Marriage problem/need advice

[CrazyCatLady]

My advice: build a time machine and go back to when you started losing your attraction to your wife, and address the issue. Don’t make her “guess” that you’re no longer attracted to her because of her size–pull up your big boy underoos and have an honest talk to her about the problem and try to work out a solution. If you can’t work out a satisfactory solution, then leave and find someone you can be happy with.

Barring that, I fear you’ve gone and shit the bed, Fred. Things might be salvageable, but with you still trying to justify your actions, I really doubt it.

The thing is this: regardless of whatever else may be going on in the relationship, being in a relationship means you no longer get to make unilateral decisions about your sex life. Not even in the openest open/poly relationship that ever existed–for it to work there have to be mutually agreed ground rules, and those rules have to be followed. That means you DO NOT get to find a piece on the side without her okay, not even if she’s the Goodyear Blimp, not even if she’s a frigid bitch who hasn’t fucked you since the Carter administration, not even if she’s physically disabled and will never be able to have sex again. The only unilateral decision you get to make about this sort of thing is whether to stay or go.

[Sleeps_With_Butterflies]

SNAP!

Well said.

[Tom_Tildrum]

@Vihaga

…when they can’t even talk about a 150 lb elephant in the room.

<snerk>

Yes, I chuckled. I’m a bad person.

[GiantRat]

I don’t see a reason to beat up on jtgain; yes, fucking around is horrible (I’ve been on the receiving end of that - and it’s a mindfuck). But physical attraction is something we can’t control (hell, I tried to work things out with the girl who cheated on me, but sex just became more of a mindfuck, given the infidelity… to be polite I’ll just say that I started seeing her as a slut… not really good for a relationship). The best approach might have been to discuss the weight issue before it got out of control, but it’s too late for that.

If you want the best for her, as you say, you should encourage weight loss - anyone who has gained 150 lbs, regardless of starting weight, is overweight (and probably morbidly obese). Her health is, no doubt, going to suffer and she’s the mother of your child. A parent has a certain duty to try not to predecease their progeny.

[shantih]

Oh, I think beating up on jtgain is completely called for. He cheated on his wife. For not being attractive to him anymore. After gaining a monstrously obvious red flag-waving amount of weight in a relatively short time. Without communicating with her, his wife and the mother of his child. This isn’t something that happened overnight, and this absolutely isn’t a question of Milk Dud abuse. You simply don’t gain that amount of weight without there being a serious underlying cause, either physical or psychological.

And there she is, with a major red flag waving right in her husband’s face, a major cry of something is very, very wrong screaming silently through their shared life, and his response is … to cheat on her. Contemptible.

He owed her the respect of communicating with her as soon as he started to see a problem. Having botched that, he owed her the respect of communicating with her long after he started to see a problem, but before it got to this extreme. Having botched that, if he wasn’t going to go beyond ‘she’s not as attractive to me as when we got married’ to ‘what’s really going on with this woman that I love and am committed to, and how can I best help her?,’ he owed it to her to leave the marriage and let her know exactly where she stands with him. Sleeping with another woman? Bleah. You don’t break your vows and destroy your honor when there’s a problem in your marriage; if you can’t work through the problem and stay together, you get out of the marriage and then you’re free to sleep with whomever you want.

His wife must feel ripped apart and shamed on every level right now. What an awful thing to do to someone you claimed to love above all others.

[Kaio]

@Unintentionally_Blank

ETA: While the topic is up: How do you compare/contrast a physical affair with an emotional affair?

I don’t compartmentalize sex from love. My brain doesn’t work that way. I recognize that not everyone is like me, but if you’re close enough to me to be sleeping with me, you’ll know that about me and are presumably okay with it.

So emotional affair, physical affair, emotional and physical affair, amounts to the same relationship-crashing dealbreaker for me. It’s one thing to say “I was seriously tempted, but chose not to; we need to work out our issues.” If he did that, I’m on board and we’ll work together. But it’s another thing entirely if he avoids me while having long lingering lunch dates with his cute co-worker, sex or not. If he’s fallen in love with someone else, man up and end it with me, don’t lie to me about it.

Of course this is further complicated by defining what an “affair” is and what agreements a couple have negotiated for their relationship. If both have freely and mutually consented to a poly arrangement, I have no bone to pick as long as everyone respects the rules, is honest, and isn’t hurting anyone. I’m not strictly monogamous either. If my boyfriend also wanted a boyfriend, I’m cool with that as long as everyone is clear on which is the primary relationship and what that means. If he wanted another girlfriend, well, he can have her, but I won’t be there anymore.

[Unintentionally_Blank]

There were a few things that I had to do, to get past the issues in my marriage, things that are directly the opposite of what’s being said here.

Everybody is saying ‘he cheated, he’s scum, she doesn’t deserve him, there’s a huge issue with weight, he ignored her cries of something very very wrong and is contemptable for it.’

