I've never been fat, or even close, but I have been carrying a middle age spread for the last 10 years or so. I was like that already when we got married, and for the first 5 years of marriage my wife never said anything. But, for the last three years, my wife has been on me to do something about it. For the first two of them, her argument was that I wasn't in the same shape as when we married. So, showing her the pictures of when we were dating would end the argument, since I was actually better than back then. And, her arguments about it making me look old didn't work, because most 30 year olds were in worse shape than me.
What changed all that was our last vacation, because while I looked ok by local standards, I couldn't compete with the foreign tourists, even though I'm a foreigner myself. True, the place we went was upscale, and the people who went there were the middle aged rich, and all had younger trophy wives. But, while my wife, who is also many years younger than me, could hold her own against the women, I was sadly outclassed by the men.
And it wasn't that my wife was watching the men the way I was watching the women. She was actually watching the women too, and pointing out the ones she thought were really hot. No, it was seeing the kinds of men these hot women had, and the kind of man my hot wife had, that bothered me. So, after we got home, I told my wife I was joining the local gym, because she deserved a better looking husband. And her only response was that it was about time I realized how much my shape hurt her.
I didn't understand that comment and I told her that, so she explained it to me. It wasn't a case of her thinking my body was disgusting or anything like that. I mean, she'd fallen in love with me with that body, and we'd been making love for years. And, if we'd been close to the same age, there wouldn't be a problem, since I wasn't in that bad of shape. But because I was 20 years older than her, everybody thought she'd married me for my money or my passport.
It wasn't true, and she hoped I knew that, but hearing people say that all the time hurt her a lot. If I was in better shape, they'd stop saying that, and would understand that she really loved me. So, it wasn't that she was embarrassed to be seen with me, it was people not seeing what a handsome man I was that actually hurt her.
Although we weren't fighting, because I'd already decided to start working out, I fell back on one of my old arguments. My wife was already jealous enough of the women who showed interest in me. If I got the kind of body she wanted, there'd be even more women chasing me. And the last thing I wanted was more of the "who's that girl" fights when one of them smiled at me. I was still going to start exercising, but if it started making her more of a bitch, I was going to quit right away.
She laughed at that and told me that I just didn't understand. Yeah, she'd been mad at me when she thought I knew the girls, but that was when we first got married. After that though, the reason she got mad is because of why the girls wanted me. If they had been interested in me because of how I looked, she'd have been proud, not angry. But, because she knew they were only interested because they thought I was rich, it pissed her off. And because I was making them think that by not taking care of myself, it was making her mad at me.
I told her she was full of it, and she'd get jealous again the first time some girl tried to flirt with me. But, like I said, I was still going to do this, and we'd see what happened. Of course, nothing at all happened for the first two months, because it took that long before there were any visible changes in my body.
And even when they did start to show, I didn't see any increase or change in the attention I was getting. About the most I got was that some of the people I knew started asking if I had lost weight. So, any dreams my wife had of it changing anyone's mind about why she married me were just that, dreams. Still, I kept right on with the gym, because even if no one else noticed, my wife and I both saw a difference.
Then again, I don't see how we could have expected a reaction at that point. I mean, I'd started at the end of summer, and by the time I myself noticed any difference, everyone was wearing light jackets. So, the only people who would notice anything were the people at my office, and the friends who came to visit us at our house. The rest of the time, whatever I was wearing covered any changes there were to how I looked. It wasn't until spring, after I'd been working out for over six months, that I got my first real reactions. And even then, I didn't recognize them, because the attention I was getting looked just like the attention I always got from being a foreigner and girls thinking that made me rich.
But my wife saw it differently, saying it was about time some of the girls looked at me for the right reasons. When I told her it was her imagination, that they were looking at me the same way as before, she said I couldn't tell the difference because I was a man. When a girl smiled at a man, he didn't look close enough at her eyes to figure out why she was smiling.
All that mattered to him was that she was smiling at him, and whether she was pretty enough to smile back at. That's why we had so much trouble understanding women, because 95% of what a woman said was non-verbal. If we men spent as much time looking at women's faces as we did their tits and asses, we'd be able to read them like a book. And what these women were saying behind their smiles was that I was not only rich, I was also not half bad in the looks department.
I told her that if it made her feel good to believe that, then I was fine with it. But she said she wasn't fine with it, although it was an improvement. I should have gotten more than just the three girls who looked at me that way. There should have been 15 to 20 at least, so something was wrong.
And since it wasn't my body, because that was looking real good to her, it had to be the clothes I was wearing. True, when I still had my gut, she wouldn't let me wear tight shirts, because they just made my stomach more obvious. But now that it was gone, and I had muscles to show off, I should definitely show them off. So, she and I were going shopping for some new clothes that made the best of my new body.
I hate shopping just as much as the next guy, but even I had to admit that I needed some new clothes. I was still wearing the same things I wore before, and they didn't fit right anymore. My waist was two inches smaller, so my belt was all that was holding my pants up. I even needed to use a belt when I wore jeans, and that only looks good on cowboys or rednecks.