Confession, continued

I emailed both of my parents a copy of yesterday's newspaper article that Chris had been mentioned in. He was the assistant district attorney on a case involving a drunk driver who'd caused an accident last week. I'm starting to open up more to my parents about Chris. For many years, I had avoided the subject. They had disapproved of him on several levels, even without knowing the worst of our troubles (the drinking). Fortunately, they've come 'round and accepted him, coincidentally around the same time that he cleaned up his life completely, about a year and a half ago. Part of the reason that they began to accept him was that they started to see what other men were like, particularly the ones my younger sister was starting to date. They realized that Chris has a lot of wonderful qualities that are rare and difficult to find in other men. For some reason they also stopped complaining about his shortcomings (ie, lack of financial success) after I graduated from medical school. I think they felt more secure after I became a doctor and knew that I would be financially capable with or without him. They also saw how busy and demanding my life was, and grew to appreciate how difficult it would be to find another man who accepts my lifestyle and supports it as much as Chris does.

The need for approval and the fear of criticism are, I think, the fundamental reasons why I've been reluctant to share Chris with the other people in my life. He's far from perfect, as are many of us. Unlike the rest of us though, he doesn't strive as hard to hide his imperfections. He doesn't care as much about how he appears to other people or what other people think about him. This can be a good or bad thing.

I find that physicians can be the most critical and perfectionistic people in the world. This may be a gross generalization. However, our job demands it. Without obsessive compulsive, anal, and overly thorough habits, we could easily kill someone or effectively ruin their lives. We also got to each step of our journey by survival of the fittest-- competing with others and beating the losers out with our grades, scores, and performance. The final result is a group of people, physicians, many of whom I don't like very much but we share more in common with each other than with any other people. The reality is that I have tried to introduce Chris to other people in my life over the years; most of the people who've been happy for us and accepted us as a couple were non-physicians; most of the people who had something critical to say were physicians.

Take for example, the party on Friday night. My girl friend S, whom I had always thought to be a nice person, was laughing hysterically with the guy who'd been forced to take a drug test at work. They were laughing at the other guys in our class who were overweight and a little too much adipose tissue around the belly. And the next day, while talking on the phone, S sounded a little petulant: "You looked sooo thin last night," she said. (She hadn't seen me in normal clothes for a few months; I'm usually in baggy scrubs.) Since we've met a few months ago, she's expressed her insecurity about her weight to me numerous times, even though she's a thin, petite girl who's only heavier than me because she has (significantly) larger breasts and butt! She's even stopped taking her birth control pills recently (and swore them off forever) because she'll probably be thinner without them. I don't know if I've had any influence on this, but the point I'm trying to make is that weight and superficial appearances are very important to my classmates.

I felt bad when I realized they were making fun of the guys because Chris is far from perfect too. When I met him, he was tall and handsome (6'2", or 188 cm), with an athletic build... by no means overweight. Unfortunately, through the years he has gone the way of his genetic fate (his mom, for example, is terribly overweight). He has gained too much weight, and though he's not morbidly obese or disgusting or anything, he's like a lot of other Americans after they're no longer young spring chickens. This is despite trying numerous diets, starving himself, and exercising (we walked six miles together yesterday). Am I nervous about what my co-workers are going to say about him? Maybe. When some of my med school classmates met him a few years ago they said to me, "he looks like a meathead." Was I supposed to be insulted or take it gracefully? Meathead: big dumb jock, not smart. He's well-read and writes well and went to law school; doesn't that count for something? Maybe he looks like a meathead because he always dresses like a slob. He looks great in a suit, but outside of work, he always dresses a slob. I relate more to Sandra Oh's character in Gray's Anatomy: "My room might be a mess. My house might be a mess. But I never look like a mess." Maybe I care too much about what other people think. I'm not used to being criticized for my weight or my clothing; thinness always came easily to me, (like the majority of Asian women), and I always dressed to make a good first impression.

It hurts me to hear what other people think or might think about my boyfriend.