When life threw too many things at my wife for her to cope with, using the tools she had, she started looking for something, ANYTHING, that would bring her happiness. She started hanging out with the wrong people, in the wrong places, for the wrong reasons, and did not rely on the marriage for support and growth. She would go out around 6 pm on Friday, and come home sometime in the early early morning, and do it again on Saturday. I wouldn’t know where, and I didn’t know what she was doing, but she sure was dressing up nice to do it, while I stayed home, took care of the toddlers, and wondered where my marriage was going.

It came to a head when she invited me to the biker gang clubhouse. I had a LOVELY conversation with a guy who was short a few teeth, on how LSD could be transmitted through the skin and how it got his cat high. I told her she was free to keep some of her friendships, but this stuff had to end. She was in the kind of place that the news reported the next day on fatalities, drug busts, rape, whatever.

I could go on for pages on that period of time, but I won’t. The important take-away is: I don’t know if she was faithful or not, but that to heal and move on it couldn’t matter. So long as a person isn’t forgiven their transgressions, there WON’T be healing.

I see three-ish things that need to happen in a broken relationship for it to heal:

1. The elephant in the room needs to be addressed with outside help. but you guys are makeing it an all or nothing thing. HOLY COW 150 POUNDS! She’ll NEVER lose that and he’ll NEVER LOVE her again and it’s SO AWFUL.

So if she dropped 125 lbs, all bets are off? I can’t answer that, but you eat an elephant one bite at a time, and obsessing on an unattainable number is counter productive. I’d bet if she were dedicated, and had a support structure, the bulk of the problem could be handled in two years. Not so long in a lifetime relationship.

2. The elephant in the marriage needs to be addressed - There’s something that’s keeping her from attaining happiness, but it’s also keeping them as a couple from being happy together. I suspect it’s more than just appearances…people get old and sag, and blotchy, and basing a relationship purely on appearances is doomed to fail.

3. BOTH sides need forgiveness. That includes the infidelity. Those that say it’s a mortal sin, fine. Can’t be fixed. But it can be fixed, and the first step is by making it unimportant. It’s past history. What matters now is what’s next.

If you don’t address ALL of those three, then you’re just watching the countdown to divorce.

[Maastricht]

I got nothing to add but this: Weight loss surgery has been vastly improving over the last few years. The stories you both may have heard about complications and dangers are outdated. If, and only if, your wife should decide that she wants the currently most effective treatment for her obesity and obesity realated health problems, she could join this forum, read this book, and go see this doctor, Dr Rutledge. Here he is onYoutube.

I had a mini gastric bypass six months ago. Lost 55 pounds, and permanently. About the best decision I ever made.

Sure, it may just be fighting the symptoms, but when a woman is that overweight, her weight is no longer just a symptom, but an extra problem that worsens all other problems and that, barring the kind of willpower only a precious few people have, cannot be solved by diet and exercise anymore.

[Tom_Tildrum]

@shantih

Oh, I think beating up on jtgain is completely called for. He cheated on his wife. For not being attractive to him anymore. After gaining a monstrously obvious red flag-waving amount of weight in a relatively short time. Without communicating with her, his wife and the mother of his child. This isn’t something that happened overnight, and this absolutely isn’t a question of Milk Dud abuse. You simply don’t gain that amount of weight without there being a serious underlying cause, either physical or psychological.

And there she is, with a major red flag waving right in her husband’s face, a major cry of something is very, very wrong screaming silently through their shared life, and his response is … to cheat on her. Contemptible.

Well, screaming silently isn’t communicating either. She owed him enough respect to come to him with whatever problem has been causing her to gain that much weight, and she hasn’t done so. None of that excuses the OP, but he’s not the only one who contributed to the breakdown of the relationship. I think that’s why so many people are saying the marriage is over; neither of them seem to have been interested in talking to one another for quite some time.

[Dangerosa]

Another thing - she may not deserve him, but he may be all she’s got. And yes, freeing herself from the scum who cheated on her might free her up to meet someone wonderful - but there are no guarantees that an overweight divorcee with a young child is going to find life better without her “cheated, but now regrets it and would like to be forgiven” husband. Or even the “still cheating, has no intention of stopping” husband. Sometimes people remain in soul draining situations, because the alternative is no less soul draining.

[Sleeps_With_Butterflies]

@Maastricht

I had a mini gastric bypass six months ago. Lost 55 pounds, and permanently. About the best decision I ever made.

Slight hijack: I’m glad you’ve been successful with it so far, but NO weight loss is guaranteed to be permanent. There are many, many people who’ve had different weight loss surgeries who have gained back every pound and more.

Weight loss surgery is a tool, not a solution. If the wife in the OP has a mental or physical issue that has lead her to choosing food and abusing her body, weight loss surgery will not solve that. It might remove the weight from her body temporarily, but unless she solves the problem and learns better ways of coping it will come right back.

[Kaio]

@Unintentionally_Blank

I see three-ish things that need to happen in a broken relationship for it to heal:

1. The elephant in the room needs to be addressed with outside help. but you guys are makeing it an all or nothing thing. HOLY COW 150 POUNDS! She’ll NEVER lose that and he’ll NEVER LOVE her again and it’s SO AWFUL.

[etc.]

If you don’t address ALL of those three, then you’re just watching the countdown to divorce.

