Most Painful Thing I Have Lived Through...

When people come to this website for the first time, they are appalled by what they read. They have understandable responses. The responses are the same as those on any other site or blog that discusses obese significant others. They think those of us who are dealing with an obese significant other are being shallow because we cannot love the person the “way he or she is.” I read those responses and I think, “Spoken like someone who isn't dealing with an obese spouse (girlfriend, boyfriend, etc.)” If they could walk a mile in our shoes, they would quickly be silent or perhaps join us in our mantra. By the time a person posts their feelings on this website, they are to the point of anger and they need to vent. They are trying not to vent at their obese significant other (and by this time, I am thinking I need to shorten that to OSO – Obese Significant Other). They love that person, and don't want to hurt his or her feelings. Where else is there to go? It is so easy to scold the angry person, and tell him or her she is the bad guy. Oh, but what emotions lie underneath the anger. I look at my OSO and what comes to me first is not a thought, but a deep, visceral reaction. I have worked for months to over come this reaction, and I cannot. I look, and cannot quell the repulsion that rises from somewhere primal within me. I am a woman, and my OSO is a man. What is repulsed by sight is confirmed through touch. Indeed, magnified through touch. His shape, with full hips, buttocks, and thighs, large belly and ample man boobs, is more comparable to a female than a male. I have no lesbian leanings. This repugnant tactile sensation causes me to recoil. I look at his form, as he 
lay under the sheets, and what I see is a fat woman, not a man. When I hug him, its conjures childhood memories of my cuddling with my grandmother. There is no room for two in the tub or the shower, and if there were, I would not join him. When he rolls over in bed, its like the rolling of a whale. At night his breathing is the strained and loud. Breathing of a fat person. When he speaks, his double chin and jowls wobble. When he laughs, his belly undulates like the baffles of a waterbed. When he walks away, his back parts and the way he fits into jeans remind me of a large, loose-skinned elephant. His movements are awkward and comical. 
On hot days, sweat drips from underneath his man boobs and wets his shirt. He tires easily from the least exertion. When he does too much work, his inner thighs become chaffed from rubbing 
together. He wheezes. He eats like every meal is his first after a week of starvation. He talks about food with zeal, as if it were some great, amazing hobby and all the rest of us are interested. Literally everything in life is affected by his size, nothing is left untouched. 
I haven't gotten to the bedroom yet. When we used to make love, he had to be partially clothed. 
Looking at him turned me off so bad, he had to stay covered up. We have not ever made love, skin to skin. We have not rolled and tumbled like lovers do. When we spoon, I get a big belly in my back. You can imagine how awkward certain positions are. And I could not bring myself to be on top because the view is so bad. I cannot even look at his face surrounded by all that fat pooling around it. I used to want it only when I was really horney. Now I don't want it at all. Its sad, because he is a very attentive lover who is technically good in bed and cares about my orgasm. But I like active, reciprocal sex and cannot bring myself to pleasure him. I never want to stick around afterward and hold him, there is nothing about his body I like. It harps at my mind that I ignore the little signals he sends out that lets me know he wants sex or to be affectionate. It makes me feel guilty that there is nothing on his body I long to caress when he 
comes home after being away. It does not matter any more how well he treats me, how kind he is, how helpful he is around the house. It no longer matters how much money he makes. The energy about him and around us that always used to be there still there. These all become horrible teasers. I get turned on by his personality and have no where to go with it in an intimate expression .I can not bond with him. This is absolute hell on earth. His wonderful aspects and personality only make me resent his obesity more.. Now when I think of him, my mind instantly goes to that fat body and that sunken feeling sets in. There is no excitement of anticipation in the thought of him anymore. Its been swallowed up in fat. . I will always manage to find someone I can talk well with, like I do with him. This is called a friend. We have discussed marriage, and I do not want to have a marriage with just a friend. I want a 
