Husband is obese - AIBU to address this?

[primrose81]

Hi, I’m posting here because I’m finding it hard to talk about this in ‘real life’.

My DH, nearly 50, is a wonderful man. He is truly pretty much perfect - so kind, generous, patient, clever, sensitive, high-achieving, clever. People adore him. There are so many reasons we are married - he is great company and a fantastic father.

However, he is also obese. He was overweight when we met, and is a big man anyway - tall, heavy set, broad. Over the years he has put on more weight.

For context, I’m very slim, spend a lot of time on exercise / fitness. (I’m not trying to stealth boast, there is quite a contrast between us.) I’m also a bit younger (by 6 years, so not loads)

I’m feeling really exasperated by him - it feels like he just isn’t trying to address his weight at all. He tries diets and then drops them, likewise for exercise. I know he doesn’t like his body but also he is usually just very genial / relaxed / quite confident & seems to turn a blind eye to his weight.

Money is not an issue - we are well-off. He could afford a PT, diet plan etc.

He is really close with our teenage girls - to be honest I would say he is a better parent than me - they love him, but I also know they worry about his weight a bit too. Physically they are very similar to me & also I think they can both be a bit anxious about weight / food etc, I feel like this might be linked to both of us.

I try to address the issue with him but he can be quite evasive - he is sensitive and I know it doesn’t make him feel great. I don’t know what to do anymore - it’s starting to feel like a really significant issue for me but I also feel like I’m being really mean because he is so kind.

It’s interesting so little is being said about this, when anorexia presents a far more serious immediate risk to health than obesity.

it’s almost like it’s a values judgement rather than a health one.

I’m (was) on the other side of this. I was nearly 24 stone. My DH, who is a normal weight, would occasionally raise that he was worried about my future. Our plan is live somewhere like a smallholding and frankly, I was kidding myself that I’d cope when I found even going upstairs tricky. However, I’d always deny there was an issue. Ultimately, my DH talking about it made zero difference. I needed to make the decision, nobody would have made a difference. When I was in the right headspace, I chose surgery, I’m over 11 stone down.

I suggest you keep on with your healthy meals, gentle chats re the future, you’re worried etc. He won’t do anything until he’s ready and that might be never. Getting on his case will quite likely cause him to dig in his heels.

It sounds like he is a lovely partner and your love for him is very conditional - perhaps you should give him the chance to be with someone who both loves and desires him.

If you really want to stay with him I think you should have therapy to look at your own behaviour - your 'thin' obsession that is impacting your daughters and likely your husband too. And why you had your affair - why did you not end your relationship at that point? Did the other man not offer what you want?

I am obese but pretty healthy. I only started losing weight (a significant amount which I've not had trouble maintaining) after my husband stopped being critical. He has now done a full 180 and finds me really sexy and attractive even though in the past when I was this weight he felt very differently. I now spend more time buying clothes than bingeing. Him being critical made me more secretive about my eating and really took a toll on me. I can't image the impact an affair would have had on me- I don't think I could have slept with him again. Our children are healthy weight, one is super fit because he just loves movement, and neither are obsessed with weight loss thank goodness I think instead of trying to change him you should go to counselling for yourself and work out whether you should be in your marriage.

@primrose81 , I hope you know how lucky you are? Your husband sounds amazing, so many are not. Why does this bother you? Are you worried about his health? That is reasonable and understandable or don’t you fancy him now?
I assume he eats or drinks a bit much? Maybe he’d benefit from WLI?

OP, you need to address matters re your husband's weight. The situation will only make you more resentful. Please please talk to him.
You could start the conversation by discussing how to address this together??????
I really appreciate how sensitive this is

OP, I was the obese partner until recently. I've always been slim, but a certain birth control caused me to pile on weight veey rapidly (multiple stone in just a few months) and then I just got heavier and heavier. I went from an 8/10 to a 16/18 pretty quickly and was obese - I think my BMI was around 32, maybe a little higher. I was more than 16 stone. I've always had slightly disordered eating but always been able to manage my weight anyway - until now.

Anyway, I hated it and hated myself. Thank goodness my husband was so lovely about it. But he did make a couple of comments sometimes and they stung, so do be careful. In the end, after stopping birth control, I lost it with Weight Loss Injections. They were a game changer for me and I am determined to never let myself get into such a state again.

I know you said WLI were no good for him, but there are different types. There's Mounjaro and Wegovy, and they have different side effects.

