Sunday, April 25, 2010

"Warning: Fat Ahead"

My husband had two girlfriends before he found me. In fact, I was well-acquainted with the first one ("GF1" from henceforth), and fairly decently acquainted with the second one ("GF2"). GF2 had ended her relationship with my future husband because she realized that there were some core incompatibilities in regards to needs for attention, time spent together, etc. that were never going to work out. Also, she found another guy closer to home who she was more attracted to and didn't want to string one man along while courting another.

I always had the impression that GF2 may have wanted to fob her ex-boyfriend off on someone else because the break-up was so painful for him and he needed a lot of interaction with her in order to recover. He needed to talk and understand what went wrong and she just wanted it all over with. This was one of their core incompatibilities. Whatever the case, she was relieved when he got involved with me (at least initially).

For those who may not have read or recall my earlier posts, I'll state that I got involved with my husband after losing a tremendous amount of weight. I probably weighed around 180 lbs. when we became acquainted and was on a fairly strict healthy lifestyle kick. Since I had known GF1 for quite awhile, she had known me during the time when I was greatly heavier and had seen pictures of me as a fat child and young teenager. She knew I had lifelong issues with weight.

While GF2 was happy for my future husband and I, GF1 was outwardly supportive, but inwardly unhappy at the notion. This may have had something to do with the fact that he ended their relationship after finding out she had lied about many things that had happened between the two of them to GF2. I should mention that GF1 was also friends with GF2. We were all one little group of friends passing around the same guy at that point.

GF1 put on a big show of saying how happy she was for us that we seemed to be hitting it off so well. She maintained this for awhile, but when my husband and I were traveling abroad together, she sent him correspondence beforehand saying, "You know (my name) used to weigh a lot more; I thought you should know."

There it was... a warning that he was dating a (well-proportioned) chubby girl who was a former very fat girl who might get fatter again. She was using my past to try and drive a wedge between us because she couldn't stand that we were succeeding where she and he had failed. All of her proclamations that she was happy for us rang false, and the way in which people can be malicious and evil with a smile and a sense of doing something morally "right" (he needed to know I used to be fatter, it was only right) was clearly demonstrated.

Her efforts to break us up probably would have worked better had I not exhaustively informed my future husband not only of every single character fault that I believed I held (and yes, I did this - I gave a laundry list with explanations of all of my flaws), but also of my past in glorious Kodak-worthy color pictures. He knew I used to be fatter, and had seen just how fat I used to be. He knew how long ago I'd lost weight and by what method. He also knew that I believed I was temperamental, neurotic, and prone to many unappealing behaviors. And he still loved me, wanted me, married me, and has been with me happily for over two decades.

My husband has told me on many occasions that what he loves about me is that I have a "spark" that you don't always encounter in other people. Fortunately, that spark can't be drowned out by layers of body fat so he has loved me unconditionally and without reservation through weight ups (mostly ups) and downs.

GF1, who was shallow, vain, and a compulsive liar, couldn't begin to conceptualize why he loved me if it wasn't related to my physical beauty, and thought that she could use my (then former) fat as a weapon against me. It's something which reflected badly on her, and for which she never apologized. I confronted her about it, and she defended her actions by asserting that she felt it was the right thing. He "needed" and "deserved" to know the truth as hitching his wagon to a former fat girl carried implications she felt he needed to be aware of, as if I had some infectious social disease that he deserved to know about before he got too seriously involved with me.

In perhaps a karmic backlash, years later GF1, who had always eaten abysmally (hot dogs and sugary Coke) and remained thin, went through a bad patch in her life and put on a lot of weight. She eventually lost it and went back to her trim self, but I hope she learned a few things about being fat and looks back with regret on her devious behavior. I don't know if she did though since my friendship with her, unsurprisingly, had long ago ended.

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