My partner takes it as a personal affront if I eat less than her. She says it's like I'm saying she's a big fat pig. She even sometimes begs me to have a dessert so she can justify having one herself.

Surely this is a no-brainer. People pay extra attention to their appearance when they want to attract a mate, and often let themselves go when a relationship becomes stable.

Blaming one's partner is a bit rich, though.

The heading of this topic sounds like a Jerry Springer episode.

For 45 years I ate as much as I liked, of anything I felt like, & never gained a pound.

Now, as a clapped out old bugger, half a meal a day is too much, to keep the weight off.

I don't think any partner had, or has, much to do with it.

Too easy to blame someone else for what we stick in our own mouths.

I am in the same state as Hasbeen, for years and years I too was as thin as a rake but since hitting the big 50, have packed some on.

Too much going in relative to that used to get from place to place...

the excess has gotta go somewhere....

I put on a lot of weight when I was working on a field crew in the bush for three years. Three rich meals a day was too much for me as I was doing computer work, but I got caught in the rut of having all meals to fit in socially with the rest of the crew. (As they were mostly doing 10-12 hours per day manual work, the calorie intake was right for them).

So I can understand how people's environments can have an effect on their weight. After all, living with a partner is just another environment, with its own particular trade-offs, that needs to be negotiated.