Wife struggles to find her own value

Dear Amy: I’ve been married for 26 years. My husband and I clicked immediately when we met. I thought I had found a man who loved me and didn’t judge me. We married a year later.

Three months after our wedding, everything changed. One night I tried to initiate sex. He said that he didn’t want to have sex with me because I had gained weight and he was no longer attracted to me. I went on a diet and lost it all. I tried to be the perfect wife so he would accept me.

He is a good man. He is home at night, helps around the house and has been a good provider, but these rejections continue to affect me deeply. He doesn’t show any empathy, even at our counseling sessions. He told the counselor that he married me because I was beautiful. I feel ripped off. I married this man for love and emotional security. — Holding On

Dear Holding On: As a newly married man, your husband was showing you who he was. Your shame over his rejections means that you have spent the last quarter century justifying someone else’s superficial and unkind assessment of you.

This armchair psychologist wants to look you in the eye and remind you that no one else has the right to define you!

At this point, your goal should be to find ways to reframe your reactive emotions and find a way to fairly assess this relationship. Do you want to stay with him?

I hope a day will come when you can stop pinning your personal self-esteem to your husband’s narrow metric, and quite honestly love yourself for everything that you are, and exactly as you are. When you do, you will come into your own power, and the balance in your marriage will shift. Individual counseling would be very useful for you.