Unsupportive hubby: my email to him

Okay, so I sent hubby the below email of 'airing grievances'. PS hubby and tend  to have better communications via email or text.  We're in-the-moment people and sometimes end up speaking before our 'verbal filter' is applied.  Often times we email or text, that gives the other one the chance of avoiding a heat of a moment response that we may regret later. 

So here is the email I sent , I hope it helps him understand my feelings about this. I welcome all constructive criticim.

 

I don't know how best to put the title of this email, so away we go.   I guess you weren't taking me seriously about me going forward with the weight loss surgery, even though I talked about it A LOT, and talked about it seriously.  I do remember you telling me that you would support my decision, but I guess that is what you said to pacify me with the hopes that I wouldn't go through with this.   I'm not looking for the 'easy way out', by far.  The 'easy way out' is to continue on my path of calorie counting and working out on my gazelle, and hopefully losing a 10th of a pound every other week.  I don't pig out when you're not home.  I monitor my calories and intake.  I CAN'T do another 500-calorie-a-day diet again, not like this, not without surgery, it's too difficult being hungry all of the time.   And for you to consider sleeve gastrectomy as 'the easy way out', I would just ask you to google it, to browse and see the diets that the patients have had to undergo before and after the surgery. 
I want you to know that I have done my research.  Of all surgeries, this has the HIGHEST success rate with the LOWEST possible side effects and complications.  It's permanent, which is what I need after a lifelong struggle with losing weight (and maintaining weight loss).   I can't possibly begin to make you understand how much this means to me, but I'll try.   I've struggled with weight loss my ENTIRE life.  I've been anorexic, taken over the counter diet pills, done workouts and fasted, and done everything short of prescription diet pills, which are really expensive.  I don't know what else to do.  Any changes I see are short-lived.   I think you think that since I work from home, I gorge myself on food all day, which is NOT the case.  I have my yogurt/granola for breakfast at 10:15, then a light lunch of maybe a sandwich or just lunch meat and my special K crackers, then a halfway sensible dinner.  I count my calories and it's usually at or below 1200 calories a day.  I rarely snack.  Even if I'm not running marathons, I'm trying, really really trying.    You have no idea what it's like being fat and disgusted with yourself.  Then finding out that there is something that I can do to make my life better.  I've weighed the risks and benefits, and I can tell you the risks outweigh the benefits more than you can possibly imagine.   You told me that whatever my decision is, you would stand behind me and support me, then last night you basically contradicted yourself, then made me feel like a loser who just wants this surgery for 'the easy way out'.  This is SO not the 'easy way out'. I've read the risks of the after-surgery life.  This is NOT easy, but it's effective in the long term.   I've asked you before if you want to know how much I weigh, and you said you didn't care how much I weighed.  Well I DO care.  As of right now, I weigh 235 lbs.  The normal weight for someone my height is 130lbs.  That means I'm over 100 lbs overweight.  Even doing hCG, the lowest I got was 204.  Do you know how much I hate that diet, being starving all of the time?  Do you have any idea how disgusting I feel every day, seeing myself in the mirror?  Your opinion is that this is too extreme, that I should be able to lose weight normally by exercise and diet, but I've done that, and I've never had more than a month of success before things make a turn for the worse when I start introducing 'normal' foods into my diet.   Part of my depression is my self-loathing.  I don't deserve any of this.  I don't deserve to be fat.  I don't deserve to have a good husband and a nice house and good kids and a nice car.  It's because I'm too fat, too disgusted wit myself, I'm at my wit's end and know that this will be the change that I need in order to put my life on track and get me where I need to be.  How can I be happy in my life when I can't run around with my kids.  When walking through an amusement park and is exhausting: not from lack of exercise, but from carrying 100 lbs of extra weight around with me.   I'm not doing this surgery for you.  I'm doing this for ME.  I know I qualify by our insurance standards: my BMI is over 40, I have hypertension, high cholesterol and severe depression.  Why do I snap and be a ***** regularly?  Because I don't know what else to do.  I hate myself and I hate what I've become. I hate feeling like I'm unattractive and fat.  I'm depressed, and depression medication doesn't help me overlook the fact that I'm disgusted with myself.   And please spare me the line of you still loving me as fat as I am.  Please don't tell me that I'm not fat or that you don't love me any less.  While your approval for this is really important to me, I can do this without your support if I must.  I guess I was deluded by thinking you would remain to be a positive supporter knowing that I need to do this for myself, to give myself a healthy life that I feel I am capable of and I deserve.   Do you know how depressing it is knowing I have an awesome life: great house, amazing husband, 2 great (sometimes annoying) kids, a great job, a nice car... but I can't enjoy any aspect of my life because all I see every day is a disgusting fat person who doesn't deserve what she has?   I want to feel slender and sexy.  I want to dress up in pretty clothes and strut my stuff beside you.  I want to feel good about myself.  I want to feel sexy when we're having sex, not worrying about what fat roll is jiggling the most.   I am doing this because it means so much to me.  This is NOT the easy way out.  I know the before/after diet is rigorous and it will take a lot of hard work.  I'm prepared to make those changes when I know that those changes will reach an end result of me finally feeling good about myself and truly being happy in my life.   I am desperate for your support in this, I really do want you to be with me as a part of this journey, but I don't want you to go against your will.  If you do decide you want to be a part of this, then good.  If you decide that you don't want to deal with it, all I ask is for you to be patient with me during this journey, and please take me to/pick me up from the hospital when I do have the surgery.  Otherwise, I am prepared to take this step towards the beginning of my new healthy, happy life  even if I have to do this alone.   I love you.  I just hope you love me enough to support my decision.    If you don't want to go with me to the seminar, that's fine, but maybe it'll help provide you some information regarding my decision, and may possibly help you to see things in a different light.  All I can do is hope to have the support of my husband, but if not, I'll deal with this as best as I can.  For better or worse, so the wedding vows went.  This is my worse at the moment.  I take you as you are, and support you in your decisions.  I only ask for the same respect in return.   I'm sorry I'm a disappointment to you, I'm sorry I'm a disappointment to myself, and I just hope that one day in the future, post-surgery, I'll be happier and content with my life, be more energetic, and as a result, make you happier.    I love you so much.    

