I’m Mitsuki, and I live with my husband, Shigeru, our seventh-grade daughter, Yuna, and our fourth-grade son, Itsuki. Shigeru and I have been married for 15 years. While he focused on work, I took care of the house and the kids, and we lived a peaceful life together, each doing our part. But one day, Shigeru looked at me with a serious expression and said, “From now on, I only want us to get along as parents to our children.” He told me he could no longer see me as a woman or a romantic partner. The main reason? I had gained about 30 kilograms after having our children. But this body didn’t come out of nowhere. It was shaped by the life I had built with him—years of handling the housework and raising our children mostly on my own, along with all the stress that came with it. After 15 years of marriage, I couldn’t believe he was still criticizing my appearance without even realizing everything I had been through. I was deeply disappointed in him.
“It wasn’t that you didn’t have the time or energy. You just never tried to make room for yourself.” Those words stopped me in my tracks. Raising kids had certainly been hard, but deep down, I think I had been telling myself, “I work so hard, so it’s okay to let this slide,” and I hadn’t taken my weight gain very seriously. Whenever my husband expressed concern, instead of truly listening to him, I would think, “You don’t even try to understand how I feel.” But then I realized that I had been doing the exact same thing—I hadn’t tried to understand how he felt, either. All this time, he had been worried about my health and had tried to talk to me about it as gently and considerately as he could. And yet, I had kept brushing his feelings aside. When I finally realized that, I felt ashamed of myself.