I’ve fucked everything up

[OHara1991]

I’ve been with him for almost 16 years, married seven. We have two small children and a wonderful life.

I was getting really down about my weight after the summer and secretly arranged to start ozempic. I hid it because I knew it would be a flat no from him and I wanted to do it any way (which is obviously very selfish of me), I’ve never hid anything before. I did it for around three months, then when he asked me about it one day (if I was taking it) I lied to his face and said I’d only tried it once. Right then I stoped and felt truly terrible, but hoped we would would just move past it, I promised myself to never be such a twat ever again. I don’t know why I lied but after I did I felt I couldn’t go back as it would only be worse, and I essentially ended up fucking gas lighting him. Which makes me a truly terrible person, and I’m shocked I was even capable
of it.

Any way, he found out today, saw it all on my online banking. He is (rightly) distraught, I feel like I’ve sleep walked into fucking up his life, our kids lives and my life.

I don’t really know why I’m posting, will we ever be able to recover from this? I haven’t been able to stop crying I just can’t believe I’ve been so stupid.

I’m must reading through yo pis and I’m pretty shocked that you don’t seem to realise how controlling he is. It sounds like you’ve been with him since you were even able to form your own views as an adult - he is all you’ve ever known and his manipulative nature (sulking, silent treatment) is the norm to you.

My dh didn’t want me to have Botox either but I went ahead and had it bc it’s my body and my choice. He didn’t even notice, but that’s not the point. It’s really worrying how you keep going on about what a terrible person you are - he has really got inside to your head hasn’t he?

Hopefully at some point the scales will fall from your eyes but you sound very far gone.

*Im just reading through your posts that should say 🙄

That’s just an excuse. He doesn’t want you to lose weight and grow in confidence more like.

The ridiculous stuff about you cheating too - he sounds massively insecure and wants to keep you in your place.

I know right?

OP please don’t take advice from a person who can’t even string a sentence together.

Op, your h is a nightmare and he is fucking up your life BIG time.

I once sent my dh a thread I’d started about some things he was doing that really upset me.

He read it very solemnly and fell very quiet. He seemed quite shocked to see it all in black and white. We then sat and discussed everything I’d mentioned and had a long conversation about issues in our marriage and things he’d done I felt very resentful about. He explained why he had done those things, that he was wrong and very sorry. He apologised profusely and has never done those things again.

That’s a healthy relationship and how a decent man who cares about his wife and wants her to be happy would react. I really don’t get the impression your h’s reaction would be so favourable.

This is a real person's life, not a philosophical discussion about whether people in a healthy relationship should be allowed an opinion on their partner's choices about their own body, or the ethics of weight loss drugs.

She's already dealing with a manipulative asshat, she's not in a healthy relationship, and she doesn't need anybody taking his side and trying to make her question whether she really is a terrible person who needs to grovel for forgiveness and never make an independent decision ever again.

She's not a bad person. In a healthy relationship she could apologise for hiding it and that would be the end of the issue. But in a healthy relationship she wouldn't be given the silent treatment, days of sulking, anger, or bizarre false accusations about historic teenage cheating, either. In a healthy relationship she wouldn't have feared his reaction and felt the need to hide it in the first place. He's the problem, not her.

Thanks everyone for all your messages, I have read them all.

I think there is a lot to be said for the fact we've been together since we were very young. I've never thought of it in that way before, but we really do not know any different and are very entwined, which is clearly not healthy for either of us. It really resonated with me when someone said we both don't know how to be independent adults, because we've never been, we've always relied on each other.

He is a good person, I know people will talk about scales and eyes and everything but he is and I know he loves me, as I love him. I do though acknowledge that his behavior, is not healthy and I've been going along with it for a while. However, my behavior is not much better either. I'm going to start individual therapy and I'm going to apologies for my lying again but then make it very clear that I want to draw a line in it and move on.

If after exploring it with my own therapist and if I want to go down that road I will also suggest marriage counseling, he would be open to it.

I will work on my behavior, and I will not lie again. However, I will also be more vigilant if something comes up that makes me want to lie and I will stand firm and do whatever I want to with my own body.

Thanks x

How does her losing weight affect him?

Surely he wants a healthy, happy wife?

Op you have every right to keep some things private. You seem very fixated on this 'lie' but you had every right to lie. Tbh 'mind your own buisness' might have been a better option but, the point is he had no right to police what you put in your own body. It's a weightless pill, not another man's cock.

Tell him to grow up and stop being a gaslighting dick. You've not done anything wrong. And good on you for working to take care of your health.

Yes this is what will happen.

My dh wouldn't have to read this or any moans. We only have the odd niggle. He hates botox and is dubious of the side effects of weight loss jabs but couldn't forbid me from having either. He knows I'm my own person. He'd be worried if anything but him saying no to me wouldn't work. I'm an adult.

I hope you start to realise we're in your corner @OHara1991 . I know it can be a shock to realise the person you thought of as your rock actually isn't.

Do you have many friends you can trust?

HI OP, I just want to chime in with PPs who note an element of control here which you pushed against.

You said that his response may have been “no I don’t want you to do it, I think it’s a stupid lazy thing to do".

Whilst accepting this was a description of a typical response and not a quote, it appears that you ARE affected, in decision-making, by his views, prejudices and importantly, his approval.

I would think about that. Is his disapproval painful for you and so you avoid it? Is this a time you were trying to be autonomous?

As a couple in a respectful supportive marriage this should all be considered in the round. Discussion about what led you to want to conceal this. That this weight issue was important enough for you to want to have sole control of it and not (for once?) accede to his views. How to be open, non judgemental and support each other better.

I've never had a relationship which works like this, as it should - so I'm not preaching - I know exactly, viscerally, why you concealed this and it's not because you're a liar.

