Having doubts after 8 years

[timestamp]

Eight years ago I meet my girlfriend online in a video game, sight unseen we started talking nightly and eventually struck up a long distance relationship where every other weekend we would take turns driving 400 miles and visiting each other. After a year of doing this she finished high school (I am 2 years older than her) and moved in with me, since then we have only spent 3-4 nights apart.

 

Before I start unloading into this post about why I am unhappy, let me say that I know that I am not perfect. I am willing to do whatever I need to do to make this relationship work, but I am not willing to be unhappy for the rest of my life.

 

I think the stem of all of my problems revolve around my girlfriend’s weight in one form or another.

 

She has always been heavy and when she was younger her mother was nothing short of abusive when it came to her weight loss. When I met my girlfriend she was 4’9” and 140 pounds, about 50 pounds over her target weight, eight years later (no children) she is around 200 pounds. I see her struggle to get out of bed at times, complain about constant back pain and get sores in-between her thighs from the skin rubbing together. I fear that in another eight years she will be too large to get out of bed at all. My mother was extremely overweight and she fought it for 20 years before she got gastric (and nearly died to complications from it).

 

In the last 6 years I have tried everything I can think of from going on the diet with her (I went from 165 pounds to 149 pounds in 3 weeks on atkins) to cooking healthy meals for every meal for her while we were in college (but she refused to keep up the exercise routine) to literally cheering her on while she works on an exercise bike. All of which I attributed to failure because of our school or work schedule being too strenuous, so when we finally finished school and she was doing freelance from home I thought she would finally stick to at least a modest diet and exercise plan. What ended up happening for the entire year that she was off school is that she filled this giant void of time with craft hobbies and despite any amount of talking/pleading from me was only ever able to stick to anything serious for two weeks at a time. I went as far as telling her that I would leave her if she didn’t either get help or get it figured out, but she fell off the wagon after 2 weeks. She refuses to see a therapist despite me asking her multiple times.

 

On top of this our sex life is unusual to say the least. It is not that we do not have sex frequently, so much as when we do I feel completely unsatisfied the majority of the time. Occasionally we have exceptionally good sex/anal and as far as I can tell she enjoys herself just as much as I do. However most of the time when I initiate it feels like she is doing a chore or otherwise not up for anything except for vanilla sex where she lays motionless. She says that she enjoys herself, but all of her body language says she is not interested in much of anything. I have tried toys, foreplay, and pornography in an attempt at finding something sexually that she is passionate about and to no avail. In the end I feel inadequate as a lover and my desires are left unsatisfied.

 

I am starting to get angry because I feel that she is doing nothing to help her weight problem and I feel resentful because I am constantly craving sexual gratification. I love her but I don’t know if I should/can move onto marriage and children like this. I feel like a scumbag for even thinking of leaving my girlfriend for either of these issues, but I don’t know what else to do at this point.

[Crazyaboutdogs]

Sounds to me like she is very unhappy and quite possibly suffering from depression. If she is not willing to go to counselling and to help herself then splitting up might be the only option. Sometimes a jolt like that gives someone the incentive to make radical changes in their life and lifestyle.

[savignon]

I agree with CaD....there's nothing you can do about this but rather the motivation and initiation need to come from her.