt I would be attracted to my wife if she gained 40lbs. A request to lose 40 lbs is not a demand for maximal sexual attractiveness, it is a request for a return to something approaching a normal weight and a realistic acknowledgment that weight loss is necessary to restore physical attraction.

I guess that I just don’t get this.
As long as everyone is healthy, and you are attracted enough to have a good sex life, what does it matter?

Also, what happens if your wife gets cancer or has an accident or something that makes her less attractive? What if she just gets old? Are you just going to leave? Are you going to bluntly tell her that you don’t find her attractive?

NP here who said anything about leaving?

This weight loss is something within ops control. It's not much different than if he asked her to wear makeup or a sexy night gown.

Women complain here all the time about their overweight and slovenly husbands wanting sex with them and being turned off. This isn't any different despite your attempts to spin it into something else.

OP here. I am not slovenly, and my husband is not turned off. If anything, he seems to be turned off by the weight I have lost, even though that’s explicitly wha he says that he wants.

Also, it’s very different than asking someone to wear makeup or a sexy nightgown. You can do those things later that day and be attractive to your partner. Then you move on with your life. With weight loss, you have to change the structure of your life, at least a little bit, every day, and you have to live with the fact that you aren’t attractive to your partner for months, if it ever happens.

OP - something you wrote earlier on this thread is stuck in my head. How you felt happy and present before, and now you feel like you are constantly thinking about food and your body. It didn't even occur to me that those thoughts - the constant thoughts about food and body - weren't universal or default. I'm not a crazy dieter - I live with the 10 pounds I put on in my 40s and feel pretty good/lucky overall (knock wood!). But I wake up in the morning already assessing whether I'm having a thin day or not a thin day, and just spend so much time aware of what my body feels like, what it looks like, what my body and I are doing together. I had never thought of that as being optional before. Now I wonder if I could break out of those thoughts - and how.

Anyway, I just wanted to say than you for that post because it's given me a lot to think about.

Hi. Thanks for posting.
I know what you are saying. I'm experiencing this somewhat in reverse. I don't think I really realized before how much people talk about this and think about it. I now understand why people who lost a LOT of weight always want to talk about it and (before everyone had photos on their phones) carried around photos of themselves when they were fat. They must almost always be thinking about it.

Someone said that this was like asking your spouse to put on make-up, but I think it's more like asking your spouse to convert to another religion and then wholeheartedly believe. (I don't know if it would be too far off for someone to tell me that achieving my goal weight will purify me, clear my soul of evil spirits, and wash me in the blood of the Lamb )

[Anonymous]

Why didn't DH bring this up before OP gained a full 40 pounds?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why didn't DH bring this up before OP gained a full 40 pounds?

Look at all the anger toward him for bringing it up at all! Can you imagine the outrage if he'd brought it up over "only" 20 pounds?

[Anonymous]

I guess none of the vows people say at wedding ceremonies (civil or religious) mean anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why didn't DH bring this up before OP gained a full 40 pounds?

OP here.
I gained most of the the weight during my second pregnancy. After I had my daughter, DH had his own crisis, and I had to help him navigate through that, take care of the kids, and financially support the family since he couldn’t work. I didn’t lose any of the weight I gained while pregnant. Once he came out of his crisis, I got pregnant again with the intention of him being a SAHD. During my pregnancy, he found a dream job in the Midwest. He moved, and I had the baby, took maternity leave, then wrapped things up with closing down my practice, selling the house, and finding a job near DH. That took about a year. And again I didn’t lose all of the weight that I gained while pregnant.

Moving with three little kids was stressful. I didn’t like the new city, and I missed my support system. I wanted to move back. He didn’t. I thought about murdering him pretty regularly. To put it mildly, we did not have a marriage built on direct communication.

Over the next couple of years, things got a lot better between us. He settled in with the new job and wasn’t gone so much. I found a happy place with my job here. We made some friends. Kids got a little older. Our marriage and family life has been really stable and good and happy for the last couple of years. He also built up his career, and now he makes a lot more money than I do (about twice as much).

I think he brought it up now because
a) he expected that once all of the turmoil was over, I would lose the weight and I didn’t,
b) he has been thinking that since he makes more money, he “deserves” to have his wife look a certain way,
and c) because our marriage is stable enough that he felt that he could tell me anything.

So, that is how he didn’t say anything until a decade after I had gained most of the weight.

[Anonymous]

^^^Also, during this time, he DID, actually, convert to my religion. I wanted him to be baptized should some terrible accident befall him. And o felt the need to go to mass and confession a lot more regularly than I had been.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why didn't DH bring this up before OP gained a full 40 pounds?

