It’s going to be uncomfortable reading for a lot of lads. Sacrificing their marriage on the altar of personal bests and a perceived sense of self improvement
Ask Allison: I do everything at home while my husband goes running — …
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Allison Keating answers your queries about life and relationships
![Take some time to reflect on the deeper emotions behind your anger. Picture: Getty]()
Take some time to reflect on the deeper emotions behind your anger. Picture: Getty
Question: My husband and I were both quite sporty before we had kids. We have three children now — aged between four and 10.
My youngest was a very bad sleeper and I have just come out of the fog and am realising that I have completely let myself go. I am about three stone overweight and feel like absolute crap. I don’t like going out or getting dressed up as I hate my body.
On the other hand, my husband is fitter than ever and has recently achieved a very impressive personal best in a marathon. Everyone is congratulating him on his achievement and I just want to scream. Of course he is amazing, but it is off the back of my misery.
I do everything with the kids and while he works hard at his paid job, all his spare time goes into running or cycling. I was looking back through photos on my phone and there was a direct correlation between how fit he got and how fat I got.
There is no room whatsoever for me to have time for the gym or even have the headspace to think about it. If I try and talk to him about this, he gets very angry and defensive.
He has turned into a right selfish you-know-what and I don’t know how we can ever resolve this.
He is determined to beat his personal best in 2024 and has already signed up for numerous events. Please, how do I stop myself from either murdering him or exploding with rage?
Allison replies:
Photos tell a story without words, but your words say so much more, as you noticed “a direct correlation between how fit he got and how fat I got”.
Feeling crap about yourself hits so hard. This bleeds into how you feel about your life, and you could possibly close down social opportunities and connections because of this.
Can I encourage you not to wait until you feel ‘good enough’ to go out? Meeting up with friends and getting out of the house is crucial for your well-being. Even if you feel uncomfortable, allow space for this, and know that whomever you are meeting is not judging you on what you are wearing or how you look. They are there to catch up with you.
A lot of women who have been unhappy with their weight say that when they look back on photos of themselves during times when they didn’t feel good about themselves, they realise that they looked so much better than they thought.
There is so much internal pressure on women — please don’t wait. Go out and have some much-needed time for yourself. You won’t look back and say, “I’m glad I stayed in because I didn’t look good enough to go out”. You will look back and say, “I’m so glad I went out and had a laugh and some fun”.
There are a lot of built-up emotions and frustrations here. From this column to my day-to-day work, to hearing other women chatting, I know the quotient of unequal time in relation to the amount of exercise or leisure time women get is a big area of gender inequality and is too common an issue within many households.
It sounds like you have had enough, and that it’s been enough for too long.
You are not angry, you are raging. Three years of sacrificing sleep — not out of choice — hits a mind and body hard. When you feel like a zombie, finding the motivation to exercise will feel like the last thing you want to add to your already-depleted physical battery, if you even got the chance to do so.
Parents sacrifice, but when the load is consistently unequally distributed, patience wears thin, as resentment simultaneously increases. You may have found yourself muttering, “this is not fair” and when it not only lands on deaf ears but is greeted with anger, that is tough to take.
Anger as an emotion relays a clear message: “This does not feel fair and feels wrong.” Like a simmering pot left on a high heat for too long, boiling over is an inevitability, unless you take a new approach.
Write out how you feel. This may be an angry, quick scrawl at first. That’s fine, don’t hold back. Turn the page blue. Now take a deep breath and pull out the core issues. The tip of the anger iceberg can hide the hurt and other emotions that are just below the surface.
Take a moment to get to the deeper emotions, like feeling let down, disappointed, abandoned, a bit lost and alone in the relationship. These feelings are hard to sit with but will aid in the wider discussion that needs to be had. Assess any other feelings that may arise for you. How has this made you feel about the relationship’s integrity, friendship, and sense of being a team, or how you feel about yourselves as a couple?
Part of the unfairness can relate to a sense of the other person not considering your needs. Not even just for your physical, mental, and emotional health but for the health of the whole family — you need time and space to think, rest and move your body in a way that energises you and releases pent-up frustrations.
On a hotter note, I imagine an anger volcano, the danger of which is that when you blow, a lot of hurt can spew out in a way that can damage the relationship. So, reverting back to the anger iceberg is helpful to cool hot emotions that need to be communicated in a way that they will be heard and actioned upon.
Obviously, this is not a given. If you feel your husband has become selfish, it can feel like personal rejection.
What do you want and need? Make a plan and then bring this conversation to him during a walk. Walking is a great tool for all couples to work through tense and hard conversations.
Do you feel connected to your husband? Are there any activities you would like to do or try together? Novel experiences can sometimes be just what the doctor ordered. Could you go on a cycle together, or can he give you some time off while he is with the children?
There may be a whole host of issues that might need to be worked through. If it is too challenging to do this alone, you could consider talking it through with a couples therapist.
Allison regrets that she cannot enter into correspondence. If you have a query you would like addressed in this column, email allisonk@independent.ie