A Partner's Perspective on Anorexia

This blog has been structured mainly by my own experience of anorexia, in combination with relevant scientific insights and some discussions of others' perspectives. This time, for a change, I wanted to give more of a voice to someone who was a contributor to all but the first few months of my recovery, and who has witnessed at first hand my transition from recovery to health: my partner David. I asked him a few questions about anorexia and about his time living with someone recovering from it, and I hope that his answers, transcribed here, might add more detail to the question of how things are for onlookers and assistants to the difficult business of recovery.

He didn't know me well when I was still ill, so that part of the story is absent; an interview given by my mother and me presents a parental perspective on the illness itself. His thoughts are of course his alone, but we discuss some of the frequent (mis)conceptions of anorexia and its causes, and the practicalities of a full recovery, and he talks about how it felt to be close to someone who was engaged in that process. In addition, although he was never diagnosed with a full-blown eating disorder, he talks about his own problems with body image, and about how the experience of living with someone who was having to confront the illusions of anorexia in fact helped him reach a healthier and happier place in his own relation to his body.

E: What did you know or believe about anorexia before you got together with someone who was recovering from anorexia, and once you knew more about the illness, did what you thought before turn out to be correct?

D: I suppose it's now hard for me to filter out what I knew before from what I've subsequently learnt about it, and to try to think myself back to a time before I knew you, and before I became so intimately acquainted with it. I do remember watching a documentary when I was about 16 or 17, about a 12/13-year-old girl who had anorexia, and the mother trying to keep her on this prescribed diet, and the daughter was hiding bits of food around the house, like burying sandwiches in flower pots and hiding them at the back of drawers, and it made me feel an intense sense of anger at the girl for being so wilful—although that might also have come about through my own approach to food, which has been so shaped by ideas of restriction and gluttony, from having been overweight as a teenager.

E: So you were almost angry at her because she was managing to restrain her eating in a way that you couldn't necessarily?

D: It sounds like that's what I'm saying, doesn't it?

E: Or maybe you managed to adopt the parent's perspective, and see how sad- and helpless-making it was...?

D: I think it was more that. I guess I was in many ways such an obedient child, and couldn't really empathise with somebody causing so much pain to their parents.

E: Did you think that that was almost just a childhood rebellion, then, rather than a real mental illness?

D: In this particular instance I think I might have thought that, in my own ignorance, but I don't think I ever took the notion of being anorexic lightly—I think having some experience with mental illness myself, I think I could always understand it's no laughing matter, and that it's not necessarily just a case of deciding 'I want to be thin'. But I guess my ideas about it were more driven by the cliché that people become anorexic because they want to be thin like models—that it's more an aesthetics-driven illness, at least in its first iteration, maybe.

E: And you think you've seen through that as an illusion now, or do you still think it's partly true?

D: Oh no, I think it can be a facet of how the illness manifests itself, but I don't think that's the underlying impetus or driving force. I've come to realise that it's much more about trying to exert control over one element of the sufferer's life when other things are so out of control, and that it's almost like a response to existential angst in some ways.

E: But do you think that response to a perceived lack of control did actually apply to me, or is it just another relatively commonly said thing about anorexia, whereas in reality it's really not that straightforward?

D: My answer to that is qualified by how I recognised things from my own experience in your anorexic experience: I guess I always thought that what I was doing with my dieting and my weight-lifting—my body-building attempts—had nothing to do with control, and had everything to do with trying to shape myself to be a certain way. But of course that is also all about control, and defined by those cycles of placing great control on myself, and exerting great self-discipline, and then that self-discipline crumbling. So I guess in my mildly disordered eating, control was definitely a large factor, and it's maybe only with hindsight that I could see that. It's difficult to say, because I didn't really know you when you were still fully anorexic, but I could well imagine that ultimately it would have been about that, because it seems to me that in your home life, despite some of the routines that you guys obviously did have—morning coffee and lunch routines—there was actually a lot of disorder within that: work trips for your now stepdad, and engagements for your mother, and her being so busy with her work, and the divorce of your parents, of course—and your father's life seems to have been anything but ordered, or orderly. I could imagine that growing up in something like that, it was a real necessity for you to be able to exert an influence on something, and things to do with the body, and exerting control over oneself, is the obvious sphere in which to do something like that. I do wonder, too, if it wasn't also a means of seeking attention, even though at the time you seemed to really hate the attention it did garner, because it obviously meant you couldn't just get on with starving yourself, because you had people interfering. But I could imagine that the feeling of being overlooked would often arise, certainly growing up in your mother and now stepdad's household.

