Married with two affairs

I've been lurking around these forums for a while, and feeling slightly better reading all your stories than I'm not alone in my misery. I've been married for 11 years (I married young) to someone who started out thin, attractive, sportsy and energetic, and who is now a very overweight fatling bordering on obesity (she's around 224 pounds for 5 feet 9 inches), who doesn't take care of herself in any manner, stopped doing sports or even going out entirely, has no energy, developed sleep apnea, is working on developing other health issues, and is basically a snappy bitch 24/7. We have two kids, a 8yo boy and a 5yo girl, they're both smart and thin, neither one is fat, they both do a lot of sports outside school and they seem to be happy kids. My wife, besides self-destructing with food and being too lazy to go out and do things with the kids, is a fairly good mother, is good about maintaining a united front with me when we decide something about the kids, cooks healthy meals for them, she loves the kids, they love her back, so I don't want to upset the apple cart. I'm also the sole income source for the family and I've been supporting her for as long as we've been married. I work my ass off while she does nothing all day once the kids are in school, but I've never complained.

However I'm ashamed to do anything with her, I don't want to go out and be seen with her,  every time we talk without the kids around she bitches at me, and when she comes on to me about once a week or so, I am grossed out and pretend to be tired. I feel like I'm on the wrong end of a major bait-and-switch.

I'm thin (170 pounds for 6 feet two) and I'm a pretty smiley and confident person. My wife piled the pounds on quickly after we got married so all that resentment already existed back then, and I had an affair with a thin girl which she never knew about. I put an end to it once I decided to have a family. These days, once in a while attractive women still chat me up and it takes a lot of self-discipline to ignore it. Once I ended up at a convention (I go to a few for my job) in the hotel room of a very attractive, thin, feminine 40yo who had chatted me up, and I said goodnight and walked away. It wasn't easy.

I've had "the talk" with my wife about her weight and my concerns for her health, I've tried all sorts of things, same as everyone here it seems (gym, going on walks, only having healthy food in the house..) and she has all sorts of stalling techniques to avoid directly telling me no, but yet nothing ever happens and my resentment and the feeling I'm wasting my one life keeps building.

Late last year a woman who's close to my feminine ideal flirted with me ("offline", not on the computer) and I finally decided to pursue it. She's knows I'm married, she's thin, mid thirties, feminine, takes care of her looks, only speaks to say something intelligent, and above all she has a great and positive personality. She's got kids of her own and doesn't want to be in a relationship again due to very bad history with men, but still has needs. She also has a power job and interesting stories about it all the time. We became sex buddies and it's still ongoing, it's been over a year now. I can't begin to explain how good it feels to be desired by an attractive, feminine and very smart woman, to the point that I can barely walk in the door of her place before being jumped on. She's not after money (she makes more than I do!), there are no strings attached, no head games, we meet up for sex and that's that. Having this affair has done a lot to restore my self-confidence and blowing off steam from being unwilling to leave my wife since that would also probably mean leaving the kids I adore.

My sex buddy isn't always available, which is normal - she has a job and kids of her own. So this summer I met another woman, also mid thirties, also thin, great looking, with a genuine, very outgoing and energetic personality. Very different looking in every way than my mistress but just as hot. This time I'm the one who pursued her, and, it must be some sort of personal best, even taking into account my sleeping around days before getting married, we went from meeting to being in bed in about 4 hours total. I guess I needed some reassurance that hooking up with that first woman wasn't a fluke, that I could seduce even if the woman didn't give herself up on a platter, and that I am still actually attractive and don't actually deserve to just be with my fatling. She also has a high libido, no kids, single, she does know I'm married, she has a job as well, not after money. She would be happy to enter a relationship but I've told her upfront that I won't leave my family, ever. Yet that affair is also still ongoing.. Again I barely can walk in the door before we end up in bed. In 11 years, even though I support my fatling wife and even do quite a bit around the house, she has never done so much as make me a coffee (a stupid example, I don't need a maid, but just a sign of attention), even when we were dating and she was in the "selling the idea of marriage" period. I thought it was normal and I didn't deserve any attention.. yet both mistresses are full of small attentions, one of them even always has a coffee ready, stirred up and all, when I visit. I purposedly try to avoid an emotional affair so I don't discuss issues or my life much with them, but they're still both much more encouraging and motivating than my legitimate wife. How f-ed up is that.

I call one when the other isn't available, so basically I end up having sex with a thin, feminine girl 4 times a week on average, while remaining married to a bitchy unappreciative entitlement queen fatling, for the sake of the kids. I do use protection all the time. I'm not trying to set myself up to be found out so she takes the decision to divorce and free me - I really will be sticking around to be present for my kids and ensure they grow up healthy and happy like they are now. I guess my main concern is that I feel no guilt whatsoever and that I actually feel so much better about myself.

I have zero hope that my fatling will ever lose the weight, as she is still ballooning up further and using stalling technique after stalling technique to avoid direct confrontation on the issue, or restore her pre-marriage personality; so I have every intention to keep these affairs or even having new ones.

posted by The Trapped Thinling  on

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