It's very easy to take someone's words out of context, especially when we hear only one side of the story. We don't know what you say to him and how you say it. I'm not accusing you of provoking him, or assuming that you say equally inapropriate things to him, or any of that. I'm just saying that without hearing both sides, we have to guess and make assumptions and try to take possible biases into account. Maybe he's a jerk. Maybe you're a jerk. Maybe both or either of you hurt each other a lot. I don't know enough about your situation to even guess at which of those may or may not be true.

Although I have a masters degree in psychology, I've never been a marriage or relationship counselor, but I've been in a position to mediate conflicts when I was a probation officer and in other areas of social work. And often the two sides of a story don't match up. Both people believe they're telling the "whole truth," but they only see the situation from their own side (and it's impossible to see it from another person's side even when we try).

I know in my own relationship, there have been times that If I were to tell other people what my husband said, they would say "dump him, he's a son of a b****." And likewise my husband could tell his friends what I said in the same argument and they would tell him "dump her, she's a *****."

I don't think what he said is nearly as important as what you've said. If your fiance treats you in a way that you cannot be happy with, maybe you do need to leave him. Notice though I didn't say "in a way that makes you unhappy." Because no one can make you happy. It isn't possible. Happiness is a choice you make for yourself. Sure there are situations that are not conducive to that choice, and you've got to decide what to do about it. If he can't be someone you can be happy with, you've got to take that understanding and do something about it. Whether that's leaving, couples counseling, or something else, I can't say. Your life, your choice.

But assigning someone the task and responsibility of making you happy isn't going to work. It can't, because your fiance has virtually no control over your happiness (he has a little bit of input, but ultimately it's your responsibility, not his).

Depression does make happiness difficult, so make sure that you're getting help for the depression. Medications can be very helpful, but it still takes serious mental work. It still takes recognizing that you have a choice in the matter.

You have made comments that suggest you have a tendency to blame the situation or other people for what is happening inside your head. I understand that. I grew up in a household with parents and grandparents who blamed others for their sitation. When they were unhappy, it was always someone else's fault. Sometimes they lay the blame at us kids - if we were better behaved their lives wouldn't be so miserable.

Even as a kid, I suspected that they were choosing to be unhappy or at the very least it wasn't really anyone's fault - because no matter how hard I tried to make them happy, it rarely worked. When I did feel like I succeeded in making them happy, it never lasted nearly as long as the misery.

Living in that did shape my experiences and my own personality. I do sometimes tend to blame my husband for my own choices. He was raised in a similar household, so he does the same thing. We're both people pleasers by nature. Hubby's a white knight who wants to solve everyone's problems. I tend to put everyone's needs before my own, and then resent them all for not appreciating it or returning the favor (and I keep my resentment to myself until it boils over).

But in the light of day. When I'm being reasonable me, I realize that only I can make me do things, including being happy. I have to know myself enough to choose happiness.

Choosing happiness can mean removing someone from your life, but what it almost never means is changing someone. People can change, but usually the changes are subtle not complete personality-transplants. I've changed tremendously, but it's all been a lot of work, and I still have to fight the impulse to blame others (just because my auto-pilot reflects the environment I was raised in. When I'm thinking I know this, but when I'm reacting, I forget).

I think your relationship with your fiancee needs work (by both of you), but so does your relationship with yourself.

I think counseling would help a lot (and not because I think you're crazy). I think most people would benefit from having gone through some kind of counseling. It's nice just having an objective ear who you know isn't going to gossip about you all over town or make the conversation all about him/her - someone who's heard it all before and isn't going to judge you, because he or she has seen and heard a lot worse.

I know counseling isn't always feasible, but if it's possible, I think you would find it helpful.

There is a couple of things that are bugging me about some of these post. 1. is that the op is being to sensitive.. really!! there is not one woman out there who if she were trying to snuggle up to her man and he said something like this, you know you would feel the same way. hurt to the bone. 2. that she is expecting to much from her fiance in terms of making her happy.. what the h3ll is he suppose to be there for! thats his job! just like its her job to make him happy and bring joy and support into his life. i understand that her weight may have been bothering him but you don't motivate someone with humiliation, embarresment or pain. if she is depressed, its her mans job to come to her and ask whats wrong how can he help, ride the storm out with her. 3. when a man loves you, they just love you, fat, skinny, extra toe. don't matter. if his comment had been soley about wanting you to lose weight for your health, i'd be right there with him. but when he threw the sex thing in it, he took a left turn. just my two cents :)

Too fat to have sex? I hope I'm not saying the wrong thing here, but I... er... I've seen things... And, nobody is too fat or too skinny for sex... Nobody. :)

I think he genuinely cares about you, but it came out the wrong way. People we love and people who love us say hurtful things sometimes. That's just the reality of relationships. :)

Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep and Yep.

