Weight

Just to reiterate, the update schedule on this blog is not multiple times a day or week, but instead when things happen in my married life that I think warrant a post. From the fact that I update once a month or two, you should get an idea of how uneventful this boring gruel called marriage is.

I think I've covered all of the bases on marriage, but I've also gotten requests for labels on my posts from smart phone users because they aren't showing up on the top page. I've updated the top post with those links at the bottom for easy access.

Now to the news. I've been about thirty pounds overweight for the last two or three years, and though it didn't show, I still wanted to look better for my family. After a very long time spent trying to effectively lose weight, I've found that exercise doesn't do much to lessen the pounds, but dieting does. With that in mind, I've found my exceedingly low metabolism's resting caloric rate and switched to a diet of a small amount of food every day with vitamin supplements, and the weight is just dropping off.

I also told my wife about this, and she noticed my ribs finally starting to poke out and my jawline becoming much more manly and distinct. But after a month or two of me losing ten or fifteen pounds, my wife had remained the same size.

About two or three weeks ago, I saw her sitting in a chair wearing shorts and noticed her thunder thighs. I stopped walking past her, then silently reached down to lift one of her legs to turn it over and inspect it.

"Are you dieting?" I asked.

She remained silent.

"Why not?" I asked.

"I didn't take it seriously," she asked.

"Why not?" I repeated, eyes narrowing. I already knew the answer was because she's my wife and can't get "fired" from this job while we have our son.

She got silent again, then answered, "I'm sorry. I'll go back on it."

A few days later, she did just that, but when I asked her how she was doing with her weight and appetite, she got mad. "Can you stop asking me?!" she demanded, "It's too much pressu..."

That's as far as she got before I shot her murder eyes, tilted my head up in condescension, spun around and charged into the bedroom to get ready for my shower. I ignored her for the next several hours, not even seeing a text that she sent me only a minute after I entered the bedroom explaining her hard work and how she wanted to look good for me. I only saw the preview and ignored it until the next morning, where I was still doing my best to make her feel isolated and uncomfortable.

That night, she came to me to show me some ribs sticking out, and how happy she was to be dropping pounds. I gave her a very brief compliment, then it was back to life as usual. Imagine the advice you would have gotten from Team Woman about giving her space, loving her for who she is, letting her be who she wants to be, accepting anything and everything she does and how you should feel like a complete loser for having any kind of standard for your wife.

Now, I don't doubt that she might end up quitting the diet again in the next few weeks, at which point I will overtake her and actually weigh less than she does (this should happen in about two or three months). I'm so removed from caring about the outcome, though, that I really don't care if she hits four hundred pounds. I'll just stop sleeping with and touching her; I'm here to protect my son, after all.

In other news, in the past week, I've also had a strange callback to the many moments in my single time when I had flashes of euphoria that I've detailed in several of my Then and Now posts, where I:

- See or feel something great
- The world opens up and becomes crystal clear
- A shiver goes up my spine
- I feel free, open and invincible
- The image of that scene is burned into my permanent memory
- Seconds later, it all stops

This happened around twenty or thirty times in the six months I was a free man abroad, but only once or twice in the seven years since. I wonder if I'll feel another flash in 2027 when my son is a happy, mature college student and ready to see the world as a free man without marriage, and I can live again, knowing he has been protected and provided for as best as I could have done.