Good for you in losing the weight! Keep it up. Do you have a target weight? How are you managing your diet?
Is your depression better nowadays?
I hope you've stepped up and do your part of the household chores.
For my height I need to be under 195 so my BMI isn't considered "over weight" and under 230 to be out of the "obese" range. I'm aiming for at least 250. I'm sitting at 279 at the moment.
There was a while I was considering getting bariatric surgery, they mentioned that after the surgery you would basically be having 750 Calories a day. Just after BD there were days where I couldn't eat and so my appetite shrunk accordingly. Now I'm staying below 1000 Calories a day, drinking lots of water throughout the day, doing a bit of strength training and cardio when I can get them in.
The depression is manageable, I still have my bad days especially when new development with the wife comes up. The meds help out a lot.
Since I'm the only occupant at my place (other than the cats) I've been taking care of all the chores.
How's your job search going? I hope you're doing this full-time as it should be. Cannot be done in a half-hearted way. I've learned that networking has helped me land jobs as 80% of the jobs are not advertised. Throughout my career, I have only applied to 2 actual job postings cold. The rest were through the grapevine of my social circle and college alumni network.
I do have a full time job currently that I have to attend to. It is a contract job funded by a grant, so the funding (and thus time) is limited. That's why I'm looking around for other jobs now. At the moment there is enough financial support to get me through the end of next summer.
The job search is going well I think. I've been getting phone interviews from just about every place I apply to.
I've tried going the networking route but the people in my field tend to be a bit aspergers and are anti-social/anti-networking. My phd advisor is one of the most well known, well respected people in the field, but when we got to professional meetings together he runs off to talk to his buddies without so much of an introduction. Networking wise I'm doing the best I can with what I have to work with.
Are you the saver in the M? Is she the spender in the M? If that's the case, then there's resources in counseling to work through different financial positions. One spouse may feel the need to save due to how they were raised and the other spouse wants to spend money as a way to show appreciation for those items. Have you two had any HUGE, drag-out fights over finances? As people say, three main things couples fight the MOST about are the following: money, sex, and kids.
Oh yeah, I was definitely more the saver and she was more the spender.
We both came from the same socioeconomic backgrounds, and even talked about not wanting our (future) kids to have the same upbringing we did because of it. We even said we would wait until we were financially stable before having kids. However when we started making money she wanted to use it to buy things while I wanted us to be prepared for the future.
We never had any huge fights over finances. She would complain quite often how it wasn't fair that we made money but never seemed to have any to do what we wanted with though. In the beginning I managed all the finances. Eventually I suggested that she start doing so and she began to see how much money went to bills. She still had her occasional "want-to-spend-money-we-didn't-have" flare up though.
When she finished school we went out and got her a whole new wardrobe for work. After that though she wanted to do that every 3 months after. We discussed how that wasn't sustainable and she went from buying herself a whole new wardrobe to just an item or two.
Conversely when I finished grad school we went to go get me a new pair of dress pants. The salesman there kept telling the wife how if I was getting pants I would need shoes, a shirt, a jacket, etc... and how everything was BOGO Free. We walked out of there spending more than what we spend on rent in a month. I backed the car out of the parking spot and pulled right back in and took everything back besides the pants I wanted and the shoes I needed. I couldn't bring myself to spend more on clothes than we did on rent.
Have you ever tried to compromise and/or negotiate things like this ^^ with W? Sometimes we need to step back and ask "How important is this to you? Perhaps we can try to find some middle ground here between our desires."
This does two things: 1) You are not discounting W's desires 2) Tells her that you are willing to listen to her without discounting them outright.
Yeah we've tried to compromise/negotiate things like this before. Overtime she became less and less willing to do so though. Saying things like "this is what I want to do and if you don't like it too bad, this is what we're doing" even when referring to spending time with the OC.
Do you see how inserting a "but" negates the previous statement? No wonder W misconstrued your feelings. Why not be more authentic with W with this type of thing? A much more authentic response would have been something like: "I am so happy and proud of you. Gosh, I am a feeling nervous about leaving this area with all of our friends we've made over the years." I bet that it would most likely resulted in W sharing her feelings as well...no?
Yeah.
Did your parents ever show affection, emotion, intimacy around you and your siblings?
How do you express your emotions to your family?
What attracted W to you in the first place?
They did show lots of affection towards each other. I didn't date much when I was younger though. The wife was basically the first and only long term relationship I've ever had. I was lonely as a teenager. I think that's why I wanted a lot of attention from my wife.
Expressing emotions to my family is hard. If dad is told anything he kinda "hmms" and "ahs" his way through it with a basic "don't let it get to you" mentality. Mom seems to always find a way to express that she has it harder than I do because she's always wanted a big, loving, involved family and my brother and I moved away.
We met in a scifi fan club. I don't know if anyone else believes in love at first sight but the wife and I did. We found we had the same interests and similar hobbies, we were perfect friends who complimented each other.
It appears that her family is not demonstrative toward each other. Throughout your M, was W demonstrative to you? Did she initiate hugs, kisses, hand holding?
How about you toward W?
She was more than happy initiate holding hands. She would occasionally initiate a hug and on a rare occasion a kiss. She always had some complaint against how I kissed.
I was the initiator most of the time and would like to do so often. She was receptive of some things but would complain about others.
Care to elaborate what you perceive here? Does W nag you, give you constant reminders, do ALL of household chores, interact with the school personnel...etc?
What does emotional intimacy look like to YOU? What did it look like in the early stages of the M compared to now?
Because of the sitch we were in when we first got together and after we got married, she was literally a caretaker in the relationship. She said she enjoyed taking care of and spoiling me on more than one occasion, even referring to me as her baby. Unfortunately she maintained that role for longer than she would've liked.
I guess I'm not really sure what emotional intimacy really looks like. I thought it would be being able to share thoughts, hopes, feelings, fantasies, and fears with someone you were close with, without having to worry about being judged. I feel like the wife and I had that early in our relationship. Now not at all. Communication break down on our part I guess or maybe we felt like we knew all there was to know about the other person, or maybe we were walking on egg shells so we didn't upset the other person. Yeah, that last one seems to most correct.
I love Sheldon Cooper...on TV. In real life, Sheldon has no place in your M. Do you see how exhausting it is to W when you argued your POV allllll the time to the point of being "proven" correct??!!! For what??!! A blue ribbon??!! crazy If you have done this or continue to do this with W, then do a 180 and stop acting like Sheldon in your own M and around the house. No "Bazinga" either.... smirk
She doesn't want a Mr. Smarty Pants in the house, but a EQUAL partner in the house and M. Do you see this now?
I understand she wanted an equal partner, I thought that's what we were. I thought that by being equal partners we didn't have to censor ourselves or walk on eggshells when it came to discussing things. That we could share our viewpoints and defend those viewpoints with what we knew to be true. I guess I was wrong in choosing which viewpoints were worth discussing.