Dear Paul B,
I am NOT a selfish person, nor am I hypocritical. It’s not that I am not sensitive to my wife, but she is NOT the woman that I married. We don’t have any kids, and we’ve been married for almost four years. We were a couple in high school, and we knew each other for nine years. Everyone thought we would get married, and we did. Claire was 134 then, and now she weighs in at 187. She says she works out, but I never see it. She works and we don’t eat at home much, which I know would help her lose weight. I am not a good cook (nor was my Mom,) and she tells me she is too tired to cook. She travels over an hour to work, and often comes home at 6:30 in the evening. I am not angry about that, but I see other women at work, and at bars, and wonder why my wife has become so unattractive to me. I can’t help it, and don’t want to split up, but I am not happy, and she doesn’t seem to care about her weight gain. She says that it is her DNA, and not her fault. My friends tell me that I should leave her now, before kids are born. I am stuck in neutral. What do you think, Paul B?
Mark E
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Dear Mark E,
Mark, you sound SO defensive, from the get-go. Stop and think about your relationship. Was it always built on physical attraction? Is your marital foundation so fragile that you’re on the run now? Fifty pounds is…well…Fifty pounds, but don’t throw away a marriage just like that. You both need to consult a marriage counselor, priest, Uncle or “wise-person,” with whom you can discuss your relationship. You two are NOT in unusual territory. Many couples SHOULD and DO meet with an expert to hash out your differences. It is neither healthy nor necessary to carry carry fifty excess pounds. You could present a healthy diet for you two, because “you want her to live long and live well,” and become grandparents together. Mention that if children are in the near future, that she will typically gain forty pounds during this process. She may be applying for a zip-code if she doesn’t start to slim down, capisci? Blame it on me, it’s fine….
P.S Pull out all the stops, Mark. I can tell you that another woman will undoubtedly open up “new problems, perhaps worse,” and that you know what you have with Claire, right?
Paul B
Queen – ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ queenonline.com
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