One of the best ways to get your spouse to eat well is to stop taking responsibility for their food habits
As the case of Chaim and Esther illustrates, one of the best ways to get your spouse to take responsibility for his or her unhealthy behavior is to stop taking responsibility for it yourself.
Of course, wives aren’t the only ones who want their spouses to keep to a diet. Husbands can also try to get their wives to take control of their eating. Consider, for example, the following couple with whom I worked some time ago.
After15 years of marriage and a bunch of children, “Shira” wasn’t as slim as she was when she and “Avi” married. As a result, Avi made a point of mentioning that he would appreciate her going on a diet to lose some of the weight she had gained. Every time he raised this topic for discussion, Shira would become very defensive and angry. In spite of the response he always received from Shira, Avi stubbornly continued bringing up this issue.
Shira perceived Avi’s preoccupation with her eating habits as obsessive. At one point she became so disturbed by Avi’s laser focus on trying to get her to lose weight that she crossed her own self-imposed red line and retaliated with a stinging barrage of fault finding, including sharing her disappointment that he was no longer kovei’a itim. This “taste of his own medicine” left Avi feeling wounded and effectively put an end to his broaching that sensitive subject. He stopped badgering her once and for all. A few months later, Avi managed to pull himself together and returned to his former Daf Yomi shiur.
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