Paul Mason has a solid list of the things that attract him to his fiancee Rebecca Mountain. Here’s a start.
“She’s very open. She drives me on. She never gives up.”
And Rebecca?
“He doesn’t mind talking about his feelings,” she says, “talking about his situation, his past.” When someone can be that open and honest with you, “it sets the stage for a level of trust,” she adds.
She’s 41. He’s 54. They share a love of animals and making things with their hands. In the past, Rebecca worked for the MSPCA. At a young age she says learned from her father how to swing a hammer. She ended up starting a successful business building custom made wood tree houses for cats. (If you love a cat, you’ll understand this.)
Paul, from Ipswich, England, brought his dog over with him to the States. For the time being he makes jewelry. He used to deliver mail for the Royal Post. Like Rebecca, he’s dated a fair amount. He has one particular distinction from Rebecca.
Up until recently, he was known as “The Fattest Man in The World,” weighing almost 1000 pounds.
You may have seen Paul and Rebecca last year on ABC’s The View, with Barbara Walters. By that time he had lost almost 600 pounds.
In England, he’d had gastric bypass surgery paid for by the country’s National Health System. Before the operation he was eating 20,000 calories a day, and dependent on caretakers. He says he knew he was going to die within a few years, given the burden he placed on his body. Around 2008 Paul got into therapy, and he says he finally spoke about the aunt who molested him as a child, and his abusive father.
“He learned a lot of her parenting skills from being in the British army,” Paul says. “His idea of discipline was just, a good sort of left hand. We weren’t allowed to express ourselves. I was burying everything that was going on.”
When Paul was close to a thousand pounds, the British tabloids had a field day with him. He became the subject of a couple of documentaries. That exposure lead to some good things. Around 2009 Rebecca happened to see one of those movies. She says she felt some kind of connection to Paul.
“Not like a personal connection,” she says, “just an empathetic connection.” Then a few years went by, ” and I just stumbled across and update online about Paul. ” She saw that he got the gastric bypass operation he had been waiting for, for years. In 2013 she wrote to him.
Paul says her email explained why she was in touch, “she wanted to help, to get the loose skin removed. [She inquired] how I was, and how my life has changed.”
Rebecca says talking to Paul was easy. He was the kind of person she could meet at a party and then talk to all night. Their first Skype conversation lasted four hours. And their lives connected from there.
The couple has many hurdles to overcome before, they say, they can get married. When they leave their home in the rural town of Orange, Paul uses a wheel chair to get around. The 100 pounds of skin left over from the weight loss are debilitating and cause frequent infections. In the past few months, Paul’s had to take heavy doses of antibiotics. It will take at least two operations to remove the skin.
They have managed a lot to this point, says Emily Nagoski, the director of the Wellness Center at Smith College, researches and writes about sexuality and relationships.
“There’s the physical distance to begin with. There’s having to address physical health issues before you’re ready to be in a relationship,” and she adds, “then there’s the sort of social judgement piece of people wondering why you’re in this relationship when there are so many barriers,” and wondering why these two are attracted to each other.
But Nagoski says those barriers that could have kept Rebecca and Paul apart could also be what brings them closer together.
“When you cross one hurdle and make more of a connection, and are rewarded after you cross that hurdle, with a stronger connection that feels really rewarding and good, and then another barrier comes up,” and you want to cross that barrier too, she says.
Paul and Rebecca have some help with the next barrier. A top plastic surgeon in New York City has volunteered her time to perform the skin removal operations. Barbara Walters got The View to cover hospital fees. But related expenses like transportation and medication? Unclear how they’ll be paid for.
Surgery is scheduled for the end of April at Lenox Hill Hospital in new York. Paul has to be healthy or it’s delayed. The worst case scenario: his medical visa runs out before the operation and he says he’d have to return to England.
At the same time, this unexpected couple are coming up with a playlist for their wedding. Both agree ont he Pet Shop Boys. Tenor Mario Lanza? Rebecca says, no way. But, it’s not a deal breaker just a hurdle of the most minute kind.