EDs and Bad Beaus

Having an eating disorder is hard enough. But add an abusive boyfriend to the mix, and you have a heaping helping of trouble times ten.

Now, let me state first of all that some boyfriends can be extremely helpful — they can assist a woman in figuratively “breaking the mirror” once and for all.  However, my experience has been that many beaus use their gal pals’ disordered eating as a way to control them emotionally and physically.

And I speak from personal experience.

One of my first high school boyfriends (let’s just call him “The Devil”, shall we?) adored mocking my anorexic body.  He’d call me ugly, fat, huge, elephant-like… just so I would cry.  He’d tell me I couldn’t eat anything when we were out together.  When we kissed or “made out”, he’d tell me he hated me because I was so disgusting.  I stayed because I thought he was telling me the truth and that this terrible treatment was what I deserved.

Ironically, though, he’d sometimes make fun of me because I didn’t eat.  He’d say I was psycho and weird and needed to eat something.  He was messing with my head… and I was allowing him to make me feel even worse about myself, inside and out.

In all honesty, I really believe he enjoyed making my eating disorder worse.  

Basically, ”The Devil” helped fuel my self-doubts.  And I truly think he relished his power.  (Hmmm… who was the really psychotic one in the relationship…?  But I digress…)

Eventually, we broke up and I started to heal.  But if we had remained together, I can’t imagine where I’d be now… 

Later in life, I dated someone  who attempted to control my body.  But this time, I wasn’t having any of it.  He told me one day rather flippantly that if I lost ten or fifteen pounds, I’d be “perfect”.

So what did I do?  I lost about 220 pounds.

Him.