Many people in his shoes would be mortified that their loved one felt compelled to hide this.

The issue of your weight/BMI/the meds is separate really. I guess if you were prescribed it then you required some weight loss for health. And it's tough, using that medication to gain health, it's not an easy option.

Ah I hope you feel better today (or maybe tomorrow when you've had a sleep). You've apologised. Tell him that's all you can do, that this is the one thing you've ever concealed. And that you're aware that his disapproval and criticism were what you were keen to avoid. Say that's something you'll be working on in yourself. Cos no one is perfect.

Please don't apologise forever more. If he holds it over you long term that's twattery and not husbandly/loving behaviour.

You have not fucked anything up.

What was life like for you at home?. You do not have to answer that but I could guess it was less than ideal. Did this then teenage child behave similarly to how your parent/s treated you?. If so this is something you want to go through in therapy. You absolutely need someone who recognises control and abuse in a relationship. Do read Why does he do that? by Lundy Bancroft (which has already been recommended to you).

It was a sad day for you the day you met your controller i.e this man. The only good to have come out of this are your kids. You and he now need to be apart and permanently so too because you've been manipulated by him throughout this entire rel.

Abuse is not just physical in nature but can present many different ways (his sulkiness is an example of emotional abuse). Abuse is about power and control and he wants absolute over you, and in turn the kids, here.

I would think he behaves similarly towards the children now: they are like sponges and they watch his every move too. What do you want to teach them about relationships and what are they learning here?. What did YOU learn about relationships when you were growing up?.

They do not know like you have not known either (because of belief that abuse is only or mainly physical) that the only acceptable level of abuse in a relationship is none. That is why your relationship to this now adult man is over. If he truly loved you he would let you go and he will not because he enjoys keeping you in a cage of his own paranoid making.

Once your eyes open more as to the levels of control he is deliberately keeping you and your kids under you cannot unsee that. And why does he do this; well it's because he can. These actions are not the actions of a loving man. You may well love him but I fear you have confused love with codependency here; he may well be codependent too but that is no excuse for his actions either. He is NOT a good person for doing what he has done to you and that is a fact. He chose to abuse you because he likes this level of power and control he has over you.

I would also suggest you contact Womens Aid as they could also be very helpful to you.

You lied once about using weight loss medication - because he (entirely unreasonably and high handedly would have vetoed you using it) and now you're a cheater who must have lied about not cheating years ago while back packing??

So now you must have lied about absolutely everything including cheating (as well as being a cheater).

He's nuts.

Is he usually so spectacularly OTT and extreme?

(I'd also wonder what he was doing while you were back packing).

@AttilaTheMeerkat she isn't leaving.

If I disapproved of my oh using weight loss medication, for whatever reason, and he hid using it/lied about using it ...I'd be frustrated and annoyed etc but would consider that he must really have wanted to use it, and ask myself was I entirely reasonable in going against it ......

I wouldn't think "he must have cheated on me!! I bet he cheated on me years ago, because he told me one lie about using weight loss medication two weeks ago".

What is up with your husband????

I hope that once she realises the extent of the control he has put her (and in turn the kids under) she will start firming up plans to leave. If he goes (and he will not leave her because he actively likes the levels of power and control he has over her) he would be doing her a huge favour; the trash taking itself out as it were.

I note without surprise that he ignored her this morning; it's another attempt from him at "punishing" her for her supposed transgression. In his paranoid head he thinks that if she improves herself at all she will then run off with another man!!!.

So he keeps her in a gilded cage but a cage all the same, of his own paranoid making.

Giving someone the silent treatment over something like this is abusive.
OP you’re obviously blinded to his faults but he’s not a nice or good person at all. A good person would never make you feel like this.

So now it’s “just” weight loss drugs and “just” Botox. Believe me there will be other “just this” things that he doesn’t like and that you’re not allowed to do.

Get the botox, take the GLP, do what the fuck you want. Do not let your life be controlled by him. Make it abundantly clear to him that he doesn’t get a say. At. All.

And I BET that the root cause of all this is that he doesn’t want you to be too attractive because you might leave him because he knows full well that you are better than him and that if you hadn’t been together since the age of 14, you’d not look twice in his direction.

That sounds like a great plan. Choose an accredited counsellor that you click with, don’t be afraid to switch if you need to.

Talking through especially why you couldn’t just tell him what you wanted to do, ie lose weight and your reasons for avoiding his reaction.

Start checking in with yourself more often. What do I think of this situation? What do I want to do? What is good about this for me? Start using the word I, instead of we.

Tell him to respect your opinions, decisions and judgement. Be clear that for this marriage to work you must be an equal, and you are not always going to work as a unit on everything. Sometimes you will feel differently, and that’s okay.

There is much you can do to improve things simply by asserting yourself much more often, and be very clear you won’t put up with his responses such as the silent treatment and threats to leave going forward.

You are a powerful person in your own right op. You can do whatever you please in your own life, you don’t need permission as an adult from another adult to take weight loss medication or anything else.

Your body - your choice
Your life - you call the shots 100%

It’s not the most important aspect of this threat / that’s his coercive control - but what was your BMI when you started on medication? And do you have any conditions such as high blood pressure or cholesterol? If you were honest with the prescriber than you would usually need to have a BMI of 30plys or 27plus and a health condition.

I bet everyone a month's worth of Ozempic that OP's lovely DH is at least three years older than she is. They've been together since she was 14.

She does say they have been together “since we were 14/15” so I think at most he’s one year older.

You need to start your own thread in relationships other wise your post will get lost.

Your husband is not emotionally intelligent enough to be a good husband or father. Start your own thread and you'll get emotional and practical help.