#6 Your Partner is not on the same page as you

Oh boy this is an issue. Everyone that I have ever trained has had this issue.
For years Mary has been unhappy with her health. She understands that if she gets healthier she will feel better about herself on so many levels. She is sick and tired of going for her annual physical and having her doctor tell her that she needs to lose weight. She is tired of getting her medications increased every time she goes to him. She is tired of always feeling tired and not being able to climb a flight of stairs without taking a 10 minute break. She is sick and tired of not being able to do things with her kids. She doesn’t feel sexy and has no sex drive.
Mary’s husband is just as out of shape as she is but really doesn’t care. He knows that he could stand to lose “a little weight” but what is his incentive? He has a good job and provides for his family. He too has to take several medications in the morning for his diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol but once he takes those medications he’s fine right? His testosterone level is 250 and his doctor tells him that he needs to get that into the 450 range to be average. But what is his motivation? His sex drive is, well, Viagra which once worked no longer works. However, he doesn’t really care.
One day Mary decides to finally get her health back in order and runs to the local gym and signs up for personal training. Her trainer is known for taking a no-non-sense approach to getting results. He doesn’t believe in political correctness and holds people accountable. Most people don’t like that but Mary is desperate. She sees her children going down the same path and she knows that she needs to do something about it now.
At first her husband approves of her passion for getting healthier and “losing the weight” and she does really well. Within the first 6 months she losses 50 pounds and she just feels really good about herself. She is now able to do things that she thought she was never going to be able to ever do again. She is now running and workouts have become fun and she looks for new challenges. Her doctor is impressed with her results and begins to remove some of the medications she was taking daily. After one year all she is taking is a multi vitamin. She looks and feels great.
One day her husband, who hasn’t changed a bit, sits Mary down and tells her that he is beginning to have a problem with her going to that local gym. “Why do you have to go everyday and for hours at a time? You have responsibilities here and the membership fees are not cheap. I think you need to think about quitting the gym and besides you can probably do those things on your own now and it would save us money.” He says to her.
Now she has found a new freedom and finds a new happiness in her new life, but she is now beginning to feel her husband fight back by requesting that she quits. Why is he doing that, especially when she is taking care of her responsibilities and the $35 that comes out once a month from their checking account is really not a lot when you consider the hundreds of dollars he spends every month on beer and cigarettes? Well the answer is simple, he feels uneasy with his wife’s new life. He feels inferior to her on so many levels, whereas before he didn’t. She wants to go for walks and he physically cannot keep up. She wants to go on bike rides and he physically cannot ride. She is finding a new fire in her and wants intimacy and he cannot perform on any level. He is feeling the pressure to put an end to this so that he can “feel better” about himself.
For him to “feel better about himself” he either has to step out of his comfort zone and begin to change his life to match hers or he needs to stop her from pursuing things that frankly he doesn’t feel comfortable with. He likes his life the way it is and so what he is a little over weight, they have medications that make him better right?
This struggle goes on for months. She is improving everyday and his health is getting worse and worse. As much as many may not realize it, Mary too has a decision to make. She can make her husband happy and lower the stress in the family if she quits or she can continue down her path of better health and let the chips fall where they may. She knows that her old life brought her depression and misery and she doesn’t want to go back down that path. Life has gotten good to her in her new. She no longer shops in the big and tall stores but goes to regular department stores to shop. She has lost 14 sizes and now is wearing sizes that she only wore in her high school years. She feels and looks sexy and many have told her that. Now why does she want to go back to her old ways? A huge decision has to be made here, a life changing decision for both parties.
What Mary did is confidential and I won’t tell you but know this, the hardest thing for one to do when they are pursuing better health and fitness is have a spouse that is not on the same page as you.