Wrighteous Ray said:
Well. That didn't go well.
I'd be interested in hearing more about this if you're comfortable sharing.
Well, first of all, I didn't "tell her she's fat".
I've been really bummed on our relationship lately and she has noticed. Over the past week I actually noticed some more effort on her part, but it had just gotten to a point where I was beyond the tipping point where I could just turn it around. Her weight is part of it, but only a part.
So last night I was doing the dishes and she asked me if there was "something she did" or if I was just stressed from work, etc. (which I am). I told her lets talk after the kids go to bed.
So basically I just start out the conversation just telling her that I'm not happy with where our relationship is at, and I want to improve it. I told her that I can't remember the last time I came home from a long day and got a huge hug and a big sloppy kiss. I told her that I feel like I'm not getting enough affection from her. As a result, we are not communicating, don't spend quality time together, and just overall (from my perspective) have a personal relationship that is suffering.
Some of you might know the "love language" thing. About a year ago I had a conversation with her about this. I started off asking where I could improve. Her love language is words of encouragement (yeah, you can see where this is going). So I spend time (months?) trying to really encourage her, give her complements about what a great mom she is (she is), how she's doing a great job balancing kids and part time work, give her complements on her appearance when she looked nice, bringing home flowers or other things randomly, etc. She also asked me to work on my temper with the kids. I tried to work on that as well.
I told her that what I wanted her to improve on was her affection towards me. Random physical touching (doesn't even have to be sexual), kissing, etc. I needed to feel like her husband, not her roommate.
Anyway, after that conversation not much changed, even when I tried for months to consciously work on things from my end.
So back to last night, I bring up the conversation we had a year ago, how I felt like nothing changed on her end. She did not deny that. Eventually I talked about how she doesn't really seem happy (which she denied, offended that I thought that), that I think her self esteem has been down because of her weight and it seems to affect her personality. And that all that put together has just gradually made me lose interest, and that I wanted to fix it so we had the relationship we had 10 years ago. She admitted that she knew our relationship "could use improvement", but didn't think it was "that bad". I tried to emphasize that I wasn't putting everything on her, and that I knew there were things I needed to change, but I can't change them if we don't talk.
I really cannot remember every detail of the conversation, every word, but somehow through all that, the things she came away with were:
1. I think she's hideous (I don't)
2. She is not 'special' to me anymore (wrong)
She said she needs time to "process" things, so I am going to give her some space. I tried to be honest with her in a way that conveyed wanting to fix our relationship, and it didn't seem to work. Somehow I came out of the conversation as the bad guy.
So today I'm at work, more unhappy than I was yesterday.