obsessive about it: how do I know?

I am sorry. I feel I have to apologize right away. This is an ongoing theme for me in other threads as well.

My question is if someone else have in a relationship, any type of relationship, been the target of unfair criticism, and then been able to move on from that with that someone?

my husband and i have had a stormy past. we took to counseling. this after i had before asked him for a split as i could not take it no more, i was afraid of my mental health and thought me being a mom and everything else had to come first. that i could not afford wasting any more energy on this relationship that was clearly not working for us. He did not want to part.

Then briefly after the counseling when we were suppose to start over and be happy he managed to spoil that by suddenly without any provocation tell me i had gained too much weight and needed to take it seriously. When he said that i became shocked and hurt (and later on furious to the point that my fury even scared myself) he hurried to apologize.

In the past he had been on my case as well but then in a more respectful manner. he once got me on a diet when i was not even over weight and i was back then also sad and felt very different from before. no other man i had ever been in a relationship prior to him had ever commented on my weight or wanted us to go on no diet. it was people at work that began to question why i was even on one and told me i did not need to and that they thought my husband was wrong. i went off it to never again go on one again.

During the split he would tell me that he had changed his type now and that he found my new body type attractive. i told him i think he needed help and let me be. he got help.

he too would tell me that he had never unlike me seen a correlation between his view of my body and our intimate life together, that he had always found me attractive. that it had always been him to take the initiative, but that that had been OK, he had understood.

I took him back as I could tell he had changed and because he got me on the sentence where he had never not been turned on by me during intimacy.

Still I feel myself obsessing about it now. Like how is it possible to change body type that you feel attracted to?

From what I can tell looking at his parents one of them is clearly under weight, been this way, tons of photos of it, and not normal weight and from the comments of the other parent this is the normal, but it is not. the other parent (the bully) will always comment on the females bodies of the family, it is sick, it really is, but the other parent accepts it without objections when it comments.

to me it is very simple: If you are under weight you are under weight, you are simply not normal weight. There are easy ways to look this up. When I met my husband I was under weight. That do not mean that he was guaranteed that was the weight I was going to keep for the rest of my life. I am in no way jeopardizing my health, I am not over weight but even if I was and I have been too now and then slightly so during my life span, I still think it is fundamental that you treat every human being with respect and integrity. he did not treat me with that.

He comes from this obsessive diet, workoutish, afraid of sickness sort of family so I understand that his normal was actually not normal out in the real world but in this isolated family life style that had clearly gone to his head.

I think there was this part of him wanting to be perfect by his bully parents norms and was afraid to stand up to this parent and there for too wanted me to be perfect, and i was not perfect by their sick measurements.

thing is i have no intention of wanting to loose my curves, i am happy to have them, i look at the women on my side of the family and i am like them and they are like me and i am proud to be the way i am now. i have taught children we have different body types and different looks and appearances and that everyone deserves to be treated the same way, with respect. I was teaching that from very early on in all kinds of ways, way before he said what he did.

however i can not combine the way he chose to express himself (believe me the above was the child version of it) when insulting me, and how he is today. i am somehow hoping time and him proving he has changed will do it but how long?

it is moving towards Christmas and i know i am going to spend some time of it with his side of the family and frankly anything to do with diets, workouts make me wanna puke. i have always moved, worked out in my own way that i like to do but that is nobody's business including my husbands, it is my body, my life, my time, my interest on how i wish to do it, and not his. he wanted always to be in charge, and/or that we would do this together.

I have tried reiki and overall i am good with my own body, it is the relationship that still has its yesterdays ghosts, that has worked itself under my skin.

I can see he has changed but how do i know if he has really?

If he would not prefer to have me underweight again?

he was emotional during the split up as he would say he felt it real bad knowing he was not allowed to touch me no more and he just missed holding me, and that he found me "so pretty", that he was jealous now knowing i was to be single and enjoy the night life and dating life, and him somehow - despite lord behold my terrible weight - fearing i would have no trouble getting interest from the opposite sex. he would even confess later on that he had followed me on few occasions, I know of one but pretended I didn't.

every now and then he will still go on a diet and he is on one right now but is more calm than he usually was before and not irritated like before. before it was like living with someone who was to stop smoking.

I have been at other forums and from what i can tell the relationships are doomed. They are so doomed after one of the partners has told the other they think the partner is over weight and often followed by the sentence they have thought or expressed to them that they feel no attraction to them no more. Often written is that they think their partner is kind and everything and they love them, but they just don't love their bodies. I read of a woman who was at her husband making fun of his over weight til he told her how it made him feel and from then on she had felt sorry and said she would try to not comment no more.

What these people have in common is that They often feel very entitled to express themselves this way to their partners, and look at their own bodies as being superior to their partners.

There are also ridiculous measurements, demands. for instance some men who verbally attacked their women and wives after they had given birth not at all long time ago as if they expected their bodies to just jump back in a heart beat and devastated and i mean devastated women, new mothers, who now found themselves in a complete nightmare with the man they loved who talked and looked at their bodies this way. Never mind the women had given birth to their children without the men at all having anything changed with their own bodies or taken any risks of their own. never mind that.

on the most read i had made it was more women who were the target of this kind of bully and entitlement by their own partners, but there were also some women going on the same way with the men. It can be the culture that fewer men will hit a forum writing about this so statistically i can not say naturally if it is equal this complaining or not.

Many wrote about not wanting to show themselves semi nude or more so the thought of just sharing a bed with their partners who had complained on them was now overwhelming to them. I have felt the same way. I felt this animal kind of rage though, not sadness but pure rage when he one time tried to sneak back into our bed when it was his turn to sleep on the sofa, we had split but still lived under the same roof. another time he walked in on me semi dressed and apologized right away. I was having the attitude that i was not ashamed but that he was not entitled no more to see my body semi naked or naked, as that was something preserved for my lover only, and he was that no more, on paper still husband, but in reality not. The kind of rage I felt - i can't remember having felt it like that before in my life.

What joined the complainers was that they seemed to have no fear of actual consequences that did not at all result in any weight loss in their partners, but that their partners would in fact stand up and walk out on them, despite their own views of their own superior perfect bodies and therefor value?