Me (31F) with my husband (30M) of three years. How to address the (literal) elephant in the room: his weight.

...Well. Three years after marriage and six years after our relationship began, I've got a nagging suspicion that my husband has started to let himself go.

It's an old, tired story. But one I admit I've never understood. Why stop caring just because you've been together for any particular amount of time? I don't see the logic.

Anyway, there's a stark difference to me between his lifestyle now and his lifestyle a few years ago. Or even a couple years ago. The change really kicked in after we got married. Not exactly sure what that says, but it can't be anything reassuring.

Quite frankly I've become increasingly frustrated these days over his eating habits. He has lapsed from someone who once ate a normal well-balanced diet, into someone who opts for unhealthy junk food whenever he can. Some days he doesn't eat a single real meal, he'll just graze on packaged snacks throughout the day. Other days it's fast food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Still other days, especially when he gets home from work late sometimes, it's a massive binge of garbage for his dinner in front of the tv because he doesn't feel like cooking. He'll come in, we'll talk a bit, then he carries however many bags of chips and cookies he can fit in his arms over to the couch where he plops himself down to gorge for several hours until we go to bed. I find this incredibly unattractive. Not to mention he sometimes gets horrible gas so then I'm kept up during the night from that.

We both work fulltime and split household duties like cooking between us. I still cook balanced meals with real ingredients like usual. He cooks high-fat foods or just throws something processed in the microwave. I don't want to eat fried chicken or frozen sausage pie or mac and cheese this often, so the effect has been that I've gradually begun doing more of the cooking. Now, I'd be happy to take that on if it meant my husband was therefore eating healthy food more than half the time, but this isn't the case. Even on nights when I've fully prepared a meal and he doesn't need to do anything but eat it, he'll still sometimes decide he doesn't feel like having whatever I made and will order Dominos or Chinese delivery instead. So I feel like I'm now doing extra work for no reason because he won't eat what I make and also won't cook decently healthy meals himself. It also just makes me feel unappreciated when he blows off my efforts to stuff himself with crap. Not to mention the waste of money.

We also have a two year old child who's now at the age where she can express food preferences and figure out what things are treats that we only permit her occasionally, like ice cream and candies. I'm getting concerned about her picking up on my husband's dietary habits. She's already started asking for whatever junk he has when she sees him eating it.

Then there's our sex life: it's pretty much gone. Because of all the weight he's gained, he no longer wants to have sex much, and the physical logistics are very difficult anyway. In a way this is okay with me as I don't find his body attractive like this, but I still wish in a general sense that I had the kind of sex life we used to have before all this.

A final problem is his appearance. He's so large now that his old clothes don't fit properly but he persists in wearing them. With pants he's out of luck and needed to buy new ones, but some shirts he'll still try to squeeze himself into and they'll ride halfway up his belly. It's very embarrassing to be in public with him like that. Plus there are very few flattering pant styles for men of his size, so a lot of the time he's just wearing sweatpants. Then on top of these things is the fact that his hygiene has slowly but steadily gone down the toilet. He showers maybe twice a week. Sometimes if I nag him enough he'll shower every other day, which I'm fine with. But I don't want to have to nag. If I don't remind him to shower he'd go a whole week without and by that point his hair is very unkempt and greasy, and his BO is horrible. I've tried to ask about why this has become such an issue, since he used to have no problem keeping up his hygiene. He just says washing himself is "a hassle," "annoying," and "a waste of time." He used to like the feeling of getting clean after a hot day and never complained about basic hygiene routines. When he does wash, he often will still smell faintly afterwards, so I don't know if he's even doing it thoroughly. The overall impression that he gives off here is a man who looks very sloppy and like he doesn't care. To me, that's a really unappealing attitude in a partner. Again, I don't know what it was about having a ceremony and a legal document that triggered this change but I don't like it.

Between the unnecessary extra spending, poor influence on our daughter, and how indifferent he is about his health and the way he looks, it's obvious I need to talk to him about the subject of his weight. On some level I wonder if he secretly regrets getting married and that's why he doesn't think he needs to care anymore. I can't think why this would be - he hasn't ever hinted at being unsatisfied with our relationship.

Those of you who've had to have a conversation like this, how did you do it? What are some ways to avoid defensiveness from your partner while still being clear it's a problem?

TL;DR: Husband seems to have lost the care he always used to have for self-maintenance and is letting himself go. I need advice for confronting him about his weight before it spirals out of control.

Submitted March 29, 2019 at 05:25PM by HistoricalMastodon https://ift.tt/2Wslx62