So here I am broken beyond belief of my husbands betrayal. I just walked away and ran to my room and cried tears. Sobs that I had never thought were inside of me. Hurt and pain like no other. This kind of betrayal was incomprehensible. My husband would have rather wanted me skinny and dying of anorexia rather than having me fat and alive. I could not believe it.
Coincidently, around this time, I had reached out to another marriage counsellor. The timing of starting with her just happen to coincide with this huge betrayal my husband had just handed me. We were to work with her for 8 weeks of intensive marital counselling. Every week I would meet with her for an hour, my husband would meet with her for an hour and we would meet with her together for an hour. I spent most of my time with her crying, sobbing, trying to understand what I was going to do about my marriage. What to do about my husbands betrayal. She was empathic and told me she was trying to get through to him about how his actions were not only harming our relationship, but also making my recovery so much harder than it already was.
About half way in, she told me something that changed the course of my life forever. She sat me down (via zoom, ha!) and told me I was in an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship. She also told me my husband could also be a narcissist but that she could not formally diagnose him. I was shocked. What did that mean, I asked? She told me his reaction and the things he said to me when we discussed my ED recovery were not typical of most husbands. I spoke at length with my HAES/ED coach about this – as I wanted her opinion on what it looked like when husband supported their wives. And this is for all of you who have a normal, healthy relationship with your husbands….
Most if not ALL of them are fat phobic. Meaning, they are terribly afraid of you getting fat. It’s a normal reaction. In fact, YOU, the person recovering from atypical anorexia is also fat phobic – heck, it’s the thing that drove you to starve yourself in the first place. So you have to understand that your husband grew up in the same fat phobic society as you did. But this is where things can improve. Just like YOU learned about fat phobia and have learned to lean into recovery and weight gain, so can he. Just like anything else in the world, proper education and understanding is key. Most husbands would acknowledge that is more important for them to have their wives alive and healthy then continue down the path of self-destruction and possible death of trying to maintain a certain body. Most husbands want you to stay alive (mine did not, ugg). If they were not attracted to you temporarily, they would still hold you, hug you, kiss you – to let you know you are still worthy and loved as they made their way through their own educational journey of unlearning their fat phobia.
Remember – men are primed to place a value on how a woman looks; it’s ingrained in their upbringing and in our culture. It’s going to take time for him to understand that you gaining weight it not going to fundamentally change anything about who you are as a person. It’s just hard for him to see that and there may be some rejection there as he works through it. But they key is that he has to WORK THROUGH IT. And don’t let him use the excuse that he cares about “your health”. Looking attractive and being healthy are NOT the same thing. Deep down all he still cares about is that you are no longer thin enough for him. Caring about your health means that your MENTAL health matters (in fact, I argue should be one of the FIRST things that determines someone’s health). Other factors like bloodwork, blood pressure, respiratory rate and cardiovascular fitness are much better measures of overall health. It’s time for YOUR opinion of who you are to matter MORE THAN any one else’s option of who you should be. Take your POWER back.
Circling back to my marriage counselor laying the blow of the century on me about my emotionally and verbally abuse relationship – it was life changing. From that moment on I spend hours and hours and hours devouring everything there was on the subject. I had never been so grateful for the Internet or for Amazon Prime as I ordered hundreds of dollars worth of books on the subject. Everything finally made sense. The thing that was “off” for 15 years of my marriage, that I couldn’t quite name, the things that caused so much turmoil for so many years and that finally led to the betrayal of my husband – I was in an abusive relationship. Reading the mental anguish women in these types of relationship suffer was like reading my autobiography. Tears saturated the pages of these books as I read them over and over again. Trying to understand why this happened. I know now that IT WAS NOT MY FAULT. I was the victim of abuse. While he never laid a hand on me, he punched me with words and vile comments our entire marriage. I have emotional bruises all over my body and so many broken bones I can not even count.
For some of you, this is not resonating at all. And I am SO HAPPY that you have NO CLUE what it’s like to be in this type of relationship. The scary part for me was that I didn’t know. You don’t know you’re in it – it sounds so stupid writing that down (how could you not know!!?!?). It’s only now, in the last 5-10 years or so, gaining traction because experts are realizing these relationships are everywhere and there are women in them who have no clue what is going on. Most marriage counselors and therapist don’t understand the nature of these relationships, so they often go unchecked. The wife is often blamed (50/50) for problems. Would you blame a women who is being beaten by her husband for the problems? No, you would not. Just like she would never deserve to be beaten, women in emotional relationships don’t deserve to be abused either. Is it not 50/50 – you are a victim.
Finding this out, as I mentioned, changed everything. I finally understood why he said the things he said to me when we discussed my ED recovery. It was abuse! Plain and simple! Why would he understand? He didn’t care about me or my life! For those who are interested, I’ve listed the books that I read that blew open everything. I finally understood him and our relationship. Discovering this was fundamental in my ability to move forward with my ED recovery.
The Emotionally Abusive Relationship by Beverly Engel
The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans
Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft
These are just 3 books that broke things open for me – I’ve read at least 20+ more on the matter because I am determined to learn everything I can about this type of abuse so that I make sure my daughter is not a victim of it and that my son never displays this kind of behavior as well. It is going to be my dying mission to make sure I tell everyone I possibly can about what happened to me and empower women to understand that it is NOT their fault.
So how does this all tie together? Well, one of the main reasons I developed disordered eating and went into full-blown eating disorder was because of my abusive marriage. You see, the constant attack on my self-worth, self-image, intelligence, opinion, values and morals was also priming me to hate myself even more. Someone else was dictating who I was, how I should think and feel and how my body should look. While I was certainly the one responsible for choosing not to eat or how much to exercise, it was being driven by the external force of my husband’s approval. Deep down I somehow knew that if I wasn’t skinny enough, he would leave me. But how did I know that? I can’t tell you how – but I knew that was my FEAR. That’s what I was afraid of. That was my motivation for doing the things to myself that I did.
And low and behold, when I finally reached out for treatment and started recovery, gained weight and tried to save my life, my biggest fear come true. My husband “left me”. I mean, he’s still living the house and we’re still technically married, but for all intents and purpose, we are no longer married. I’m not sure what I’m going to do moving forward. I know that I hate him with every being of my body and have a physical reaction if I’m not more than 6 feet away from him. The trauma associated with the abuse is deep and painful and I know that I have to deal with it. I’m in the process of working with a trauma therapist because I can’t continue to feel this away about him and our relationship. If I had to guess, I’d probably say I’m going to leave him, but I have to take into account my children and see if there is any other way to protect them, one of which is special needs. I’m also not working right now and that complicates things – my parental responsibilities don’t let me work regular hours so I’m exploring other income streams right now.
All this to say – I’m here on the other side of the pain. I wish I could tell you I don’t want to go back, back to the land of make believe when I was still skinny, thought my friends and family loved and supported me and thought I had a somewhat challenging, but solid marriage. Perusing recovery from atypical anorexia has turned my world upside down. All of my fears not only came true but were amplified to the umpteenth degree. My friends and family have abandoned me and my marriage is essentially over. So, I ask myself time and time again, what is so much better about my life today? One could argue that my mental health is FAR worse than what it was before, right?