I think my marriage is over…
Hi everyone,
I remember thinking before surgery that my marriage would never be
affected by my surgery. My mom sometimes wishes that I would’ve
never had it because I am thinking about divorce. My husband is such
a great guy. We never fight but I feel like his mother. I feel that
I am very bossy with him and he never tells me how he feels about
anything. I have been going through this for a very long time,
wondering why I married when I just turned 19. I love my husband as
a person but I am not in love with him. We don’t have an intimate
relationship because I don’t feel anything for him. I am so
depressed right now. I have dropped the weight and my whole outlook
on life is different. I will be 22 in June and for some reason, I
feel like I want to do more with my life. I honestly don’t see Jason
and I together for the rest of the year. There is someone else that
I have been spending a lot of time with, just as friends, but I am
scared that things will progress and I would rather divorce my
husband before I cheat on him. When this person is around, I just
get weak in the knees and I have tried to stay away from him and
forget about him but I can’t. He’s been asking people about me and I
want to get to know him so much. My confidence and self-esteem are
so much higher and I know that things will keep getting better. I
don’t know what to do. I am so scared and confused and I just want
to be on my own. Can anyone help me?
Lanaya
October 22nd, 2003 at 9:01 pm
Dear Lanaya,
Your letter hit a cord with me and I felt that I had to write to you. You
didn’t say how far out you are, if you have reached goal but I will tell
you from my own thoughts, experiences……DON’T make any permanent, life
altering decisions right now. I so relate to what you are saying. I am 16
months out, have lost 173 pounds and my world feels like it has been turned
upside down. I went through a stage where my husband had to just look at
me and I wanted to rip his head off….for totally stupid things that made
no difference at all…..I mean he cleaned my vacuum cleaner for Pete’s
sake, but I wanted to choke him! It was a wash of emotions so intense it
was scary. I went to the doctors and got some wellbutrin…..helped me
sooooooo much. Just in the sense that it calmed me, I don’t have the rush
of emotions, put things back in balance. Then I started
therapy. Everything is not rosy at home, I got so caught up in “me” that I
forgot about “us”. I neglected my marriage badly. I didn’t do anything
rash, I just didn’t do anything at all. But I can say, and from
experience, the grass is no greener. 90% of a marriage is attitude and
what you put into it, if you don’t put anything into you are not going to
get anything out of it. Again, I am mainly speaking for myself here, cause
I did that, but I would really hate to see you end your marriage to a
“great guy” before your really focused on that “great guy”. The other guy
seems wonderful, and I am sure he is, but so was your husband when you
first met him. Don’t do anything right now when your emotions are so
high. Something that my husband and I have started doing, besides having
LOTS of heart to heart talks, is spending quality time alone together doing
fun things. We went to the coast last month for 3 days, no daughter, just
us. It was wonderful and the closeness we regained in that 3 days was/is
invaluable! This month we are going to New Orleans, just the two of us,
just to have fun. The point being we are refocusing on each other and
“seeing” again what we saw in the first place, what made us fall in love in
the beginning. We have been together ten years, he loved me when I was
328, he loves me now at 155.
You said that you wanted to be on your own, maybe you should spend some
time on your own, doing something that you enjoy, but on your own with no
other distractions, no other people. Something that I really enjoy that
helps me refocus is I drive out somewhere in the country and walk, take
pictures and breath in the fresh air.
You also stated in your message, “We never fight but I feel like his
mother. I feel that I am very bossy with him and he never tells me how he
feels about anything.” I really relate to this also, because I have felt
that I was the bossy one, that my husband let me “walk all over him”, and
of course he didn’t tell me how he feels, you don’t tell your mother how
you feel if you think she is going to get mad at you. It took him telling
me that he was thinking about walking for me to realize that I needed to do
some more work, I need to change my attitude towards him, I need to give
him the respect that he deserves. I see him in a whole new light now.
Please forgive me if this sounds like I am scolding or condemning you in
any way, because that is not the intent I have at all, but rather to just
try to give you something to think about. You don’t get rid of great
guys. You fight for them. I’m fighting really hard for my great guy, and
it has all come down to a change in my attitude. The excitement that you
feel towards the other guy is so natural and understandable. If you feel
like me, all the sudden I feel like the world is my oyster and I can do
anything and I want to LIVE IT TO THE FULLEST! But I want to live it with
someone who has stood by me and loved me through “thick and thin”.
My heart and thoughts are with you!
HUGS
Cyndi K
Dr Wolfe UCDavis
Open RNY 11/13/00
328/155
October 22nd, 2003 at 10:06 pm
Dear Lanaya:
Losing weight is like gaining a new you. Your self image improves. You want
to get out there and do things, move around and for the first time in a long
time…BE SEEN. If Jason is a great guy, and you married him because you
Love him try to make it work with him. Stop seeing the guy who makes you
weak in the knees. Temptation is all around. Just because this guy is
asking about you, and makes your heart go all aflutter, doesn’t mean you
should throw away your marriage.
Try rekindling the Spark with Jason. Make it a point to TALK to him. Go on
a hot date, weekly!! Then if neccessary see a marriage counselor. ESPECIALLY
if their are children involved.
