married women,does your man...?

My husband cares deeply. He is taller than I am and extremely fit. I am not super heavy, never have been--my usual weight is on the high side of healthy BMI (I am now like 0.5 into the overweight category)--but I will admit my current weight doesn't look good and he doesn't make any bones about that. He definitely loves me and is faithful, and we have been married a long time, but he doesn't tell me I am beautiful anymore because he doesn't see it. I am a little sad about that but I respect that it's his truth. I can't be indignant because I don't think my body looks good either; I just haven't yet been able to summon the strength to eat well enough to fix it. I try to view the subject as all my issue, but his disapproval does introduce a weird dynamic sometimes, in which I don't want to do what he wants me to do if I am unhappy with him or how he's acting.

I'm sorry. This makes me sad.

Me too. I work with a woman whose husband is the same way, and she is constantly worried about losing weight for him. He didn't want to touch her or even look at her when she was overweight. She had weight-loss surgery that went horribly awry and ended up having most of her stomach removed. She will now have a lifelong battle with malnutrition, but her husband is, in her words, more wiling to be seen with her in public now. That was pretty shocking to me.

This last situation bears no resemblance at all to mine. You can be sad for me if you want, but I don't think my husband's unwillingness to pretend 30 lbs of extra fat on me looks good makes this a Lifetime movie. He's right--it doesn't. Our love life is good, he says nice things to me, we go out and have a great time, and he's a good guy. He's just not a liar (he's an engineer, they are kind of unable to lie for social purposes). I actually have a hard time believing there are men who are themselves fit who don't care if their wives are fat. They are just smart enough to keep their mouths shut.