My weight gain after my husband’s affair has made me feel even worse about myself and my marriage
It’s very normal to examine your appearance after your spouse cheats on you or has an affair. We wonder if we are not pretty enough, thin enough, attractive enough, or playful enough. We wonder if the other woman looks better than us, and as a result we can be very hard on ourselves.
Worse yet, in the days after the adventure, we often just don’t have the energy to worry or focus on our appearance. We hardly have any energy to function let alone worry about things that are not essential. And so, we can “let go” little by little at a time when we are too aware of the way we see ourselves.
A wife might lament, “I found out that my husband had been cheating on me about four months ago. I asked him to leave. I didn’t want to see him. Lately, we have been talking but not living together. And this time period has been very lonely and difficult for me.” I often walk my dogs in the morning and just think about things. Since I don’t want to go to an empty house, I usually stop at a coffee shop and have a coffee and danish. I also haven’t been to the gym in a while because I don’t I want to be with people. As a result, I have gained a noticeable amount of weight. This makes me feel even worse about myself. One day, my husband came unannounced. I opened the door without makeup and in tattered clothes. My husband had a He made small talk with me, but then he left shortly after. His facial expressions made it quite clear to me that he was surprised by my appearance. And now all of this makes me feel like I’ve taken a big step back.”
I want to suggest you be kinder to yourself. As anyone who has had a cheating spouse knows, this is a pain like no other. This is not a time when you are expected to be at your best. And fighting is absolutely understandable. More than any other time, it is important that you support yourself. Calling yourself a fat pig is not aligned with this and probably not accurate either.
It’s also very normal to look for flaws in our appearance and personality in the hope that this will tell us everything we need to know about why our husband cheated on us. Here’s what you need to understand about it. The answers are not within us. They lie within it. And nothing in our appearance or personality could have led to this at all. Men with beautiful, sweet, understanding wives cheat. And this has nothing to do with the wife.
So if you’re looking for a reason, check it out. Not to you. Now, if improving your appearance will make you feel better, then I encourage you to do so. Getting fitter was really very empowering for me during my recovery. And I have maintained this change in my lifestyle because after the increase in my self-confidence, I noticed a great benefit in reducing stress and an overall sense of well-being. I feel much worse physically and mentally if I don’t exercise. I want to keep those benefits and this doesn’t have much to do with my marriage, but it has a lot to do with me.
And it doesn’t have to be big changes or efforts that you make at first. You don’t have to assume anything that feels overwhelming. Maybe you just drink skim milk and skip the danish. Maybe you can walk home from the cafeteria or extend your walk a bit. I found Yoga and Pilates extremely comforting during my recovery. During that time, I tended to have a lot of tension in my shoulders. And I literally found myself hunched over and hunched over. Yoga and Pilates fixed this problem and strengthened my core so that I had a flat stomach for the first time in many years and the stress reduction benefits were enormous. This made a huge difference in how I looked and felt. And I never felt like I was wearing myself out or punishing myself. It felt like a treat to my body, actually. Learning to lean into my breath and breathe into my pain released so much tension and allowed my body to relax at a time when it drastically needed it.
But if you are going to make any changes or improvements, do it for yourself and your own self-esteem. Do it out of love for yourself, but not out of a desire to change yourself because you think you’re not good enough or up to the task. Because you absolutely are. If you think you could use some improvement in your fitness level, by all means go after it because there are benefits to this other than the way you look. But don’t beat yourself up or break down. None of this is your fault.
