A Smaller Pant Size Does Not Equate Happiness, Even After Divorce

My first thought as my forty-one year old husband revealed an affair with a girl half his age was not one you'd expect. Such as I'm going to rip his head off and run her over with the car but rather, Cool, I'm going to get my girlish figure back!

I imagine such a revelation to a therapist that I was giddy over the fact I was going to lose weight from the soul-crushing stress of divorce would have heads shaking derisively as notes are not so much scrawled but bled across page after page in a notebook.

It's the truth though. I was at least eighty pounds over what had been my normal weight for most of my adult life that fateful day. And while I would say to other people that I wasn't happy with the extra weight, as if it were required of me, like an apology, (I even blogged my self-loathing as if it were homework) I was actually quite content.

In fact, for the first time in my life I was very comfortable in my own skin. I was overweight but free of all those crazy notions that I wasn't good enough because I could not fit into a single digit pant size. This coming from a gal who grew up chubby and was constantly and consistently harassed about it to the point I starved my way down to a society-approved pant size in high school. A size mastered through my young adult years via one crazy diet after another, but mostly starvation, with hours of exercise. At least until my second marriage where I decided society was just going to have to accept my God-given, natural, size.

Yet, as my now ex-husband revealed his betrayal with a lithe, blonde, twenty-one year old child in my eyes, (I'm thirty-six) back in June my first thought was I'm going to be skinny again.

Obviously, my body image was not as healthy as I had assumed and it only got worse. As I moved all my belongings out of our house, including that of our two young daughters, I began to lose weight in record time. The more the weight fell off the more I reveled in everyone's attention of said weight loss.

A handful of months later, however, as I stood before a mirror, several sizes smaller and absolutely swimming in my old clothes one would have thought I'd be deliriously happy at the weight loss. Instead, I thought to myself, two more pant sizes, just two more and I'll be happy. Okay, maybe three.

Great!I'd been perfectly content with the old me, the overweight me, and now thinner me was at battle in a wicked game of self-loathing. I wasted most of the summer dreaming up strict diets and exercise plans.

What happened?

Divorce is what happened.

Besides the fact that divorce is a soul-devouring, life-altering event, possibly the worst emotional hijacker next to death, it really does a number on one's ego and self-esteem. Where one may have been content and blissful with a partner who assumedly accepted you in whatever shape you are or were or will be, you suddenly find yourself questioning everything from pant size, to that new wrinkle across your forehead from the stress of it all, to taking issue with the number of candles on your birthday cake, especially if the marriage was torn apart by a third much younger, thinner, I-can't-compete-with-a-twenty-year-old individual.

So how does one recover their self-esteem in such a situation?

Well, as much as I would love for there to be a magic pill to swallow or a perfect pant size to recoup self-esteem, there isn't. The first thing in recovering self-esteem, especially after a divorce, is to be aware not only of the pressures of society to be beautiful, thin, forever young and just beauty pageant perfect all the time, which is impossible, but the ridiculous expectations we put on ourselves. Not only that, but where our values are to begin with because here was my husband of ten years telling me he was having an affair and my first reactive thought was how thin I was going to be when all was said and done. If I could not condone his behavior, what was to be said of my own at that precise moment? Thinking not of the harm the situation posed to our children, possibly my health, and certainly the potential end of what I thought was a safe, secure, solid marriage, but of my waistline, seriously?

The fact I was actually thinking of my weight at a moment when my life was literally coming unraveled goes to show just how misappropriated our values have become in society. Everything in my life was at stake that otherwise fine June day and I was daydreaming about how I would toss out all my "fat" clothes for tight jeans and even tighter skirts.

Looking back, which seems like an eternity but it's only been four months, not only am I embarrassed and horrified by my thoughts of how a smaller pant size would make my life perfectly happy, sans a cheating husband, but it almost feels as if I had cheated on my marriage, too.

As a friend said, losing weight is absolutely an esteem booster; however it is not the guaranteed stamp of approval. She's right and I might add a smaller pant size does not equate happiness, even after divorce.

* originally published at Beautiful You September 26, 2010

The mother of two munchkins, Bethany J. Royer is an independent contractor and writer currently studying psychology with Florida Institute of Technology. She is actively seeking a publisher for her first completed novel while working on a memoir about her personal trials and tribulations with divorce. She blogs prolifically at motherofthemunchkins.blogspot.com and can be reached at themotherofthemunchkins@yahoo.com.