lover. I no longer have one in him. I cannot bring myself to marry someone I want to change or who I am not 100% crazy about. And I battle feelings of guilt over the fact that what would restore my being in love with him would be if he lost weight. Indeed, I will always love his person, but I cannot be IN love with him and his fat anymore. My parents think he's great. He has a wonderful personality. My boys wonder when we are going to get married. The neighbor drops hints about it. Most people find him engaging, helpful, smart, witty,etc. He is perfect in every way. I just would have to be okay with a marriage that had no intimacy, for the second time. Dont they see what I am dealing with? None of them have OSO's. None of them get it. Now when I think of him, I grieve the lost future. Whether I stay with him or not, the future I dreamed of is gone. Don't look forward to it. I have such disappointment. Simple things that bind me to him don't exist. Simple things that elevate the relationship to love and not just roommates dont exist. No long walks, no cuddling on the couch as we watch TV, no sex initiated by me, no adoring looks and flirting caresses. No dancing or going to the beach. No feeling proud to be with him in public. My attraction is waning, fast becoming zippo. The disappointment is crushing. I have to admit I can no longer compensate for or fake my way through the feelings I have in response to his body. Even a few hours alone with him has become agonizing. He has no idea all this is going on in me. The lack of power over any of it is depressing. I grow more despondent and immobilized by bleakness daily. We have talked about it a few times, his weight and its affect on me. I dont understand how obese people can live their lives unaware that their looks and way of life, (indeed, fat is a lifestyle, not just a size) is a turn off to those of us who are not. He acts surprised that I cannot be the intelligent, 
deep, adult and accept him for who he is. He does not see the sedentary, food centered and fat-related complaints for the turn offs they are. He has been this way so long. He used to be an athletic, handsome, energetic person. I am being supportive, but its wearing on me. I have enough to deal with being a single mom. I am also angry at the things the food industry has added to our food that attributes to obesity in our country. It adds fat, tricks the hunger signals, turns off satiety signals: I was born in 1962, and as a child do not recall seeing many fat people- anywhere. That was when food was food, for the most part, and not chemicals and processed goo. , I am a divorced 47 year old woman who passes easily for 37, or even younger. This man was my HS sweetheart. We hooked up after talking on the phone for months. I was not prepared for his size when we first met. I felt guilty over my initial reaction to him and have been trying to over come it ever since. Its hell to get along with someone perfectly in every area but one. He is trying to loose the weight, but has plateaued at 265 or so for months. He used to be 320. I have known him for almost 3 years. What will he look like when all the weight is gone? The thought of all that loose skin frightens me too. I have memories of us and what we used to do when we were young, and he is not that person anymore. I miss those things and I am afraid they never will be again. This is killing me. His devotion to me almost makes me sick because I am to the point where I can no longer return it. We dont have any children together, but my sons know him and love him more than their own dad. So, in a way I am stuck. What hurts the most is that I feel denied that wonderful obsessive, crazy, “cant keep my hands off you” honeymoon period that most people have when they hook up with someone they love. I did 
not have that after my first marriage. The abuse started too soon, it messed up my trust, and I was too stupid to leave. For me, life has been very ironically cruel. If there is a God who overlooks our affairs and wants whats best for us, he has a terrible sense of humor in expressing it. I came out of a bad marriage looking for love. I thought I had found it again, only to realize I am going from one man I cannot touch, to another one. One long, sexless relationship to another. (First husband was normal weight, but abusive). I never thought, among all the things I have had to deal with in life up till now, that I would ever experience love with an obese person. It has been undeniably the most painful thing I have ever lived through. So when newbies come to this site, they have no clue what really lies beneath the surface 
of the anger. Perhaps I have helped, in my own way, them to understand. 
And now I have put my innermost thoughts and emotions here for the public to read. It 
cheapens them, since I know the picking apart that will happen in subsequent comments. Fire away.

Those who are saying it cannot be done are interrupting those who are already doing it.

Posted by chevalle d'or on the My Fat Spouse Forum click here to read more