I think you've had some great advice here. Particularly from Nola Celeste and Kaplods.

On the lighter side, did you think about suggesting that perhaps it's not that your body is too big, but that his penis is too small for you guys to have sex comfortably? :cool:

If my husband told me it was my job to make him happy, I would tell him "if that's true, I quit."

I like doing nice things for him, and he likes doing nice things for me, but being responsible for each other's happiness, that's too big a job for any person. Especially when the expectation of mindreading comes into play.

If you're going to argue that we're obligated to do what makes our partner's happy, then I guess the OP would be obligated to make her husband happy by losing the weight (or are only men obligated to provide happiness to their partners).

I was raised in a family in which it was expected for the men to make the women happy (and sadly not the reverse), and unfortunately nothing the men did ever made the women happy.

In my extended family, there are families in which the reverse was true. The women were expected to make the men happy, and the men didn't have the same responsibility - and sadly the same was true that no effort on the part of the happiness provider was ever "enough."

No, I don't think that men or women are obligated to "make" their partner happy, because I don't think it's possible. Happiness is more often a choice you make, not a gift that anyone can give to you. Sure good relationships are built on both making the effort to make life better for their partner, but no one can "make" you happy, without your cooperation. If you're determined to be unhappy, nothing anyone can do will ever be good enough.

There's no doubt that OP's fiance said something hurtful, but is it worse than things she's said to him? There's no way to know that, so I give advice based on the premise that anything could be true. The fiance could be an A1 butthole and OP could be a saint. Or she could be a mean, horrible nag and he could be the mostly innocent victim. Or (and the most likely) they're both imperfect human beings who have said horrible things in the heat of anger, or just because they're human and didn't realize how they would sound.

You can't judge anyone by one statement, even if it's a super horrible one, especially when you haven't heard both sides of the conversation, from both sides.

Well you can of course, but it's likely to be a false judgement.

it is my job to try and make my man happy in whatever lil ways i can and its his job to do the same for me. it shows him i appreciate him and vice versa. thats just the kind of woman i happen to be. i disagree with your post.. but thats the beauty of america. we can agree to disagree. happy forth!
mickey

What a horrible thing to have to go through. I can only imagine the devastation that you feel.
But I say try not to dwell on it. The guy lacks diplomacy I will say that, but it sounds like he is frustrated as well. You sound so sad honey. And I mean sad in general, not just about the comment he made.
If you're suffering from depression then you really HAVE to get some professional help, because depression doesn't just go away. You can lose 100 pounds and still feel just as down.
You have lost some weight, so you can definitely do it! But you have to work on the inside at the same time.
You have been given some great advice by the people who have responded before me & I hope that you have found some solace in their words.
It'll get better, it will, but you have to work at it.
Feel better hun.

I could never see making my husband happy as my job. I prefer to look at it as something I choose to do--a little (or sometimes big) gift I'm giving him of my own free will. When I make him his favorite dish or watch the show he likes or do his laundry for him as a little surprise, it's not because I feel a sense of obligation, but because I love to see him smile. He does the same for me.

I suspect that we're all talking about the same thing, though; some of us say "job" and "duty" while others say "choice" and "gift," but what it all boils down to is that happy relationships require some give and take. We can't say what PHG's overall relationship is like; we don't know who's doing more giving and who's doing more taking.

What we DO know, by her own admission, is that her weight is causing relationship strife. I think the advice to seek counseling is very sound. That may shed some light on things regardless of who has done what and to whom.

Another issue here, which I think is really important, is the possibility of clinical depression. When you're clinically depressed, choosing happiness is beyond your control, and beyond anyone elses either. If you can't make yourself happy, no one else is going to be able to do it for you.

