What if you get disgusted? Then what?

[Dr.mom]

Oh Mk, we need to talk. Like I said before, I just got back from spending 3 days at a retreat with my estranged husband. He made me physically sick. All I could do was feel sorry for him, feel pity.

He is obsessed with his looks, with working out. Can't have a conversation about anything other than other people's appearances. He talks about his looks, his work-out, his diet, MY looks (thank god I finally lost 30 pounds), my diet, how "gross" I was, how poorly I ate. It was awful. I just let him spew . . . .

He started making comments about other people at the retreat. One woman was, um, rather large, and he kept going off about how much overweight people "angered" him. How he got upset when he saw people smoking, how he was mad a fat people, and the message that gave their kids. This is not new behavior, he has commented on people like this for years, their weight, etc.

I just pitied him. I used it as an opportunity to humble him, to show him how ADULT, COMPASSIONATE people think.

After he commented about the fat lady, I just said "Some people wear their pain on the inside, some wear it on the outside. She must have a lot of pain, and that saddens me".

Again the next day he conveys his disgust about her weight, about how she will probably never live long enough to see her kids grow up, etc.

I commented back "You know, that hatred you have is doing nothing for you". He said "Yeah, I can't get it out of my head".

I said, why don't you just "send her love and hope" in your mind. Who knows, maybe her marriage made her fat, maybe she just started at the gym last week an already LOST 5 pounds. Maybe she is waiting to save up that last couple hundred for her stomach-stapling surgery (we had a friend that did this, lost 220 pounds and has a whole new life). Maybe she is already ON her way to getting healthy. Why don't you look at it THAT WAY?

That shut him up.

Anyway. It made me not even want to be associated with him. I was embarrassed he was my spouse.

But it is his cry for help. I can't help him, I can't change him, but I can set an example. He is gonna have to help himself.

All I can do is change me, and how I participate in the world.

(but it makes "detaching" easier, and I NEED to do that right now) Maybe it is the "natural evolution of things".