Lanaya I feel the way you feel sometimes. We all get depressed, and feel
unfulfilled at times. And losing all this weight DOES change us. Good luck
sweetie. I’ll be thinking of you.
Love,
})i({August St. Amand- Maine})i({
Lap RNY Oct. 15, 2001 -150
Dr. PA Aslam- Augusta Maine
October 23rd, 2003 at 7:53 pm
Note to Lanaya and others who feel this way with their spouse!!!!!!!!
THIS IS NORMAL!
This experience/emotion is a normal part of the marriage roller
coaster. It takes *work* to remain in love with a spouse. And a LOT of
patience. Sometimes it takes individual therapy to rediscover
romance. Sometimes it take couple’s therapy. Sometimes it takes finding a
new activity together (boredom spells DOOM in a marriage!). Sometimes it
takes time… waiting out the yucky feelings… remembering that
*everything* comes in cycles… love, hate, indifference, boredom, sex,
lack of sex, etc. Sometimes it takes all of the above and more…
sometimes more than a few months’ worth of work. But, every second of work
is worth it to save something that meant the world to you not so very long ago.
Having surgery changes *everything*… absolutely everything in the
world. And, not only does it change *us*… it changes, in very profound
ways, every person who knows us. We are reacting to the world differently
and they are having to re-learn how to live with the New Us. It is
imperative of us to have patience with their growth process… to allow
them their time… their period of adjustment.
Mostly, WLS changes our marriages. It takes good marriages and makes them
fantastic and takes bad ones and dissolves them. I am never one to tell
someone what to do (I hear you all snickering out there!), but would beg
you, Lanaya, to remember that the grass is greener everywhere but your own
yard at the moment. Those weak knees? That is HORMONES! That has nothing
to do with love. Might have tons to do with pheremones, but doesn’t have
squat to do with the day to day living with someone… brushing your teeth
with that person, sitting across the dinner table watching them annoy you
with the way they chew for 20 years, sighing as you see that, for the one
millionth time, your spouse forgot to take out the garbage on the way to
work… THIS IS LIFE… and finding, reminding, living for that kind of
love… the love where you reach out for his/her hand when you are scared,
when your child is sick, when you watch a romantic movie, when your parents
die… this is love.
Love is the hardest work you will ever do. Don’t squander the time.
Barbara Herrera
San Diego, CA - 41 years old
Open RNY April 5, 2001
Dr. Julie Ellner, Alvarado Hospital, San Diego, CA
04/5/01: 344# BMI: 63
08/24/01: 244# BMI: 45 (minus 100 pounds!)
03/21/02: 167# BMI: 30.5
October 24th, 2003 at 1:13 am
Lanaya,
Let me give you a single woman’s point of view on your email. I can tell you
from a dating perspective…. EVERY man has his bad side and good side. They
all have that part of them which can make you go weak in the knees, if you
were attracted to your husband in the first place… then you can be again
with a little work. Every man also has those parts of himself that drive us
nuts and make us cringe. Yes! Even mister temptation. Right now you are
looking at him through those.. “ohhhh, isn’t he wonderful eyes.” Those eyes
dim with any relationship. They will with this one too given time. What I am
saying is this… sometimes the grass seems greener on the other side of the
street… but when you get there….. the dog has peed on that lawn too and
you see the brown spots as you stand where you once wanted to be. Sorry for
the crude analogy but I think you get my point. Both lawns have brown spots
and a blooming garden. Who was it that has seen you through thick and thin?
Who was it that you made vows to because you loved him? Who is it that is
afraid to share his deeper thoughts with you because you are mothering him?
(Your words… please don’t be upset with that question) By the way…
mothering men isn’t good. I have had an important long term relationship end
because I started to do this. I have to take responsibility for my role in
that destruction. Ask yourself…. what can I do today to build the
relationship I want with my husband? Then talk to him about how you are
feeling. Listen to what Cyndi shared with you because I think she has some
good advise from a married woman’s perspective. And take what you can from
this single woman. You might feel like you are missing something by not being
single again and experiencing life to its fullest but I will tell you…you
aren’t missing much. What you are missing is lonely nights spattered with a
fun moment once in a while, wondering when you are going to meet mister right
so you can stop eating alone, feeling insecure cause you don’t know where you
stand with the one you love, kissing a lot of frogs in hopes of meeting a
prince, and there is something to be said for getting a hug from someone you
know loves you…. verses giving a pat on the head to your cocker spaniel
because he is the only one who meets you at the door after a long day at work.
My life isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, but I hope I can get you to see a more
realistic view of being single. It isn’t all it is cracked up to be…
anymore then what marriage might look like to a single person. What you
discribed in your email sounded like the romantic version which is perfect
and filled with possibilities. It is that in short moments but more times
then not it is just as monotonous as the life you described in your email …
just different in nature. Our lives are what we make them as will live them.
I wish you well … don’t give up on your marriage, work on it. I think you
will be glad you did in the long run. If nothing else, if it does end, then
you will know in your heart that you did everything possible to make it work.
I wish you all the happiness in the word and the answer lays in our own
backyard.
Take care. I wish you well…
Sandra in California