Health is important but should not override marriage

My wife’s best friend is constantly following the “latest, greatest” trend.

She’s influencing my wife so much that we’re often arguing because she keeps wanting to impose them on me and our schoolage children.

The fads become obsessions. I do like to feel fit, but I just don’t like switching approaches based on her friend’s whims.

It’s the same with new diets. We’ve always considered ourselves fairly healthy eaters, but now she’s joined her friend on the Keto (ketogenic) diet.

I’m cast as the “outsider” because I don’t want to reduce my carb intake that much, and don’t think our sports-active children should be doing it either.

My wife’s so caught up with her friend’s enthusiasm for these trends that she switches immediately and also becomes obsessive about them.

Even my wife’s cooking style has changed along with her friend’s latest craze — last year it was the slow-cooker method. Now it’s sous-vide. We’re buying new kitchen equipment whenever her friend suggests it.

I feel like my wife is losing her own personality. It’s affecting our friendship within the marriage because she’s not the woman I knew who had her own personality, style and ideas.

I love my wife. But how do I tell her that I can’t deal with these frequent obsessive changes in how we live?

– Too Many Fads

Start with the love message. That’s what’s most important here.

Appeal to the personality and style that formed the person you initially married — how she thought things through, bringing her own experience and knowledge into any discussion.

Remind her of the life you’ve built together making decisions as a couple to make sure you were in sync. Tell her you do like to be fit and eat healthy as much as she does, and of course want the best for your kids. But it’s hard to jump to a third-party’s intervention.

Say, too, that it’s putting distance between you, which is far less healthy for your marriage despite all the new exercises and diets.