Wife just bought F Me Pumps....

Situation: long term lesbian relationship of 10 years. Partner has been unemployed since 2009. I support us. Lots of financial problems, obviously. R/S was wonderful for the most part until 2010. Partner's unemployment ran out. She has still not returned to work except for a brief stint last year which ended badly (she flipped out and refused to follow directions). Obviously my partner has some emotional/mental issues and those have become really clear to me in the last couple of months. She is having a mid life crisis spurred on by memories of a traumatic attack that happened to her when she was 19. Oh, she also lost 100 pounds over the course of the last few years. She has lots of mental damage from her family of origin including religious guilt. So beginning in April things have been really, really bad. She had a flashback and lost her mind. I was cut off from sex and affection, and basically abandoned emotionally by her. I went through the initial shock phase, then the coping phase. Partner wasn't communicating with me really at all at this point. In mid May she dropped the bomb that she's not sure she's gay. We had a tumultuous weekend, we broke up for about 5 minutes then got back together. A week or so later we had a talk that seemed to clear the air (basically I told her that I had sexual feelings for guys too and was OK with not acting on them, and that it did not threaten our r/s in my eyes). Oh, and I ALSO told her that if she decided she wanted a "boy toy" that I was out and she was on her own. She has been much more affectionate with me and loving since then, and every week has gotten better. The sex has not come back yet but the affection is slowly returning including cuddling. We are also communicating better and she is sharing details of what she discusses with her friends/therapists pretty freely. What's happening now is this: I posted yesterday about my suspicion that she has an eating disorder. She passed out early Monday morning three separate times. She just eats fruit, and that's it (and not much of it). All she talks about is food, weight and exercise. She is in therapy but I don't think it's the kind of therapy she really needs. So we saw her mother the other day. I've always gotten along well with her. It was a nice visit and we went shopping at the end of it. Her mother used to refuse to buy my partner clothes if she was over a certain weight, and now that my partner is skinny she and her mother shop a lot. Plus my partner has no $ and mom buys her whatever she wants. Which on this shopping trip, included a pair of F me pumps. My partner has NEVER worn anything even remotely like this before.....and our sex life does not include that kind of kink......not that I would mind, but trust me, that isn't why she wanted those shoes. I can understand the shoes in the context of wanting them as a reward for losing all the weight. She told me she likes the way they make her legs look. She admitted that they are totally impractical but she wanted them anyway and mom bought them for her. Of course a bigger concern for me is that she might be thinking these shoes are bait for attention from men. On a subconscious level I am sure that this is true. She has a lot of damage, internalized homophobia, etc. YET at the same time she is being affectionate and loving with me, and it is genuine. Not the same as before but genuine. Ladies, I don't know if you agree but I think all of us like to know that we "still have it." I know I do! So if she wants to be whistled at, get an admiring look, etc I really do not have a problem with that. My bigger problem is that I am not attracted to the heel-wearing, appearances are everything, superficial type of woman, and she was not that person when we met. This is what her mother is and it SEEMS that my partner wants to be that way now, too....or feels she "should be" that way......I don't know if she is fundamentally changing or if this is all part of the MLC. Our lease is up in July and some kind of decision - to stay together and keep working on things, to separate, to break up - is coming then....she had an interview for a job last week and is waiting to hear back, however we had a deal that she was to apply for 5 jobs per week, and she hasn't done that this week.

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