Any married folks trying to improve?

explodingmango wrote: »

It started the other way around for me, but it's resulted in a bit of a feedback loop - the more I stay on top of my health, the better things get between us; the better things get, the more I feel encouraged to keep it up.

See, my boyfriend and I have been living together on essentially a "marriage lite" basis since the beginning of the year. This summer, we got officially engaged, and...that changed everything and nothing at the same time. I had a panic attack over how I'm going to look in the wedding photos - and that's still an issue - but after I had a massive relapse of my eating disorder because of it something finally all clicked together and I realized I'm going to end up ruining not just the photos, but both of our lives if I don't get on top of it, and ever since then things have improved a lot in all regards. Our relationship was great before, but it's steadily gotten even better over the past month because I'm taking more initiative to find us things to do together, and trying to take the pressure of my disorder off him.

See, when my disorder causes a breakdown...it's ugly. This last time I tried to perform a tummy tuck and thigh lift on myself with a broken plastic coat hanger (...look, it's a BREAKDOWN, these things aren't logical). And...I still have it; it's only been about a month that I've been sticking to active recovery, but even when it's trying to drag me back down and I don't care about the harm I do to myself, I can remember that it's not fair to him to make him deal with that, it scares the living hell out of him and even if I'm in the moment and can't understand why he cares, I can still remember how upset he got last time. That helps me transition into reminding myself that I'm never even going to be able to improve my appearance by giving in to disordered impulses anyway because part of my disorder involves binge eating, and that helps me get back on track with fully remembering how and why I'm recovering.

The single biggest change I've made is that I've been trying to focus on what I'm capable of first, and let appearance follow that. I'm running my first 5K a week from tomorrow, and after that we're going on a date to the aquarium. In December, he's going to do his first 5K fun run with me - it will probably be more of a walk than a run for him, and I'll probably even have to carry him for some of the distance, but it's going to be a lot of fun. I've signed up for a local climbing gym where I get one free guest pass per month - and that's about how often he feels up to doing something that intense, so it's effectively two memberships for the price of one. And, I've signed up for a bunch of obstacle course races - running those has never been and will never be his thing (he hates getting dirty, whereas I've passed on a few events because I wouldn't get dirty enough ) but he sure has been excited about coming to watch and be involved in the afterparties! That marks a dramatic change from when we only had big exciting events to go to ~3 times a year, and they often got soured by the fact that I couldn't stand the way I looked in pictures.

Also, one thing that keeps me motivated is knowing that the better I take care of myself, the better he ends up taking care of himself. He's chronically ill, which is actually...a huge part of the reason we're together. See, shortly before we met, he had a flare that nearly killed him. We met online through a mutual friend because he was pretty much living on the internet while he was recovering, and he actually had a terrible first impression of me due to a couple jerks he used to know who had a few surface similarities to me...but once this friend of ours got us together and he found out I also had digestive system issues, he started getting a lot more comfortable with me. Our icebreaker was donuts and intestinal pain. I still laugh every time I think about that. But, that's a bit of a tangent - the main point is, since we've gotten together, his recovery has gone a lot faster. Before we met, he was barely managing to survive through the fear that eating anything would cause him another flare. In the time that we've known each other and I've been cooking for him, he's gained about 30 pounds (putting him nicely in the upper half of the healthy body fat percentage range, which is ideal for him). The fact that he's projecting that he'll be up to running/walking/being carried for a total distance of 3 miles in December is a big damned deal considering that when we met, he didn't have the core strength to even sit upright for extended periods of time. But...we still haven't been managing things as well as we probably could. His strength and stamina are still pretty low, and we still haven't done a good job of figuring out any trigger foods he may have...that's where these recent changes come in. If I have more fun things to do where I can take him with me, then he has more opportunities to work on building himself up without it really feeling like work. If I'm good at logging what I eat, then that encourages him to do the same and see if he can find a correlation between certain foods and sickness.

But...the thing about all this is, it works because it started from a relationship that was already good, and we're both on board with it. And it might also work if there's a problem in a relationship, but only if it's something like "we never do anything together anymore" or you just know you're regularly in a bad mood because you physically feel bad. Getting in better shape isn't a magical cure for relationship issues, and in fact it can make things worse if it's something you're trying to do together but you're not equally on board (and that's not even just true for marriage or dating; this is a small but significant part of why I dumped my ex-roommate). And if your partner's main problem with you is aesthetic? Dump the whole partner; they're not long-term relationship material. If they have a problem with how you look because you gained 10 pounds, they're probably gonna have a HUGE problem when you get saggy and wrinkly and believe me, you don't want to deal with that. I may be young, but I've seen enough failed relationships in my family to know this fact.

And, that was a bit longer than I intended it to be, but at least I think I've said everything I need to say. tl;dr: getting on top of health and fitness can be great for a relationship for various reasons, and maintaining a good relationship and being a good partner can be good motivation to stay on top of health and fitness, but getting a partner won't magically give you motivation, and getting in shape won't magically cure all your relationship issues.