OP here.
I gained most of the the weight during my second pregnancy. After I had my daughter, DH had his own crisis, and I had to help him navigate through that, take care of the kids, and financially support the family since he couldn’t work. I didn’t lose any of the weight I gained while pregnant. Once he came out of his crisis, I got pregnant again with the intention of him being a SAHD. During my pregnancy, he found a dream job in the Midwest. He moved, and I had the baby, took maternity leave, then wrapped things up with closing down my practice, selling the house, and finding a job near DH. That took about a year. And again I didn’t lose all of the weight that I gained while pregnant.

Moving with three little kids was stressful. I didn’t like the new city, and I missed my support system. I wanted to move back. He didn’t. I thought about murdering him pretty regularly. To put it mildly, we did not have a marriage built on direct communication.

Over the next couple of years, things got a lot better between us. He settled in with the new job and wasn’t gone so much. I found a happy place with my job here. We made some friends. Kids got a little older. Our marriage and family life has been really stable and good and happy for the last couple of years. He also built up his career, and now he makes a lot more money than I do (about twice as much).

I think he brought it up now because
a) he expected that once all of the turmoil was over, I would lose the weight and I didn’t,
b) he has been thinking that since he makes more money, he “deserves” to have his wife look a certain way,
and c) because our marriage is stable enough that he felt that he could tell me anything.

So, that is how he didn’t say anything until a decade after I had gained most of the weight.

This sounds like an eating disorder or a control thing where you are forcing him to accept you at your largest

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why didn't DH bring this up before OP gained a full 40 pounds?

OP here.
I gained most of the the weight during my second pregnancy. After I had my daughter, DH had his own crisis, and I had to help him navigate through that, take care of the kids, and financially support the family since he couldn’t work. I didn’t lose any of the weight I gained while pregnant. Once he came out of his crisis, I got pregnant again with the intention of him being a SAHD. During my pregnancy, he found a dream job in the Midwest. He moved, and I had the baby, took maternity leave, then wrapped things up with closing down my practice, selling the house, and finding a job near DH. That took about a year. And again I didn’t lose all of the weight that I gained while pregnant.

Moving with three little kids was stressful. I didn’t like the new city, and I missed my support system. I wanted to move back. He didn’t. I thought about murdering him pretty regularly. To put it mildly, we did not have a marriage built on direct communication.

Over the next couple of years, things got a lot better between us. He settled in with the new job and wasn’t gone so much. I found a happy place with my job here. We made some friends. Kids got a little older. Our marriage and family life has been really stable and good and happy for the last couple of years. He also built up his career, and now he makes a lot more money than I do (about twice as much).

I think he brought it up now because
a) he expected that once all of the turmoil was over, I would lose the weight and I didn’t,
b) he has been thinking that since he makes more money, he “deserves” to have his wife look a certain way,
and c) because our marriage is stable enough that he felt that he could tell me anything.

So, that is how he didn’t say anything until a decade after I had gained most of the weight.

This sounds like an eating disorder or a control thing where you are forcing him to accept you at your largest

This has got to be the weirdest comment of the bunch …

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why didn't DH bring this up before OP gained a full 40 pounds?

OP here.
I gained most of the the weight during my second pregnancy. After I had my daughter, DH had his own crisis, and I had to help him navigate through that, take care of the kids, and financially support the family since he couldn’t work. I didn’t lose any of the weight I gained while pregnant. Once he came out of his crisis, I got pregnant again with the intention of him being a SAHD. During my pregnancy, he found a dream job in the Midwest. He moved, and I had the baby, took maternity leave, then wrapped things up with closing down my practice, selling the house, and finding a job near DH. That took about a year. And again I didn’t lose all of the weight that I gained while pregnant.

Moving with three little kids was stressful. I didn’t like the new city, and I missed my support system. I wanted to move back. He didn’t. I thought about murdering him pretty regularly. To put it mildly, we did not have a marriage built on direct communication.

Over the next couple of years, things got a lot better between us. He settled in with the new job and wasn’t gone so much. I found a happy place with my job here. We made some friends. Kids got a little older. Our marriage and family life has been really stable and good and happy for the last couple of years. He also built up his career, and now he makes a lot more money than I do (about twice as much).

I think he brought it up now because
a) he expected that once all of the turmoil was over, I would lose the weight and I didn’t,
b) he has been thinking that since he makes more money, he “deserves” to have his wife look a certain way,
and c) because our marriage is stable enough that he felt that he could tell me anything.

So, that is how he didn’t say anything until a decade after I had gained most of the weight.

The move and job information is interesting. Are you truly content in the new city, or do you still miss your old support system and want to move back? Honestly, I think that some of the your anger about the weight comments is rooted in the fact that you picked up and moved for him and he now significantly out earns you, partially because of your sacrifice to move to a city you weren't thrilled about moving to.

