Off my chest - Marriage

It is common for married couples to gain weight together as their marriage ages. Did your wife gain similar amounts of weight too?

What does you wife say about your weight? What does she say about her desire for you? Do you all have a good marriage (is there markedly more good days than bad, do you prefer to be around each other)?

 

Can relate to all of this. Check out my journal, where I have written about my own quest out of PMO and back to better mental and physical health, too. It has been a 25-year struggle! maybe you will get things figured out quicker than I did.

There is hope! Do not give up and do not go back!

 

Thanks for the details. I see 3 problems and I think is important not to mix them together.

1. Negative thinking about yourself that it is unhealthy and actually holds back your ability to grow and heal.
2. You are overweight.
3. Worries that you don't often have sex because you are unattractive.

All of these overlap and effect each other, but they require specific simple solutions (simple but hard).

Solutions:
1. Practice being conscious and present every moment of your life. Negative thoughts, anxiety, self doubt, etc. those are unnecessary and unbeneficial. I recommend Eckhart Tolle, but he isn't for everyone because he is kind of dry and talks so slow it is hard to get used to him. There are plenty of other teachers who help with the problems of negative thoughts, find one that fits you (Sydney Banks, George Pranske, a lot of the Buddha type stuff).

2. You are lucky that your wife is a healthy person. Living with another overweight person makes eating healthy much more difficult. Losing weight is 95% eating healthy and 5% exercise. The exercise is more psychologically important than it is important for calorie burning. As a matter of fact, exercising for the psychological boost plays a bigger role in losing weight than the calorie burning side because the psychological boost helps you find the resolve to choose healthy foods and avoid unhealthy foods. Take care of yourself by getting enough sleep, exercising, drinking only water, and eating healthy. I have had great success with eliminating sugar in my diet (not just candy, but also white bread and high sugar whole wheat bread). It is hard a first but cutting sugar led to more energy and weight loss, even though I was consuming the same number of calories. The things that lead me to being overweight are eating fast food too much, drinking alcohol too often, and sugar. If I cut all 3 of those out, I can eat as much food as I want and I still lose weight quick.

3. You know this by now, but women are complicated. You need to tell her you feel unattractive and that you wish you all had more sex. And ask her how she feels about both those statements. If she is like my wife, she won't tell you much, but I hear that other wives are better at talking about sex. When I have asked my wife about the same topic, she claimed that looks are important to her but not very important. She told me she doesn't fully understand why she doesn't want to have sex, but that she is just not in the mood. I have since learned, that if I put in the effort throughout the day to help her get in the mood, she is much more likely to be in the mood. My guess is that your focus on your looks is oversimplifying your wife's arousal triggers. Let's play a game... your wife needs 100 points throughout the day to be in the mood for sex. And lets assume that a maximum of 10 of those points can come from maximizing your good looks. But, you can get 5 points for every comment you make about her good looks, and 10 points for every spontaneous act of kindness you commit throughout the day, and 10 points for any stressors you remove from her path during the day, and 3 points for every minute of the day you spent in the same room as her, 2 points for every hug, 2 points for every kiss, -20 for getting angry, you get the point. If that was the game to her in bed, why sweat the 10 points you get for being attractive? Sorry... I am speaking about how things work with my wife and I. I am not sure if that is helpful. Also, one of my wife's big reasons for not being in the mood is her own insecurities. Sometimes she doesn't feel sexy, which I totally don't understand because I think she is hot. But... if she feels smelly or sweaty, or she feels overweight or out of shape, then she has a hard time getting turned on because of it. The annoying thing is that her 'I am sexy meter' has no relation to how I feel about her being sexy, which is stupid because I am the only one that matters. She might be sexy as hell in my mind and in her mind she is thinking "uggg I just ate a burrito, I feel like a bloated tick, I am UGLY".

EDIT: I said all of the solutions are simple. Actually, for #3, its not so simple because wives are complicated, but on your end, all you can do is put in the effort to properly woo your wife and also take the time to talk to her about this topic.

