u/Excellent-Produce-49

Hey guys.

I want to share my current situation. I want to educate myself as much as possible on eating disorders/body dysmorphia.

My (27m) girlfriend (25f) struggled a lot in her teenage years with an eating disorder/body dysmorphia issue. She still has problems with her body and looks and to an extent still has an issue with food - but more with weight gain and her body. She eats normally but I feel in the back of her mind this voice still speaks to her, but she’s doing very well. My little sister also struggles with eating disorders - she eats only 4 types of food and has done for years. I hope she will go to therapy soon.

Shes spoken to me extensively about her body problems such as believing that ‘getting better’ from this disorder meant ‘getting bigger’. She has described the eating disorder as an ‘addiction’ which I can totally understand - competing against yourself to see how skinny you can get, how little good you can eat and so on. She has described the eating disorder to have elements of competition in it. When she was younger she went through a phase of immersing herself in very toxic eating disorder circles on the internet about 10 years ago. Tumblr, Instagram, etc… essentially self harm adjacent online spaces.

She mainly suffers with body dysmorphia more than eating itself - and this one is tough. I find her VERY attractive, (and that’s saying a lot coming from me - I hardly find anyone ATTRACTIVE attractive, I have struggled with attraction, arousal, my own sexual identity for a large portion of my adult life). However, I know that just calling her beautiful and pretty (which I do daily and I really do mean it) only does do much - sometimes it does feel like a ‘band aid’ fix. I don’t blame her. In the times when I struggled with my own addictions - people’s words meant very little and at times would make me angry because it made me feel that they didn’t understand me: “if you understood how I felt, then you would know that what you’re saying is meaningless” type mindset! My girlfriend is stunning and her body is amazing - that’s how I feel, but she struggles to feel that consistently and sometimes it gets really bad. It also doesn’t help that she is TERRIBLE at expressing how she feels. She was neglected a lot as a child and has developed a sort of ‘hyper’ independence and it is a struggle to get her to share how she really feels.

We’ve been together less than a year and I love her so so much. Shes such a brilliant person and she makes me very happy and I want to make sure I am a good partner in this sense - I do not judge her whatsoever for any of this and never will. I just want to try and understand as much as I can - I am aware action on my part doesn’t always mean resolution - sometimes just listening and being there can help someone heal. I am not here to fix her nor therapise her. I just care about her a lot and it saddens me that she has to experience this.

I want to emphasise that I am aware of how toxic and poisonous the mindset of body and eating disorders can be; how they infiltrate the way you understand yourself, the way that an eating disorders can twist logic to suit this disorder, and how much eating disorders can simply be about power over one’s self.

I have purchased the book ‘Hunger’ by Roxanne Gay and will read it over the coming months.

Any advice, tips or stories you guys have please share! I’m open 🙂

Hey guys.

I want to share my current situation. I want to educate myself as much as possible on eating disorders/body dysmorphia.

My (27m) girlfriend (25f) struggled a lot in her teenage years with an eating disorder/body dysmorphia issue. She still has problems with her body and looks and to an extent still has an issue with food - but more with weight gain and her body. She eats normally but I feel in the back of her mind this voice still speaks to her, but she’s doing very well. My little sister also struggles with eating disorders - she eats only 4 types of food and has done for years. I hope she will go to therapy soon.

Shes spoken to me extensively about her body problems such as believing that ‘getting better’ from this disorder meant ‘getting bigger’. She has described the eating disorder as an ‘addiction’ which I can totally understand - competing against yourself to see how skinny you can get, how little good you can eat and so on. She has described the eating disorder to have elements of competition in it. When she was younger she went through a phase of immersing herself in very toxic eating disorder circles on the internet about 10 years ago. Tumblr, Instagram, etc… essentially self harm adjacent online spaces.