Actually, my impression of the thread is that pretty much everyone (including me) has recommended counseling to address the issues and see if they can be resolved. At this point we don’t really know if counseling will heal the relationship or help them come to terms with its end. However I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to be a bit pessimistic about their chances, given what’s already happened and where they’ve ended up now.

@Tom_Tildrum

I think that’s why so many people are saying the marriage is over; neither of them seem to have been interested in talking to one another for quite some time.

Agreed. If the symptoms (weight gain, cheating, avoidance of communication) are so huge, the underlying root cause(s), in all likelihood, are enormous. That doesn’t make it impossible to fix, necessarily, but it’s going to be difficult, it’s going to take a long time (on the order of years, probably), and it’s going to require both of them to fundamentally change their approach to their relationship (which is both scary and not often successful).

[Cat_Fight]

(ETA Just noticed this was already at 3 pages)

@even_sven

Here is someone with the same height and weight as me. Here is someone else with a bit less than 150 lbs added. I’d be a bit grumpy if I married one and in less than a decade ended up with the other.

But unless the OP’s in a coma, he didn’t ‘end up’ with her, it’s something that happened little by little (although apparently in a relatively short amount of time). I get that he’s not attracted to her at that weight, but when she put on 50-60 pounds you think the conversation might have come up – Honey, let’s join the gym together. Honey, let’s go for physicals. Honey, let’s take a vegetarian cooking class.

Echo everyone recommending counseling and a doctor. If the weight gain is linked to depression, though, losing it in hopes of saving her marriage might not be the best life decision.

[UltraVires]

OP here. Thanks for all of the advice. I agree with any of the abuse that I’ve taken because the last step was definitely my fault. And I should have said something earlier about her weight, my fault again.

I think that this is too far gone now for counseling or anything else to work right now. We are separating and it has been amicable so far. Very amicable, actually. Whatever faults she contributed pale in comparison to the action I took, and I definitely blame myself for this.

We are going to try to make things as easy as possible for our daughter, and hopefully both of us have learned a valuable life lesson in this situation. Thanks again for all of the advice.

[sandra_nz]

Sorry to hear you weren’t able to make it work. Hope the divorce goes as smoothly and amicably as possible.

[wonky]

jtgain, based on what you said in the OP and now, I think you’re probably making the right decision. The amicable parting may not stay quite so amicable, but do your best and I hope she does the same. Good luck.

[Kaio]

I hope you’ll still consider counseling, for your daughter if not for yourself (and really, for your wife too, though she’s not here to see this). It will help you/her to process and deal with what’s at best an emotionally rough process, even if it’s amicable. Particularly for a young child – in the long term this is probably best for her, but in the short term there’s going to be a lot of upheaval.

[Maastricht]

I’m gonna play airmchair psychologist now, so ignore the following as you please.

First of all, you sound awfully relieved. Secondly, it doesn’t sound like the woman you had the “affair” with is still in the picture, or even that you still have feelings for her. Your main feelings, which are love, guilt, and regret/disgust she grew so fat, are all about your wife and family.

It sounds to me like you felt so guilty about no longer being attracted to your wife, you avoided a serious talk about it with her for years. And then you cheated, mainly because it offered an easy out for both parties. And now you are forcing a divorce upon your wife, who doesn’t sound like she wants one, by making it about you having cheated and how she, if she has any dignity, shouldn’t accept your affair. (which robs her of her only “out” of this dilemma; she was initially willing to fogive you and try to lose weight.
So, it sounds to me that both the cheating and the divorce are desperate attempts for you to stop feeling guilty about your wife’s obesity and how you feel about that.

If I snapped my fingers and your wife would be back at the weight to how she was when you married, would you still want to divorce, *even if you cheated sexually? *

If the answer is no, then all this is about the obesity and how it makes you both feel. Her obesity may affect a lot in your relationship. It might rob her of her self esteem, you both of fun (harder to go out and enjoy yourself if you’re fat, I speak from experience). Obesity robs you both of feeling sexy and having sex. And it may affect you in other ways. You might hate the fact that someone you love disgusts you. You might hate feeling so “shallow”. You might feel, deep down, that you are tied to a fat loser and that that affects how you and others perceive your worth. And you may be horrified about feeling all that.
Which you shouldn’t, all of those feelings are very, very human. Your wife might even feel the counterpart of all those feelings.

Divorcing to avoid facing all the feelings I mentioned above is a very, very costly and desperate remedy. Not to mention it will be a rotten two years for your kid. You would all be a lot better off taking counseling, even if you decided to go through with the divorce.

And I repeat my suggestion for weight loss surgery. Yes, it is a tool, not a magic cure, yadayada. But it is one of the few really effective tools to lose weight permanently once you are as obese as your wife is.

[AClockworkMelon]

@Maastricht

And now you are forcing a divorce upon your wife

What indicates that he’s forcing a divorce on his wife?

[Maastricht]

@jtgain

… my wife…found out about the relationship and I admitted everything, including the fact that her weight gain had put me off. She seemed to understand and said that she will “try” to lose weight if I can promise to be faithful and cut off all contact with the other person.

This, the wife’s initial reaction. And now they are getting divorced anyway.