Balance and Relationships

I have no doubt that having a healthier looking/fitter body improves the quality/quantity of a married couple's sex life; however, let's also consider this other dynamic: 60% percent of married men cheat and 40% of married women cheat - and those are only numbers that reflect people who are willing to admit to adultery.

Therefore, I will always believe - especially as a recovering fatty - becoming physically healthier is a process that must be motivated by something greater than merely looking better for one's spouse....because even a hot body, and a hot sex life, doesn't keep most modern marriages together.

That being said the problem with some is that they go the other way and assume that only 'a nice personality' will keep a modern marriage together.

Relationshps are made up from lots of differant factors and people have many differant needs. Relationships are very hard work, and all things need to be there for it to be healthy and to work out.

People cheat for a huge variety of reasons, not just because of looks issues. Being fed up of a spouses bad attitude can make people resent their spouse and start distancing from them, and finding themselves drawn closer to others for example. Theres a whole host of reasons.

Also the part where you mention 'needs to be for something greater then to look good for their partner', was partly covered in another post called 'putting to rest guilty feelings of shallowness'.

When people don't look after themselves it changes way more then just the physical appearance. Changes run much deeper. A lack of sex life for example can run over into other areas of life, make things harder, stress easier to build, resentment to grow etc.

Phrases like ' what are you so stroppy about? Not getting any at home?' or 'you can tell you havn't had sex for a long time with an attitude like that', aren't new.

Also yes it just as important to be about the person whos getting into shape's health. Thats extremely important. But i guess it isn't mentioned so often (thoug it is on this site) because people think 'well if they lose weight they will get healthier anyway', so maybe they feel no need to mention it. People have their own reasons.

If however a partner is encouraging a partner to do things that are very unhealthy, like starve themselves etc, then yes that would definatly be a wrong thing to do.

Getting in shape should only be done the healthy way.


Wanting your partner to improve health and look after themselves as well as look after their shape for private lives, is a human need and part of a relationship(and they themselves should be doing the same, by the way is you partner? Both need to look after themselves, for themselves and for each other and their realtionship, not only one of them.).
Relationships are not easy.

I know it's more PC to talk about the negatives health aspects of obesity, but rarely, when Anti-Fat issues are discussed, especially by men, is general health the forerunner of the topic. It's almost always geared towards aesthetics and how "disgusting looking" an obese individual is. Now, I will never discredit how unnatural the look of obesity is when manifested in the human species. I've always felt it was unnatural and unattractive.

The differance between men and women is that we need to get erect to have sex. You can't have sex without one of those present. And without any visual stimulation at all, there will be little to no luck in getting ready for sex for most men. Then partners can blame lack of erections on the male partner, saying they have erectile disfunctions when really they are in full working order, only what is naturally needed in order to gain that is missing. And a fact of life is a lack of sex can annoy people and stress people greatly. Just like poeple come on the My Fat Spouse forum and rant and rave, but then when they get it out they become calmer and seek for answers to help them out. Hence this site.

The differance between a friend and a partner is sex. So a man or a woman who has a partner who cooks and cleans and is nice basically is in a physical relationship with someone who is more like a friend who cleans up. Think of all the friends you have. I bet they have nice personalities. I bet you like being around them. But your not having sex with these people. But in a relationship, where only that person is meant to fulfill your physical needs, and you look at them and see someone who seems more like your friend, then things can get hard.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If your sex life is great, but the person doesn't help out or isn't kind to you, the sex life wont make the full relationship work.

If a person cleans, pays bills and looks after you, but won't communicate, then the fact they do dishes and pay bills wont make up for lack of communication or make the full relationship work.

If everything is great, except they treat the kids like nothing, then the relationship (and family) isn't going to work or be happy.

And its the same with sex lives. Everything needs to be there to make relationships work or keep it happy and functioning well. Like anything else, if a piece is missing it wont work, or at least not as effectivley.

Relationships are really hard things. They have never been easy and never will be.

As far as the looking at you with disgust and such, that definatly wasn't helpful.

What I'm basically saying by all of this is that all aspects of a relationship need to be there to balance it out and make it work.

posted by A101 on the My Fat Spouse forum