The Band and marriage 1/7/5

I do know that the Band has already saved my marriage. Not my band, but my husband’s. I had fallen into a deep, deep depression, and couldn’t find my way out of it. I finally went see someone about it, and I told her about Mike and his weight.

I know she didn’t believe me when I told her that he couldn’t walk through a doorway, but had to squeeze his way into every room, how his sleep apnea was keeping me awake at night wondering if this would be the night he died in his sleep. (Of course, worrying about his sleep apnea kept me from finding out about my own…) So she had him come in for a couple of combined sessions, and bingo! She was able to put her finger right on my issue – I was in mourning for him eminent death, but he was dieing a slow, slow death. And I was stuck there waiting for him to die. It was a pretty dark place to be.
When Mike finally had his Band installed, his real BMI (not calculated) was over 80%.

Part of this goes back to the notion of relationships, how we relate to food, to ourselves, to people who are important and not so important.
My mother and sister are convinced that once my honey loses all his weight that some other woman is going to “steal” him away. Ha, little do they know he wouldn’t even notice their machinations…

I do know that once I start to lose my excess weight that I will be have some serious issues that I will have to deal with, issues that concern being attractive to men. Right now I’m dealing with a couple of guys at school who think I’m pretty cute (oh sure, they do have a great eye…), but I get so freaked out by it. I’ve used my excess weight as a shield, but what do I do when I don’t have that shield anymore? The idea of being vulnerable scares the living hell out of me. It isn’t that I feel susceptible to temptation, but vulnerable as in no armor to face the cruel and vicious world.

I was a Navy Wife for 10 years when I was married to my first husband. The military has a very high rate of divorce, especially the Navy. You have people who are separated for sometimes years at a time, and people do change from what they see and experience. And it is really true; there are lots of people out there who simply shouldn’t be married to each other. I’m not sure if it is always a tragedy when these relationships break. I know that my divorce was the best thing that happened to me because it made me look at all the abusive relationships I’ve been in, and helped me to find my way to a better way of being.