This was a great letter to your husband and I hope that after he reads it, he will better understand your struggle and support you.  Have you ever had him read some of the post on this forum?  Maybe if he reads other post and see that you are not the only one out there that has struggled and he sees the before and after pics, that might help.

I hope everything works out but you have to do this for you and you only!

Okay, you asked for constructive criticism, so here goes.  He'll read this and go, "I have no idea what to do here - I don't speak the same language".  You wrote it talking a lot about feelings, which is how women talk to each other.  Men speak in actions, and want nothing more from their woman to be told what it is that they want so that they can go hunt it down and kill it for them.

So what do you want from your hubby?  Support?  What does that look like for you?  Be specific.  Does it mean going to doctor meetings and holding your hand?  Joining a health club together?  Making an appointment 4 times a week to go walking with you?  Give him a list of things he can actually do for you.  Remember, he's afraid of losing you, afraid of seeing you in pain, and afraid that you won't love him after surgery.  He's dealing with issues same as you.  

You've already made up your mind to take your health into your own hands - you don't need his permission to do that.  If you don't ask specifically for what you want from him you'll get nothing in return.

This. Men need an instruction manual. Asking for "emotional support" is alien speak to most men. 

Email is good to a point but I think you also need to be able to sit down and have the uncomfortable talk face to face. Men are still human and may have fears and concerns that they dont express. Ask him to pinpoint those. It will be give and take - identify what y ou need from him and then listen to what he needs from you. A guy told me once that he couldn't take all the self loathing talk from his wife and it was really hard for him ...it kind of made me really think about the emotional impact of our jounrey on men in our lives. 

I am sorry to hear that your husband has changed his position to support you. One of my friend's husband did the same thing. She had him go with her to meet with the surgeon and afterwards he was "on board". I agree with stating what support means to you. I have not told my family yet. When I do tell them I will be clear with what I "need from them". 

