"I AM SERIOUSLY OVERWEIGHT AND MY HUSBAND IS DOWNLOADING PORN"

Therapist A is a counsellor with a psychodynamic approach with experience of working with adults and young people .
You are an intelligent and able person but seem to find it hard to think about the sources of your own predicament. It sounds as if, although you have a tendency to being overweight, it is very much tied up with emotional difficulties rather than it being simply a physical condition.

You do not say much about your childhood but it sounds as if there were hidden currents under the surface in your family, a lack of honesty and a certain amount of secrecy and hypocrisy around things sexual. Children often sense things that are not out in the open and it could be that you not only lacked confidence in yourself but also in those around you.

I can understand how demoralising it was to find that the partner you trust is seeking sexual satisfaction elsewhere and to become disillusioned about your father’s supposed morality. People bring into relationships all aspects of themselves, both good and bad, and it is up to you to choose, by your own standards, what you will accept. However you need to work out your own position and not put up with things because you feel bad about yourself.

I think it would be a good idea for you to find a professional helper who you could trust, to enable you understand your insecurity and build your self-confidence. Only you can ultimately change things for yourself, but there are people who can help you take responsibility for your life. It is a tough road to choose to face your threatening feelings but you need to find self-esteem that is not reliant on the feedback of those around you.

I know that it is not easy to find the right person to help you when living in a foreign country but, if you cannot find face to face help, apart from therapists on this site, there are also therapists on the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy website directory who offer counselling by phone or on Skype. It won't be easy or a ‘quick fix’ but, if you are prepared to work at it, I am sure you can find a happier way of being.
Therapist B is a Relate-trained counsellor with experience of working with relationship issues and is an experienced couples counsellor
Given all that you have just poured out I am very glad that you have finally decided to seek some help. As you realise for yourself however, all the various problems you have written about seem to revolve around the issue of your weight. I'm sorry to hear that the gastric band not only seems to be making your life more difficult, but hasn't achieved the desired effect anyway,& I wonder if it might be worth looking at the various sites which give advice on the after effects of this operation. They nearly all seem to indicate that patients still need to eat correctly, exercise etc - which of course we all know is sensible - but not always achievable if you are suffering from low self esteem in the first place.

As you have already identified, the underlying low self esteem has really shaken your confidence in yourself, even though it seems to me that you have achieved a huge success in working for a large French company - not easy at the best of times, but they must value you particularly at the moment when many others are losing their jobs. Although I note that you somehow think that if you were thinner you might be taken more seriously, it does point again to you putting a lot of value on looks & shape, so I wonder what message you got from your early years that put those ideas in your head? I know that all the media promote the ideal way for a woman to look, but if you look around how many of your friends/aquaintances/colleagues can really live up to that ideal?

However, I do realise that the main issue is how you feel about yourself, particularly as it seems to be impacting on your marriage & your sexual relationship with your husband. It sounds as though you could both benefit from some couple counselling, as many men resort to pornography for a variety of reasons & it might be helpful if you could both go back & explore how you felt when you first got together & remember what it was that attracted you to each other. A couples counsellor might be able to help you both express genuine feelings that often get hidden when you're both working hard in those first years of marriage. If for some reason you aren't able to express your emotional & sexual needs early on, then often it just gets more difficult to be honest with each other. A trained counsellor would be able to help you both explore what you really want out of life, & help you look at ways in which you could both get some pleasure instead of the stress & mistrust you are experiencing at the moment.

I know that it is often hard to find the professional help you need in a foreign country, even if bilingual there can be cultural differences, but I'll put some helpful web sites at the end which you may find useful or refer you back to here to see if there is anyone suitable in your area for face to face counselling. At least you have decided to try & seek help now which is often the most difficult part,& I do hope that you will be able to continue down this path to getting yourself onto a healthier level both emotionally & psychologically speaking.

www.selfesteem4women.com 
www.relate.org.uk  -although these are based in the U.K they offer online or telephone counselling as well. You may find that some couple counsellors use webcam & skype conference calls for those who aren't near enough for face to face counselling
www.weightconcern.com  
Therapist C is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with experience of working with relationship and many other issues.
It sounds like you are having a very difficult time. There seems to be a paradox at play here, where appearances are belied by what is behind them. I am struck by your emphasis on your appearance and the importance that you attribute to it and I wonder if appearance is something that was very important in your family. You write that the family appeared to be very and moral and yet behind that facade, your father had been having affairs for all those years. It can be very confusing to know what you think and feel when there are contradictory messages being conveyed in the family.

From what you write, you come across as a competent and intelligent woman. However, it would seem that it is difficult for you to have a sense of who and what you are because of the importance that you attribute to your appearance. Of course weight is not a negligible factor but, from what you write, your weight problem would seem to indicate that there are deeper difficulties underlying the weight issue. You mention that you a experienced feelings of low self esteem even when you were thin. This would seem to indicate that these feelings are not just to do with your weight. I wonder what it is that is making you attribute all your problems to your weight.

You mention that your family was puritanical and I wonder to what extent you were not able to express yourself. This, together with the ambience in the the family may have contributed to your lack of confidence and to the way you feel about yourself today. Children are often very sensitive to the emotional nuances in the family and it may be that you somehow sensed that all was not as it appeared to be in your family. This may be something of which you were not consciously aware at the time but that may have, nevertheless, affected you. The fact that weight was an issue for you from the time you were five years old would also seem to suggest that the difficulties you are now experiencing have to do with the past as well as the present. The faking that you mention may be also be something to do with your feeling that all was not right in the family when you were growing up. Things were not as they appeared to be and this may have made it very difficult for you to decipher what was true and what was not true. I would suggest that going to see a counsellor or therapist may help you understand and address the issues that are contributing to the difficulties that you are experiencing.