First of all, thanks to all of you for all of your wonderful emails and Live Journal replies.  What an awesome cheering section I have!  The thing is, I know that if I happened to be wrong, you guys would gently tell me that as well.  Your support means everything to me.

After writing out my feeling in this journal yesterday and answering many of the journal replies, the emotion of the situation started to abate and I was able to see things much more clearly.

Eric really is a wonderful husband and father.  I say that based on my own personal experience and observations of the husbands of friends.  He normally treats me with immense respect and is my greatest cheerleader.  That's why his behavior threw me for such a loop.  As I said, in the past he has had trouble saying what he wants to say without making an ass of himself, but for the past couple of years, he's been absolutely golden.  You don't hear me complain much about him in my journals because honestly, there is not much to complain about at all.  I have a wonderful life (as people who know me personally will attest) and as a couple, we are very well suited and very much in love.  I am not making excuses for him, I'm just telling it like it is.  That's why this out of the blue stuff blindsided me so hard.

Being able to clear away the emotion and think with my head instead of my heart definitely gave me a better perspective, as did the words of all of my friends who read this journal.  Yesterday, I pretty much kept Eric at a distance for most of the day, not yet ready to talk to him about it until I got my head on straight.  It really started to come together for me when I was shoveling snow between the house and the kennel.  I realized that a couple of months ago, I would have had neither the physical strength nor the motivation to even try such a thing.  The whole "demand more from yourself" push and the physical exercises are definitely helping.  I started to get pretty mad that when I've had a solid two months of successes with a couple of slips here and there, he would be so intent on trying to bully my focus onto my 8 years of failure instead.  Stupid, stupid man. 

I know Eric very, very well and when he comes up with behavior that is out of the blue and extreme, it is invariably because he is 1) scared or 2) feeling inadequate in some way.  It had thankfully been so long since it happened that forgot the standards of how to deal with it.  In this case, he was scared I was going to die and felt inadequate to do anything about it, so he just started shooting in the dark in hopes of hitting something that would motivate me into action (when I did not need to be motivated).

After a lot of thinking, I called him around lunch time and asked him to call me back when he could talk, which he did.  Overall, the discussion was fairly nonproductive.  He was still flying high on what he deserved to have and how (get ready) I should be motivated by how good he looks.  Yes, I actually laughed out loud on that one.  When he asked me if that didn't inspire me to be different and do differently, I told him no, it really didn't and he sounded extremely surprised.  He asked me why not and I said, "When you have lost 100 pounds, then you can inspire me.  When you exercise every day, you will inspire me.  When you give up the sweets and fats you eat all of the time, you will inspire me.  Until then, it's like you being inspired by someone who never started smoking to motivate you not to smoke."  God, I was so cool.

I clearly and carefully explained to him about the trust he had destroyed and how I did not know if that would be able to come back again.  He listened to what I had to say and agreed that he had been wrong to say things as he did and to attack me when I was succeeding.  I also was very direct and firm in telling him that yes, I WILL succeed, but he needs to understand that it is because I was already on the path to success; not because he badgered and bullied me into it.

After more talking last night (Not much, really.  I think it's about played out), what I have decided is this:

1) He is afraid.  He talked a good bit about health concerns and said some really dumb things like how it scares him to watch me go down the stairs in our house, how slowly and carefully I go.  He also said that it's terrifying to watch me try to walk in the snow, that my weight makes me unsteady and makes me fall over and he's afraid I am going to hurt myself.  I was so frustrated when he said that.  Stupid, stupid man.  For one thing, I have, for reasons I have never been able to divine, a lifelong fear of falling.  I am not afraid of heights in the least.  I am afraid of falling down from heights tall or short.  That has been the case whether I weighed 115 or 215.  I am very uneasy going down stairs or inclines of any kind. I HATE hikes that involve walking over severely uneven terrain.  I pointed out to him that this is the first house we have had with stairs and so it would be the first time he has experienced how I go down stairs.  I do fine going up the stairs.  Going down is a problem.  I also get choked up with anxiety if I am going down stairs and I can't see my feet, such as if I am carrying a laundry basket of clothes up the stairs.  Meh, go figure. It's one of my weirdnesses.  It's also why I hate everything about roller skating.  I also pointed out that he might want to consider that I am falling down and going easy when I walk in the snow not because I am fat, but because the snow is up to my fucking hips.  >:<

2)  I should have been more clear in my last journal when I said, "It's not about Eric."  I know it was confusing for me to say that without clarifying.  What I meant is that the weight loss effort is not about Eric. I can't do this for Eric or because he bullied me into it.  That part is about me.  I have to do it because I want it and I can't want it for him.  I have to want it for me.  The part, however, that IS about Eric is taking responsibility for the hurtful things he said and reconciling his own feelings about my weight.  Basically, "Get over it." 

3)  When I confided my true weight to Eric, he was almost ashen.  I know it shook him to the core because he did not imagine I could possibly weigh that much.  That reaction is exactly why I'd been careful to never before tell him my actual weight.  I'd tell him how many pounds I'd lost, but never what I actually weighed.  That was a couple of weeks ago and I should have been alerted that there was a problem when, a few days later, he was talking about my weight in a positive way (being cheerleader) and said that he was especially glad I was making the strides I was making because he "didn't realize the situation was so dire."  I laughed a little when he said that because he sounded so stern and grim, but then the moment was over and I didn't think much more of it.  I think that with the image of my "dire" weight in his mind, he became determined that I had to lose this weight or I was going to die.  When I then confided to him that I'd been depressed and missed two days of exercising, he panicked and lashed out at me.  He didn't do it well or correctly.  He should have said, "I know this is a hard time, but I want to know that you are going to start exercising again because I love you and I want you to succeed at this.  How can I support you or help you?"