And that's my problem with assigning the task of my happiness to anyone else. No one can make me happy if I'm unable to choose happiness for myself. My husband could buy me everything I ever dreamed of wanting, he could do every thing for me I could ever imagine, and I still won't be happy if my brain chemistry is off because of clinical depression, or if I do not choose happiness. He can help me be happy, and I can help him be happy, but we can't MAKE each other happy. Happiness is something you have to choose and allow to happen - and when clinical depression is going on, that choice is taken away from you by biochemistry. Counseling will help determine whether OP's unhappiness is because she's living in a toxic relationship, or whether her biochemistry is preventing her from being happy.

My mother was an unhappy woman for most of her life - she blamed my father - her parents - her kids - unfriendly neighbors - everyone outside of herself for her unhappiness. Everyone tried to make her happy, and failed. Eventually everyone (including my father who loves her dearly) stopped trying, because they never were successful.

I begged her to consider an antidepressant, if not counseling (both to her meant she was crazy). For 25 years she refused, and for more than 40 years she was miserable. Then my youngest sister (the only person in the family my mother admires, even a little bit) went to counseling and was prescribed an antidepressant. The change in my sister's happiness inspired my mother to finally talk to her doctor about medications and counseling. She hasn't yet sought counseling (and I may never convince her to), but the change in her mood and outlook at life since she's been on medication has dramatically changed for the better (to the point she seems like a woman I've never met, certainly not my mother). She's feeling better and has more interest in life and has stopped seeing her life as being ruined by everyone around her. The medication has opened her heart to the possibility of happiness.

I don't know that this is OP's situation, and whether it is or isn't, counseling is the best way to find out. If OP's fiance is a super toxic jacka**, able to singlehandedly ruin almost anyone's life, then counseling is going to bring that out too.

The point isn't who is to blame (that doesn't usually help the situation, even when there clearly is a person to blame), it's finding a way to get a decent quality of life for the both of you. Hopefully that's together, but if it's not, better to find that out too.

Haven't heard from you Port, so I hope you are doing ok and feeling a bit better. :hug:

I hope you and fiancee talked it out and reached a new understanding.

The problems you describe in this thread and others -- depression, body image, emotional eating, stress, sex life problems, etc. -- that's a lot!

You have to cope with these issues with or without the fiancee. Whether you continue the relationship or not those other things are still on the table.

I certainly hope he can be a part of your support team, but that's the point I was trying to make originally. He CANNOT be your everything guy here. He's only one guy and he's got his limits. Treating mental health stuff like depression or body image... that's probably not in his job skills. He can try to be supportive, but he can't magically wish it away for you even if he wanted to. Since you asked... I think you guys could use a third party to help.

Try your best to seek out counseling and get more people on your team to help you through this, ok?

GL!
A.

[QUOTE=sniperhil;3918784]Mickey79sf


Wow. Some of you other people have got it all wrong. This man is not just some random guy on the street. This is her fiancee. Someone she has to live with and be married to. Tough love, my @$$. You don't even know her. Or him. She's looking for support, not "well you asked, and it may not have been what you wanted to hear...". you think she doesn't know that?!


I gotta agree with sniperhil. I think he could have at least put a little tact in his response. I know in my situation whenever I say something depressing about my weight, my husband will say, "well if you don't like it, do something about it." But he's absolutely correct and he is never nasty when he says it. He's very sweet and gentle about it. No one can change it but me. And no one can change it but you, but do NOT do it for a man. Do it for yourself. Do it only because you're ready to feel better about yourself. My mom always told me, "you cannot change someone until they are ready to change themselves" and this holds true for soooo many things.

First, learn to love yourself. Only then will you find the strength to say, "this is for ME." You can do it. Absolutely you can do it.

Feel free to buddy me if ya ever need someone to chat with :) Hang in there. We're all pulling for ya! :carrot:

Hmm, something that made me pause to think:

What if you were with someone that you loved, and they started to gain weight, then continued to gain weight...
What if your attraction to them physically was dwindling, and you still loved them, and throughout the relationship, they never lost the weight (or kept gaining)...?

Where is the line? IS there a line?

Must love be unconditional, and if you commit to your partner, then that's it, even though there may never be a reconciliation of the conflict (eg. the person ever losing the weight)?

I've been reading this thread, and see both sides of it, but for me, if I was with a partner whom kept gaining weight, and couldn't (or wouldn't) lose the weight, what would I do? Would my love for them end up hurting me by binding me to them and not feeling the physical pull that they once had on me? Would I be able to see beyond the weight and still keep the physical attraction?

