I am married to an ACOC wife.

Okay, your are right.

Thanks.

It's ok to feel how you feel optrepeat. Many women are very sensitive to issues of weight and body image. That is why you'll get a negative response from some women. But I feel a spouse letting their body go is really another form of abuse. Man or woman. Part of the contract of marriage is to be your best for your partner and to try to please them. We shouldn't callously discard a person for their mistakes, but we can certainly demand they own up to them and try to do better for themselves and the marriage. If they refuse, how can we trust them in general. Kudos to you for your honesty and honorable attempt to help your wife.

StrongerMan....most of the time there is a reason SOMEONE (male or female) stops taking care of their body - many times it stems from depression or other things. Not all the responses were negative!

Finding out the real issue is most important - and it does sound like optrepeat is doing that. Why would someone break a contract...why would they sabotage their marriage?

Yes, being disappointed in your partner happens and you should be able to be open and honest about it..but being a bully is not helpful.

If you read... he was looking for advice from others that faced some of the same challenges his wife faces and we were honest about it! It's up to him to figure out the rest.

Stronger Man,

Thanks. I agree about the general female response. Also, I realize I am on a ACOC Forum...and really I specifically was looking for a place like this because I believe some(not all) of our marriage problems stem from my wife not managing things very well over the last 22 years.

I should say its been a slow, methodical, "silent" but growing issue.

I am well read enough to know that two really mentally and physically healthy people have a hard enough time doing marriage. When you start to bring in mental issues or physical ones it compounds this issue.

I believe my wife and I have a long road ahead of us.
We have some fun together. We love our dogs. We laugh. We love our kids, our pool, hot tub, kayaking.

We went for a walk with the dogs the other day and didn't argue (except for literally 30 seconds) and had fun.

Seems like a little thing but its those little things that add up over the years....

Things are "iffy" right now. We had a long talk last week and I kind of laid my thoughts out for her.

She was defensive about ANY of the ACOC stuff and categorically denied that she had any symptoms. In other words she feels 100% over her childhood and its not really affecting her.

That was tough for me....but I fully expected her to be defensive EVEN THOUGH is was super clear that I the reason I was bringing it up was I care about her and our marriage. I told her I think she should get a counselor and she seemed receptive but she has not done anything about it yet.

She didn't even remember what she told me 8.5 months ago. I think she blocked it out.

Positive news.

My wife agreed to

1. Get a counselor for herself. She said she does have stuff to work on

2. Agreed to doing marriage counseling and asked me to find someone

I'm glad to hear it optrepeat. My most recent relationship was to a very controlling, high conflict ACoA woman. Luckily, I rejected her ultimatum for marriage and escaped. I fairly quickly concluded that I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg with her... but not before suffering through nearly 2 years of crazy-making drama. Of course, each ACoA is unique in their level of dysfuntion... myself included. I wish you all the best.