I think the suggestion of someone to go for a family Health MOT is a good one. This will give him some impartial advice on his weight and may be a wakeup call. You can discuss WLIs as part of the appointment perhaps.

Good luck.

It's a health issue even if its also an issue of attraction. Sometimes a bit of tough love is needed... you want him to be around for you all. I think you can say it from a place of love

Should she also be giving some tough love to the anorexic daughters?

Did I miss something? I thought she just said her daughters are a little anxious about weight/food (which is extremely common in young women these days - I'm a schoolteacher and I'd be hard pushed to find many teenage girls who aren't a little anxious about body size, sad as it is!). Did I miss a post about anorexia??

we are well-off

So am I, aren't we all just jolly well falling over our property portfolio's at this point? ....but I would grow rather fat quite quickly if I employed a housekeeper in the 21st century. Perhaps if he did only 35% of 'her' work, he might lose some fat. Self sufficiency (and not just the financial kind) is the key to health and happiness.

6 yrs younger is nothing, either. He isn't old, and you aren't superior to him.

I do wonder what attracted you to him in the first place. A good provider, a reliable breeder? Job done, now he's an embarrassment.

So you train a lot…why? I’m guessing because you enjoy it? I train 6 times a week (running and weights) because I love it. But if someone tried to force me to do different training that I didn’t want to do I’d hate it and possibly stop.

Your DH has to want to do it. You trying to make him has had zero effect so far so all you’re doing is making the situation worse. Sure, have discussions about it but trying to focus a hugely overweight person into a gym with a PT is probably embarrassing for him. I do my weights at home because I detest the gym, I run because I can do it my way.

It has to be for him, you’re making it all about you and have already told him he’s not good enough for you by going off and shagging someone else behind his back.

Op mentions the pressure in her peer circles and her daughters' schools to be thin - rather than healthy- and the impression I get is that this is more about aesthetics and socio-economic status than genuine concern the husband's health. She is turned off by her obese husband and he probably knows it.

It’s perfectly ok to struggle with his obesity. Fwiw I could not be in a relationship with or have sex with a man who was obese. It doesn’t matter how much I liked his personality I couldn’t find him attractive. And I couldn’t really deal with an un-addressed addiction/compulsion/binge eating disorder.

When you ask whether you should address it, what do you mean exactly? Do you mean ask him to lose weight? Or do you really mean admit to him that you can’t fancy him at this size? From what you say it’s not going to change.

You can’t ask someone else to address something if they don’t want to. So to address this issue head on: either accept him as he is or if you can’t, end the relationship.

If he's kind and a good husband and forgave your affair, I would leave it and just appreciate him the way he is.

Having read the whole thread I now think the OPs husband should lose 8 stone or so by dumping her.
she’s a judgemental cheat so it sounds like he could do much better for himself.

You're probably right. But he won't because he's chronically passive. He can't even sort out his own health. He's never going to sort out his life 🤣

'We are well off'

Is this wealth an even contribution or very one sided?

Yes, on the last point (thank you for everything else too) - he def has a slow metabolism, has always been overweight. That doesn't bother me - it's just the steady increase and becoming obese

Not sure exactly why it's relevant, he is wealthier than me but I am also well off

For different reasons - health, maintaining strength especially now in my 40s, and yes, also for my appearance. But it is also hugely beneficial for my mental health . I do think we're very far apart at this point in terms of fitness; we used to sometimes go to the gym together & just do things seperately, now he rarely goes.

Yes - just a bit anxious, they are not anorexic and neither am I. However, I am aware of a dynamic in which they (and I) tip a little too far into clean eating as contrast with my DH. I'm not saying this is what is happening, but that's the dynamic

Thank you for sharing this, it's really helpful

Thank you. Yes, I've tried to encourage this & our girls love doing anything with him. However he gets discouraged when he gets out of breath, and he feels embarrassed in front of them.

Thank you for your post. He is lovely and I do love him - but I don't believe that this has to be unconditional? My love for my daughters is unconditional, but it's surely different in a romantic relationship.

When I had the affair I felt so frustrated by his weight / our sex life. However it was very clear to me that it would never develop into anything serious. I also always knew that my DH was wonderful, and the affair really, really showed me this. I think he's an exceptionally kind person - that's why I am finding all of this hard.

Yes, he could do more day-to-day movement and I have encouraged this.

I just mentioned about being slightly younger for context, I know it's not a big age gap, but just am noticing that this decade - being in our 40s - is when those health disparities really start to show. And he's nearly 50, it's not ideal to be obese.