I figured all that out yesterday and the things he said last night pretty much confirmed my suspicions.  He's afraid I'm going to drop dead at any second.  In his fear, he turned into an ass.

Things are getting much better between us since I stopped crying and started thinking.  I did great on my eating yesterday and got my exercise through 30 minutes of intense snow shoveling.  When Eric made it home around 5pm, I headed out for town alone.  It was bliss to have no kids with me after days and days of having kids around.  I played my favorite music on the CD player and remembered how much I love Colin Hay (and why).  My first stop was my hairdresser in town. They were 45 minutes from closing and I got a really awesome haircut, but they did not have time to do a dye job (I have never had my hair professionally colored and thought I'd give it a try).  The hair cut is sort of the same as my usual one, but with a little more definition and character.  I asked for color suggestions (highlights, anything) and she recommended the exact brand and color of hair dye that was in an unopened box under my bathroom sink (sweet!!), so I will be coloring my hair today.  A lot of gray is showing through and I am ready to young it up a bit and strut my stuff.  After the haircut, I hit WalMart and found a giant fat woman's clearance rack of clothes marked down to $3 each.  I bought two bags of microfiber things (my favorite material, sooo soft) and some giant t-shirt type shirts to wear as pajama tops (I have forgiven Eric completely but that guy isn't going to see me naked again for a long, long, long time and I can tell you, he sure is not going to be my weight loss counselor and confidant.  He burned up those bridges quite nicely, thank you).  I am going to go through my closet (again) and dump some of the frumpy stuff and hang up my new clothes.  When I finally do unveil my body to him, it is going to look a lot different than the last time he saw it. I'm thinking November 1st.  

Aside from all of the Eric implications and psychobabble about why he did what he did, I know on a spirit level why this happened for me.  

It was to show me clearly and without a doubt how far I have come and how unshakable is my determination to do this.  There was a time when I would have taken his observations about me, warped as they were, and made them my own.  I would have shared his disdain for how I look and wallowed in self-pity for a good long time...and of course, I would have eaten over that pain.  I would have gotten fatter just to spite him.  I would have likely baked a whole batch of cookies and made sure he saw me eat them.  At that time in my life, such behavior would have made perfect sense to me.  "I'll show YOU."  This time was completely different.  I never once, for one moment, felt wretched or like a failure or unattractive.  Not even for a second. I cried and I hurt and I grieved because of what he had done to destroy my trust in him, not because I believed the bullshit he was spouting.  I got angry for what a complete idiot he was to behave this way.  I got angry with myself for trusting him, but then I thought about the years we had worked to reach that place of trust together and decided it was perfectly understandable for me to fall into that kind of comfort with my own husband, my best friend.  I also never once considered for a second eating myself into oblivion just to feel better or giving up the quest.  That was never even an option. 

When I look at what has happened in the context of my spiritual path, we begin planting our goals on the Spring Equinox.  The time between February 2 and March 21 is considered to a time of redirect or confirmation of the goals we intend to plant.  If what we have chosen to plant is what we are intended to manifest in that harvest year and is in keeping with our greatest good, we will receive very clear indicators that we should be doing what we have planned.  If what we think we should be planting is not really what we need to be doing, we will be given redirects to show us what is really in our best interests.

That is why I am so incredibly grateful that this happened. It has proved to me 110% that I am going to do this and nothing is going to stop me.  The Universe shoved into my path the one thing that would derail me if anything was going to:  the loss of my "in person" support system and direct disdain and complete lack of faith from someone I love and admire.  I got the most perfect confirmation that I am on the right track and that my success is assured. That makes me feel so excited and motivated!    If I did not collapse under this, there is no doubt I will succeed and I did not even waver a tiny bit.

Also, for those of you who are concerned that once I've lost a healthy amount of weight, it will never be enough for Eric and he will always be critical of how I look.  I can honestly say that I have absolutely no fear of that being the case because it's just not how he works.  For one thing, I've lived with that kind of person in the form of my first husband and I know the signs of that kind of warped expectation.  Another point is that Eric is not attracted to skinny women, just women who are a healthy size.   The fact that all of his girlfriends before me were slim and trim is only because they were all military and the Air Force (at that time) leaned pretty hard on women to stay into a target weight range.  I don't have a fear that he will want me to be unreasonably thin.  He just wants me not to die and to be a healthy weight.  Lastly, there have been parts of my life (like the housecleaning) that Eric has had a problem with in the past, but once they were corrected (out of my own growth and motivation, again not because he bitched about it), he shut up and I have not heard a word since.  I don't think his expectations for me are unreasonable, I just think he is dead ass wrong to set goals for another person.  Have hopes and dreams, sure.  But don't set my goals for me.

Again, thanks so much for the outpouring of support and love.  This was a good thing and I am a happy (and dedicated) girl.  (But he still can't see me naked until November 1st because I am also a vindictive girl).

Time to work out with the gym bar!  Woot!