You are not alone on the self hatred. As I have progressed through this process, I discovered that hating myself could be a negative force. I decided to accept the fact that I don't like how I look right now but with every action that I do to make the needed changes does result in feeling good about myself. I have stopped looking for other's to approve my decisions. Doing that has resulted in me carrying around an extra 100 plus pounds.   

I will pray that your husband will at least go to the orientation so that he can be informed.  

 

 

I'm independent and know that if worse comes to worse, I can and will do this on my own. I just want my husband beside me to provide emotional support and courage as I go through this journey. 

This is change will affect everyone in the family, and I need him there as an emotional rock to help me through one of the biggest changes of my life.  I want him to be there for me, the way I've been there for him through the years. I don't want to HAVE to face this alone, but I will. 

I understand. No one can talk me out of this decision!  I was talking to my friend's husband and he said that he was against it at first cuz he loved her and was afraid to loose her. He said that he was glad that she did it because she is so much healthier. 

Sending good thoughts your way! :)

 

What a wonderful, honest letter.  I hope he'll give you the support you need.  I have a feeling once you've "survived" surgery and he sees you working your sleeve, he'll be on board.  If not this is a great place to get support.  Good luck Josie:)

Bless your heart. I know this has to be so hard on you.  Just do it.  Like you said, this is for YOU!!  My boyfriend thought this was the easy way out too but he supported me (or at least pretended to).  He got a rude awakening when he saw what I've been going through with this whole process. He now tells people "My hat's off to her!  I could NOT do it"!  He didn't understand how serious this is. He does now.  He says he wouldn't have made it through the liquid pre-op diet.  People who don't struggle like we do don't understand. 

Also, I just wanted to mention this.  I was disappointment about my hunger level after surgery. I thought it would be way less.  It's not really.  At least not yet.  But I'm only three weeks out.  I don't think this surgery is not guaranteed to make you less hungry.  BUT, it is working ad that can't be denied. :)

Good luck!!

I am not trying to be rude or mean in any way, but (and this is from MY personal experience) do you think that perhaps you want him to agree with your decision and to convince him that this is not the easy way out?

I was on the same boat as you for the lap band, he did not agree with it, is not that he didn't support me or my decision he just didn't think it would work for me, because he knows me and I told him "I will never know if I don't try" and he came with me to every meeting that he could and he said it a couple of times "you are taking the easy way out because you don't want to put in the work" and truth be told I was, I never put in the work with band, never, I woke up from surgery and a couple of hours later I was hungry, really hungry and not head hunger I mean hungry and he was cooking for himself because he is 5' 10" and 145 lbs and he has to eat and I ask him if I could lick the skin of his chicken, that's how hungry I was.

2 years later I sit here at the same weight I started at and I am not going to lie to you I haven't put in the work and I'm hoping the sleeve works for me and i am not as hungry as I am with the band.

I'm sorry about the big reply, I just see so much of you in me, your letter touched me because I feel the same way.

He loves you and the weight truly doesn't matter to them like it does to us, in my relationship is the same thing, I feel fat, I don't want to have sex,  don't touch my belly, dont look at me, and the list goes on and on.

I don't know if you can change his mind, only you know that but in my case I never did and the way I took it was not that he didn't support me or my decision but his personal opinion was that people that get bariatric surgery are taking the easy way out, this opinion comes from a person that has never been overweight in his life, never had to count a calorie never had to take hcg shots and eat 500 calories a day for 2 months to lose 40 lbs and gain them all back in 3 months.

I feel you , I feel your pain, you want him to be compassionate and to understand and go to every meeting and root for you (or that may just be me) but that may not happen, ever until you prove him that you worked your ass off to lose the weight a year from now...

This time around for the sleeve, my husband has not said anything, he has come with me to every meeting, specially the info session and to the doctor, nutritionist and he is taking time off to take care of me after surgery so maybe if your hubby hears and sees everything he will be on board, or maybe he will just go with you, keep his mouth shut and pray for the best like mine does...

best of luck in everything xoxo