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iQuestions Faculty, Dr. Gary Smalley 
 
 
Question: 
 
My wife is overweight and I hate it, can I do anything? 
 
Answer:  
 
So, your wife’s weight gain is really bothering you. I think that one of 
the reasons it bothers you is because it’s really not sexy, is it? When 
you married, she was probably a lot thinner, and it was exciting, and 
sex is always for a man, the typical man, more exciting if a woman is 
thinner and “sexy”—I mean, let’s just say it. 
 
Well, if you want your wife to lose weight, or if you want to influence 
her, the first thing you have to do instantly, today, this very second, is 
stop correcting her, stop suggesting she eat differently. Any kind of 
advice from you, pointing your finger, blaming her, if you ever say—or 
if you’ve said it, you need to seek forgiveness as soon as you can—
“You are the reason I can’t get sexually satisfied anymore, and so I’m 
probably going to have to go outside our marriage,” do you know how 
damaging that is?   
 
What it does to her is it says, she’s not valuable to you anymore, 
you’re not committed anymore, you don’t love her anymore, she’s not 
good enough for you anymore, she’s somehow not performing up to 
your satisfaction. You know the bottom line? She really doesn’t have 
anything to do with your satisfaction. All of that has to do with the 
beliefs in your own heart and the relationship you have with her.  
 
Do you want her to even have the slightest desire to lose weight for 
you? You have the power in your hand to manage this, if you want. If 
you commit yourself to this, watch what happens.  
 
 
 
If you start building a great relationship with your wife today—most of 
the time a woman eats for emotional reasons, and they eat because 
they’re disconnected from a human. They don’t have a bond with their 
husband or their kids or their family, but especially in marriage, if 
they’re not connected to you in a meaningful, satisfying relationship, 
they have to find a substitute, because they have a desire to be 
connected. They look around, and what do they find? They find food. 
Then a woman gets connected and married to food, and they love it 
because it’s satisfying.  
 
So, do you know that you actually push her to food if you are judging 
her, criticizing her, condemning her, or blaming her? Because 
relationships only happen in a safe environment, in a loving 
environment, a non-judgmental, non-critical environment. And so, 
you’re actually ruining your chances of having a thinner wife if you go 
straight at her to correct her. The best thing you can do is work on 
your own beliefs and your own heart. Work on you. You start 
changing. Become a model to how do you change, but change by 
being a more loving husband, more sensitive. 
 
Here’s Viagra for a woman: tenderness, listening to her, not criticizing 
her, condemning her. As I’ve mentioned, when you hold her tenderly, 
when you listen, and when you understand, if you did nothing else but 
carefully, tenderly spend time with her over the next several weeks, 
just listening, understanding who she is, her feelings, her needs, her 
beliefs, everything, watch how she’s going to respond.  
 
The more you two are connected and bonded in a meaningful, 
satisfying relationship, the more her heart lights up with love from you 
and for you, watch how the weight begins to fall off of her. See, people 
don’t realize that when you’re addicted, it’s a substitute for a 
meaningful relationship, and the worse thing you can do is to get on 
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their case, because it only increases the addiction, because it weakens 
their relationship. It’s really simple, isn’t it? 
 
So, you have a job: work on the relationship. Work on what you can 
do. Don’t ever again criticize her, period, or condemn her, or blame 
her—because your happiness is your own beliefs in your heart—and 
when you stop doing that in her weight area, that will change her life. 
That’s my advice to you. 
 
You know, the more your heart lights up for her with love, and the 
more her heart lights up for you with love, the weight just starts to 
melt off. It leaves a much greater chance that that’s what is going to 
happen. 
 
 
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