jessicasz

A question popped into my head today as I was walking to the car after an appointment with my nutritionist: "Why am I doing this?" Really, why am I doing any of this? I never wanted to have surgery. I never wanted to change my body, the way I was made, for any reason. I never even wanted to diet but twelve years ago I found myself doing that after meeting the man who would later become my husband. In my mind, my weight was the reason for our lack of intimacy and I wanted so badly for him to want me. Cue the yo-yo / spiral of me needing intimacy & dieting in order to look better for him, having some weight loss success, still not getting the intimacy I desire, getting angry / depressed & quitting the diet, going numb & gaining the weight back, getting over it and ignoring the issue until the cycle starts over again. So am I doing this for him, in yet another attempt to gain the intimacy I so desperately crave, or am I doing this for me, to feel better about myself, to be able to do the physical activities I'd like to do? I really don't know. I am at a loss and quite frankly I feel pretty awful right now. I know for a fact that losing the weight will not help our intimacy issues - we discovered the cause/reason after a handful of sessions with a therapist (simply put, it's his problem). I'm probably stuck in a behavior / thought cycle that is ignoring all logic. I have a bad habit of blaming myself for every problem and never wanting to believe that fixing it is out of my control. On top of this I feel like I have nobody to talk to. Which is why I'm here. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks for reading.

I told my husband (obviously, lol) and my sister. I don't have a lot of people to tell. I wish I could tell my mom, she would be excellent support since she's had it done already (like... 15-20 years ago?), but she is constantly throwing it in my face (often during arguments) that I need gastric bypass that it makes me not want to confide in her at all, about anything.

If all goes as planned mine should be sometime in June / July / August. My birthday is in August so I'm hoping to have it done before then (totally an arbitrary goal but it'll feel like a really weird birthday present to myself, lol). I've had the first appointment with the surgeon, he wants me to lose 15 pounds before he'll schedule surgery (not an insurance requirement, probably just to see if I can follow instructions or something?). Had an appointment with the nutritionist yesterday and I can't do the psych eval until I've started a downward trend in my weight. But... progress. Happy to be among you, my fellow summer surgery buddies.

Thanks everyone so much for your thoughts. You've all really helped. Hubby and I had a "discussion" last night (there were lots of tears) and we have a plan of action. I'm going to do some soul-searching to figure out the real reason why I'm wanting the surgery. He's going to go to therapy. I'm probably also going to go to therapy. I think we'll be ok.

@Creekimp13 The ridiculous thing is - my relationship with my husband is fricken perfect aside from our intimacy issues. He's my best friend & my rock... the one I can always count on to be in my corner. You're right though - I do need to talk to a therapist. Thank you for your thoughts.