Double Burden, double rainbow?

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Okay so earlier a member mentioned that sometimes having two people in the house, equally dissatisfied with their weight can be a double burden because you are focusing on your own journey but also pulling for the other person.

Let's start a discussion about ways of thinking, phrases that will help us think healthily about this. I've been reading "Take control of your life" by Dr. James B Richards and recommend this book to EVERYONE. It's about codependency, and I've found alot of it in my relationship with my husband. We're both co-food-addicts. We enable each other, rely on each other---and in unhealthy ways. As I read I'm learning to say:

"I love you and I'm okay, even if you are not. I love you where you are in your journey and I support you where you are."

But I'm also learning to say to myself:

"It's okay for me to be on a slightly different path right now. I can't change him. I can't control him. I can only change me."

These are phrases that help me during those infuriating moments when he might be gorging on four tacos from Rudy's while I chomp on two, or he's eating a whole pizza while I have one slice.

What are healthy ways you are learning to look at things? How have you overcome that double burden of your journey versus his? And how have you, if you have, overcome the "enabling each other" temptation?

I hope for all of us the double burden turns into a double rainbow where at the end, both our partners and us end up healthier, happier, and physically and emotionally lighter. If anything, there's no better person to understand where you have come from tan a partner who has gone through it too.....

Replies

  • SomeMorr
    SomeMorr Posts: 220 Member
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    My husband asked me last night if I thought he was a bad influence, and I honestly told him "sometimes yes" because when I am tired after work and he suggest Chinese takeout... sometimes I cave. It is hard and I know he wants to be healthy (but is not taking the opportunities that we have readily available) so I have told him that I wished he cared enough to take responsibiity for his own health - as he has said he is worried about dying at a young age but does nothing to work towards a healthy lifestyle. I don't expect him to be LIKE me, it is hard to not have expectations for my hubby too when I have such high expectations for myself. Maybe I need to read that book because instead of telling myself that he is on his own path and I cannot force him to do anything else... I just get frazzled.

    edit, I have gotten way better about caving to his temptations. Instead of ice cream last night I had an apple.. I really wanted ice cream. lol
  • alex_marie85
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    so I have told him that I wished he cared enough to take responsibiity for his own health - as he has said he is worried about dying at a young age but does nothing to work towards a healthy lifestyle.

    This is so what I want my hubby to do---take responsibility for his health.