Male support
I feel as if I should tiptoe into this thread. A male trojan horse in the "enemy camp".
Marriage and relationships are a complex set of dynamics and Abramson's book can be a bit anecdotal at times and not necessarily based on repeatable research and much is based on student papers which he only supervised.
As such it is easy to generalise and "have a go" at the unsympathetic and uncaring perceived attitude of a partner.
I should declare my credentials as a man but also a married man to a lovely wife for 30 years!
Abramson's " to Have and to Hold" is probably a better read on the thread topic
Abramson contends that for many people, the lifestyle changes created by marriage result in significant weight gain. He examines why this happens and what to do about it in his new book To Have and To Hold (Kensington Press, 1999). In the book, he expands his chapter "Sex, Marriage, and Weight" from his Emotional Eating, published by Jossey-Bass in 1998
His findings show that although men and women may gain the same amount of weight after marriage, they differ in their reasons for eating and their attitudes about and responses to their gains. These differences can complicate a marriage. His research supports the idea that women use food for comfort in addition to fuel for their bodies, and, unlike men, their self-worth is based on their ability to maintain an attractive weight.
The focus is clearly on wives. His second paragraph begins, "Your struggle with weight and diet doesn't make sense to your husband . . . his whole worth as a human being isn't tied up in the number that emerges when he steps on the scale."
"Men may be concerned about weight gain, but their concern is more health related than appearance -- about health risks related to preexisting conditions, such as diabetes or excessive obesity."
In his book, as we have done on this forum, Abramson discusses several reasons people gain weight -- heredity, lack of physical exercise, fat (we will have to have a word with him!) and calorie consumption, culture and rituals, and emotional eating -- that apply equally to men and women.
But, he suggests that in order to please the dietary preferences of their husbands (and later their children), many wives relinquish the dietary independence they had as a single person. This has a ring of truth in my own family.
We men are forever misunderstood. If we suggest that a partner should lose weight it is taken amiss if we suggest she doen't bother that is wrong too. If the response that you get from a man is not helpfull and you can not bring him into the loop to be helpfull then you have to distance yourself from the comments, but don't necessarily distance yourself from the man.
There is enough emotional strife in today's marriages sending the divorce rates soaring. I think we would be doing ourselves a favour by taking weight out of the equation.
Last edited by rustpot : Fri, Mar-15-02 at 07:15.
|