 

One more thing that helped me tremendously with this exact topic. I had to learn to deeply trust my wife. This can be hard for some people, it was hard for me, because I had many years of not trusting her.

By 'trust my wife' I mean this: At her core, she loves me, wants me to be happy, and will walk through fire for me. Anytime she is not that way, it is because she is having a bad day and is not being her true self.

When I was finally able to trust my wife, it allowed me to do something very easily that used to be hard. It allowed me to walk away without the result that I wanted in the moment, because I knew that there would plenty of future opportunities for positive outcomes.

For example, in the past, if I spent the whole day wooing my wife, and then she still said... "I'm tired". I would get angry with her. I would either tell her, or not tell her about my anger, I might say things that were not helpful, in the back of my mind I would be thinking, I did all the right things and she still doesn't want me, what is wrong with her. I would carry that resentment into the next day or longer.

But now, I allow her to be imperfect, she has every right to have a down day, every right to make a bad decision, and it doesn't bother me much these days because I know that she will have a good day soon (I know this because I trust her). I also know that by allowing her to have bad days without me making her problems my problems, I no longer compound the issue and make what would have been one evening of a 'low mood' turn into a week of anger and resentment, or even a month of anger and resentment. The totally excellent thing about all of this is that the more you trust people, the easier they become to trust. BUT, you must let the people you trust be imperfect and when they do something wrong, just chalk it up to them being human and realize that what they did is NOT a reflection of who they really are, instead it was a reflection of a bad mood.

 

I am not sure I completely followed what you were saying. But, I think the gist of it was... "I tried to talk to her about sex and she got mad". Same thing used to happen in my marriage. Don't get too discouraged. There is obviously some emotional baggage clogging up your ability to talk to your wife and your wife's ability to talk to you.

In my case, my wife wouldn't talk to me about sex because she was scared of an impending fight and she did trust me to not escalate the situation. Back then, I thought she was the one who was mostly responsible for escalating arguments. In hindsight, we both escalated our arguments. It only takes 1 person with their head screwed on straight to avoid an argument. You always have the option to say, "Hey, I don't want to fight and we do not have to sort this out right now, let's sleep on it and talk about it later." At first, later might have to be 2 weeks later, but the more often you end a disagreement without letting the thing go atomic, the more safe both of you will feel starting sensitive conversations. It takes a while to build that trust back, it is not easy.

Also, it helps if you tell your wife, "Hey, I want to talk about sex. Not right now, but when YOU are ready." And, whatever you do, be willing to walk away from the talk if tempers start flaring. And, the goal is just to let her express herself, you will likely not like what she is going to say, because it is pretty obvious there are some other things going on, otherwise she wouldn't be avoiding the conversation. Try to listen, you don't have to agree with her, and you do not have to decide how you feel or respond to everything she says. It is better take everything in and then give yourself some time to digest everything.

You have 2 kids, your marriage is worth it. Marriage is hard. But, it is worth it, because your marriage has potential to be a wonderful uplifting beacon of love. It is going to take work though.

Well, that does make things more difficult. It's like trying to quit smoking when your spouse smokes. What would she say if you asked if the family could start eating healthier? If you have some room in your monthly budget, you should think about those mail order meals, they are fun to make as a family and they taste great and they are super healthy (BlueApron, HelloFresh, etc.). Point being, you could throw money at your eating healthy problem, use the money to buy exciting healthy foods, like crab, steak, fancy cheeses, etc. In my household money is tight, but we have gotten really good at cooking at home, most of it is my wife though, she insists on home cooked meals. Cooking at home is a great way to have family time, all of our kids help, my wife and I usually make each other cocktails or have a glass of wine. You can also get a membership to costco or sam's club. They have all sorts of semi-healthy fast to cook premade meals, that are much healthier and a lot tastier than the crap I used to eat as a kid. If you find yourself still going to fast food a lot, challenge yourself to eat the wraps or salads. They usually taste pretty good, but the best part is that for the amount of calories in those things, they are actually more filling. For example, I am full after eating one chick-fil-a wrap, but I could eat 40 chick-fil-a nuggets and a large fry and still be hungry.

 

Amazing advice. Way to be!