It's understandable to feel upset by his comments. Your points about all of the other great qualities (job, mom, sex, etc) are valid. You sound a little naive about how appearance-oriented most men are. But, you said that you've already lost 20 of the 40 pounds, and 20 pounds over your goal weight is not that much. If he is haranguing about 20 pounds after bearing 3 kids, than that is a bit ridiculous. I think you should see a therapist (for yourself, not couples counseling) to examine and lingering anger issues; and to help you figure out what you want. What will you do if you can't get over these anger issues? Would you consider divorce? Would it help things to return to your previous city? It sounds like you bring a lot to the table and are feeling undervalued by your spouse. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why didn't DH bring this up before OP gained a full 40 pounds?

OP here.
I gained most of the the weight during my second pregnancy. After I had my daughter, DH had his own crisis, and I had to help him navigate through that, take care of the kids, and financially support the family since he couldn’t work. I didn’t lose any of the weight I gained while pregnant. Once he came out of his crisis, I got pregnant again with the intention of him being a SAHD. During my pregnancy, he found a dream job in the Midwest. He moved, and I had the baby, took maternity leave, then wrapped things up with closing down my practice, selling the house, and finding a job near DH. That took about a year. And again I didn’t lose all of the weight that I gained while pregnant.

Moving with three little kids was stressful. I didn’t like the new city, and I missed my support system. I wanted to move back. He didn’t. I thought about murdering him pretty regularly. To put it mildly, we did not have a marriage built on direct communication.

Over the next couple of years, things got a lot better between us. He settled in with the new job and wasn’t gone so much. I found a happy place with my job here. We made some friends. Kids got a little older. Our marriage and family life has been really stable and good and happy for the last couple of years. He also built up his career, and now he makes a lot more money than I do (about twice as much).

I think he brought it up now because
a) he expected that once all of the turmoil was over, I would lose the weight and I didn’t,
b) he has been thinking that since he makes more money, he “deserves” to have his wife look a certain way,
and c) because our marriage is stable enough that he felt that he could tell me anything.

So, that is how he didn’t say anything until a decade after I had gained most of the weight.

This is why the last 20 lbs didn't come off. Detroit is often/nearly the most obese city in the country. MI is the only state where weight discrimination is legal. For Midwest, only 20 lbs above pre-pregnancy is a toothpick there. You stayed with him when he couldn't work, but he can't stay with you over these measly 20 lbs? Unless you are 4'11", that is insane. You keep sacrificing to keep the fam together, but what has he done? Me thinks you wouldn't be posting if you were that happy--you sound like you've resigned/given up. He could have at least cooked a healthy variety of meals to support you. Along the Mississippi and West, the ratio is in your favor and you could do better. Start by hiring a gardener who looks at you lustfully at your current weight in front of your husband.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why didn't DH bring this up before OP gained a full 40 pounds?

OP here.
I gained most of the the weight during my second pregnancy. After I had my daughter, DH had his own crisis, and I had to help him navigate through that, take care of the kids, and financially support the family since he couldn’t work. I didn’t lose any of the weight I gained while pregnant. Once he came out of his crisis, I got pregnant again with the intention of him being a SAHD. During my pregnancy, he found a dream job in the Midwest. He moved, and I had the baby, took maternity leave, then wrapped things up with closing down my practice, selling the house, and finding a job near DH. That took about a year. And again I didn’t lose all of the weight that I gained while pregnant.

Moving with three little kids was stressful. I didn’t like the new city, and I missed my support system. I wanted to move back. He didn’t. I thought about murdering him pretty regularly. To put it mildly, we did not have a marriage built on direct communication.

Over the next couple of years, things got a lot better between us. He settled in with the new job and wasn’t gone so much. I found a happy place with my job here. We made some friends. Kids got a little older. Our marriage and family life has been really stable and good and happy for the last couple of years. He also built up his career, and now he makes a lot more money than I do (about twice as much).

I think he brought it up now because
a) he expected that once all of the turmoil was over, I would lose the weight and I didn’t,
b) he has been thinking that since he makes more money, he “deserves” to have his wife look a certain way,
and c) because our marriage is stable enough that he felt that he could tell me anything.

So, that is how he didn’t say anything until a decade after I had gained most of the weight.

This is why the last 20 lbs didn't come off. Detroit is often/nearly the most obese city in the country. MI is the only state where weight discrimination is legal. For Midwest, only 20 lbs above pre-pregnancy is a toothpick there. You stayed with him when he couldn't work, but he can't stay with you over these measly 20 lbs? Unless you are 4'11", that is insane. You keep sacrificing to keep the fam together, but what has he done? Me thinks you wouldn't be posting if you were that happy--you sound like you've resigned/given up. He could have at least cooked a healthy variety of meals to support you. Along the Mississippi and West, the ratio is in your favor and you could do better. Start by hiring a gardener who looks at you lustfully at your current weight in front of your husband.

*illegal*