Hi Dean,

I'm curious - you said if your wife gained weight for no good reason that you would stoop to humiliation. Are you familiar with every medical condition that cause problems with weight? How would feel if you were oinking at your wife, and then discovered years later that there was a physical cause for her weight gain? Chances are it probably would be too late, at that point, to put the pieces of your marriage together.

After I married my husband, it could be construed as I "let myself go". All sorts of horrible things were happening to my body, but the weight was the most apparent. The first doctor I went to, told me I was a hypocondriac and that if I would just lose weight I would feel better. DUH! At that point, judging by what I've read, my husband should have humiliated and degraded me - because after all, there was nothing wrong with me.

It turned out after switching doctors I was diagnosed with PCOS - a hormonal condition which is very real, but for some reason many doctors (especially male doctors) don't "believe" in it. Now we know what's wrong, everything should be fine, right? Wrong! Things were still spiraling out of control and my body was still turning against me. But I was under the care of a physician, I was being treated, so I guess this would have been a good time for my husband to start oinking at me and debasing me as a human to make me lose weight? Or maybe he should have walked out, since I obviously didn't respect him because of my weight gain?

As it turned out a year or so later I was diagnosed with 2 more hormonal type disorders - Late Onset Adrenal Hyperplasia, and Hypothyroid. And I was also diagnosed with Insulin Resistance which could turn to diabetes.

If you were to look at me, I do not convey a person who has health issues. If you were to look at me, you would see a woman who "let herself go". Things are not always what they appear on the outside. I have 3 disorders that cause weight gain, and I'm on hormone replacement drugs which also cause weight gain, not even touching on all the OTHER things that these disorders cause. This has been an ongoing thing for my husband and I for 6 years (we've been married for 7)! If my husband had turned to the tactics you mentioned, his butt would have been sitting on the corner with all his stuff long ago...and there would have been no chance of "gee honey, I'm sorry, I didn't know that you had medical problems. I just did it because I thought you were 'letting yourself go!' and I HAD to try something!"

It makes no sense to me that if your wife gained weight due to a medical problem, that you would be all kind and caring - but if there was no medical problem you would humiliate her so that she would lose weight. How would you KNOW at what point it would be okay to start the bullying? Would you make her go to a doctor, get the all clear then start the debasing? What if the doctor was a quack, like the first one I saw? Do you think, if a medical problem was found that you could take it all back after years of torment and she would understand?

I'm curious how people who think humiliation is okay would handle something like this. It looks like many people think this is a black and white issue - but I've been through the medical end, and it's not always that way, and can take a long time to figure out what the heck is going on. It's not like you could look at me and say "ooooh, she has adrenal hyperplasia, PCOS and hypothyroid, and is insulin resistant, no wonder she has problems with weight!" and it's definitely not something that you would be able to tell with your wife either - all you would see is her porking up, and having other weird problems which many doctors may not recongnize as actual symptoms to "uncommon" disorders.