This is a question that I truly pose to the OP, and everyone else.
I know there is more to love than physical attraction. And so, what would YOU accept in your partner for the weight gain? If they kept gaining...do you think you would EVER leave? If the conversations were had (over and over again), and they wanted to lose the weight, and still didn't.... What would you do?

I think for myself...there would have to be a line where I wouldn't be able to stay. Does that mean that my love is conditional? I don't know, but I feel in my heart that I am a good person, and so this makes me sad to admit...

This. He did seem concerned about your health. I also think he was being honest. Sometimes when our loved ones can't shake us any other way---they hit us where they know it will hurt. It did hurt, but will it motivate you?

I think "my line" is very loosely drawn, but I do think there is one. Not only related to obesity, but other issues as well. And I know it's true for my husband too. And sometimes hitting below the belt is even necessary (or at least it seems so in the moment).

I went through a phase where I was so physically incapacitated that I was not able to bathe as often as necessary. I was even afraid of bathing, because getting in and out of the shower didn't feel safe. I was afraid of falling. My husband had to tell me that my bathing issues were starting to affect HIM. Not a fun conversation, but necessary.

Should he have kept his mouth shut and just left me (or waited patiently and silently for me to die?)

We married at our highest weights, me just under, and he just over 400 lbs. If either of us had gained another 100 lbs, I'm pretty sure we'd still be together, still trying to work it out (though I probably would be bed-bound or dead). But what if either one of us, instead of losing 80-90 lbs, one of us had gained 600 more. At 1000 lbs would it be ok to mention that sex was getting rough?

My husband and I have both talked about how our weights and weight loss (and our other health issues) have affected our sex lives (both positively and negatively). My husband has admitted that having to be in the caretaker role had made it more difficult for him to switch into sexual partner mode. As a psychologist, I understand this. As a woman, it sucks. We have to work at our sex life, it doesn't come naturally. We've had to be brutally honest at times, because the alternative would have been no sex life, and I think that would have destroyed our marriage (I'm not sure if I need sexual intercourse in my marriage, but I do need shared sexuality). And if something comes between my husband and I, I'm willing to hurt his feelings and mine to resolve the issue.

I had to tell my husband that he HAD to get his bad tooth fixed, because I found it unpleasant to kiss him (I tried persuading him to do it for HIS health, but that didn't work, so I had to be honest in hopes he would deal with it). Saying so hurt his feelings tremendously, but the alternative would have been to remain silent, and become more and more turned off by my husband every time he kissed me (a rotted tooth smells like death, and it's hard to be turned on by someone who smells bad - my husband had to tell ME that and I had to return the "favor" and tell him the same). Both times it sucked for both of us, but losing the marriage or at least our attraction for each other within the marriage would have sucked far worse.

Knowing when it's appropriate to criticise and when it crosses the line of decency isn't always easy to determine. We can all only do the best we can. I can't say that OP's fiance did the best he could, but I can't say he didn't, either. Only OP would have a clue. Is this a guy who always criticises on every detail or is he someone who holds his tongue until he can't hold it in any longer and out of frustration rants and rages and says nasty things (I've been on both ends of of the frustration rant, not fun either way).

I have sympathy for OP and for her fiance, because my husband and I have each been on both sides. We're committed to staying together, but we can't guarantee that we're split-proof either. We only hope so, and work at making it so. There are things he could do that would be dealbreakers (dealing drugs, hitting me, and possibly infidelity or gaining 1000 lbs. I can't say for sure on the possible dealbreakers). I'm sure there are dealbreakers for him. I know I couldn't help take care of him if he gained 1000 lbs. If he gains 200 lbs I think it would be pretty rough. Sex is difficult at our current weights, it would be nearly impossible 100 lbs from now (even though it's the weight we met at, we have health problems now that we didn't have then). How much could either of us tolerate without telling the other that sex was becoming uncomfortable physically AND mentally - probably not much, because we've always been open about our feelings, even the negative and shameful ones we wish we didn't feel, but do anyway.

I think all of us can only give advice based on our own experiences, and that OP will have to read them all and decide which apply most to her own situation. Is this a dealbreaker or not? If it is, that's ok. If it's not, that's ok too, but decide based on what is best for each individual in the family and for the marriage and family unit itself. It's not always easy to sort out, and it's impossible for strangers on an anonymous forum.