She mainly suffers with body dysmorphia more than eating itself - and this one is tough. I find her VERY attractive, (and that’s saying a lot coming from me - I hardly find anyone ATTRACTIVE attractive, I have struggled with attraction, arousal, my own sexual identity for a large portion of my adult life). However, I know that just calling her beautiful and pretty (which I do daily and I really do mean it) only does do much - sometimes it does feel like a ‘band aid’ fix. I don’t blame her. In the times when I struggled with my own addictions - people’s words meant very little and at times would make me angry because it made me feel that they didn’t understand me: “if you understood how I felt, then you would know that what you’re saying is meaningless” type mindset! My girlfriend is stunning and her body is amazing - that’s how I feel, but she struggles to feel that consistently and sometimes it gets really bad. It also doesn’t help that she is TERRIBLE at expressing how she feels. She was neglected a lot as a child and has developed a sort of ‘hyper’ independence and it is a struggle to get her to share how she really feels.

We’ve been together less than a year and I love her so so much. Shes such a brilliant person and she makes me very happy and I want to make sure I am a good partner in this sense - I do not judge her whatsoever for any of this and never will. I just want to try and understand as much as I can - I am aware action on my part doesn’t always mean resolution - sometimes just listening and being there can help someone heal. I am not here to fix her nor therapise her. I just care about her a lot and it saddens me that she has to experience this.

I want to emphasise that I am aware of how toxic and poisonous the mindset of body and eating disorders can be; how they infiltrate the way you understand yourself, the way that an eating disorders can twist logic to suit this disorder, and how much eating disorders can simply be about power over one’s self.

I have purchased the book ‘Hunger’ by Roxanne Gay and will read it over the coming months.

Any advice, tips or stories you guys have please share! I’m open 🙂

Hey guys.

I want to share my current situation. I want to educate myself as much as possible on eating disorders/body dysmorphia.

My (27m) girlfriend (25f) struggled a lot in her teenage years with an eating disorder/body dysmorphia issue. She still has problems with her body and looks and to an extent still has an issue with food - but more with weight gain and her body. She eats normally but I feel in the back of her mind this voice still speaks to her, but she’s doing very well. My little sister also struggles with eating disorders - she eats only 4 types of food and has done for years. I hope she will go to therapy soon.

Shes spoken to me extensively about her body problems such as believing that ‘getting better’ from this disorder meant ‘getting bigger’. She has described the eating disorder as an ‘addiction’ which I can totally understand - competing against yourself to see how skinny you can get, how little good you can eat and so on. She has described the eating disorder to have elements of competition in it. When she was younger she went through a phase of immersing herself in very toxic eating disorder circles on the internet about 10 years ago. Tumblr, Instagram, etc… essentially self harm adjacent online spaces.

She mainly suffers with body dysmorphia more than eating itself - and this one is tough. I find her VERY attractive, (and that’s saying a lot coming from me - I hardly find anyone ATTRACTIVE attractive, I have struggled with attraction, arousal, my own sexual identity for a large portion of my adult life). However, I know that just calling her beautiful and pretty (which I do daily and I really do mean it) only does do much - sometimes it does feel like a ‘band aid’ fix. I don’t blame her. In the times when I struggled with my own addictions - people’s words meant very little and at times would make me angry because it made me feel that they didn’t understand me: “if you understood how I felt, then you would know that what you’re saying is meaningless” type mindset! My girlfriend is stunning and her body is amazing - that’s how I feel, but she struggles to feel that consistently and sometimes it gets really bad. It also doesn’t help that she is TERRIBLE at expressing how she feels. She was neglected a lot as a child and has developed a sort of ‘hyper’ independence and it is a struggle to get her to share how she really feels.

We’ve been together less than a year and I love her so so much. Shes such a brilliant person and she makes me very happy and I want to make sure I am a good partner in this sense - I do not judge her whatsoever for any of this and never will. I just want to try and understand as much as I can - I am aware action on my part doesn’t always mean resolution - sometimes just listening and being there can help someone heal. I am not here to fix her nor therapise her. I just care about her a lot and it saddens me that she has to experience this.

I want to emphasise that I am aware of how toxic and poisonous the mindset of body and eating disorders can be; how they infiltrate the way you understand yourself, the way that an eating disorders can twist logic to suit this disorder, and how much eating disorders can simply be about power over one’s self.

I have purchased the book ‘Hunger’ by Roxanne Gay and will read it over the coming months.

Any advice, tips or stories you guys have please share! I’m open 🙂