E: What was the most difficult thing about living with someone who was recovering from anorexia? Was it that aspect: the attempt to control parts of life that can't be fully controlled?

D: Thinking back, it was being confronted with the dual nature of it: most of the time I was happily living with Emily, and then something would happen and I'd be confronted with anorexic Emily, or even just with anorexia, and I think I very early on started to feel that when you acted in a way that clearly was part of the illness, it was like being in a cartoon where you meet Death: I was meeting Anorexia. It felt almost like having to face anorexia down, whilst continuing to love and support Emily.

E: Can you give an example of that?

D: I remember the very first time something like that happened was when we'd been living together for three or four days, and you told me that you were bothered by the 'lack of thought' I was displaying by not licking my plate absolutely clean—or not literally licking it, but not getting it sparkling—and I remember thinking, 'Oh s***, what have I let myself in for?' [both laugh]. But I think I could always see the person who I think you are now trying to break out of these constraints gradually, and I think that because I could always see that 'potential' in you, or this person who was desperately trying to free herself of these shackles, and being so incredibly brave in what she was doing, it didn't actually bother me that much, because I always had the near certainty that you weren't going to be going backwards. You always displayed such a—this is going to sound so silly and self-serving—but I always believed in you; it was always very clear that whatever determination had gone into making yourself that ill, and that thin, and that sad, and that lonely, you were going to employ that same will towards getting better—that's one word I always use to describe you: wilful.

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E: A related question: what would you say is the biggest difference or change between recovering Emily and recovered Emily?

D: Emotional stability, I would say. That's definitely the biggest difference. As I've told you a couple of times, had Tom [Emily's father] died a year and a half ago, I just don't think you could have dealt with it in any way near the same way that you have dealt with it. I mean, it's only three months ago, and you're still dealing with it, and it may still take some other form for you, but still—yes, emotional stability and emotional maturity. I guess I'm quite immature in some ways, but I also noticed when we got together that there were emotional stages that I think you hadn't gone through, and that you have since gone through. The development of empathy in you has been quite stark, I think, and the move towards being able to be very empathic. I think you are by nature a very empathic person, but you'd had to switch that off for so long that it needed to come back out. And I used to dread those times when something would suddenly seem to make you hate me, and all of a sudden I'd just think, God, imagine that being permanent, and I need to get away from this person, because she's just going to make me miserable. But that doesn't really happen any more. I guess it's the fact that when you were recovering, I always thought of you as someone who was in the process of recovery, and I needed to make concessions to that process, and I needed to respect that process as an ongoing thing, and help it. Whereas these days, your anorexia is just very much a thing of the past to me: you've got no slack from me any more for having had anorexia. Of course, there are some things where I understand that your experience of anorexia has left you vulnerable to certain things, but I would no longer be willing to cut you slack, or to let you have that as an excuse these days. I just don't think you need it, and you don't ever present yourself as needing it.

E: Do you ever worry about events leading to a relapse?

D: No, recently when I was visiting my mum, she voiced repeated concerns about you, hoping that your father's death doesn't cause a relapse, and there have been other situations when people have expressed concern in that direction. But as the person who probably knows you best at the moment, because we live so closely together, and are so intimate, I always notice that my immediate, and my lasting, reaction is: no, that's not going to happen. I'm extremely confident that you're not going to relapse. But then maybe in a sort of arrogant way, the caveat is: as long as we're together. That is kind of arrogant, isn't it?! That's not to say that I think you'd relapse if we broke up, but I think that you would certainly be confronted with it again in a different way, that you would then be responsible for looking after yourself: needing to make the decisions as to what you eat, and when you eat. I have sometimes asked myself, has us coming together, and me being someone who's so interested in food and who enjoys cooking, whether that's—not stopped you from getting fully better: I still think you're fully better—but maybe from having to deal with the day-to-day reality entailed by looking after yourself. But then there are so many things in life where you don't learn certain things, or deal with certain things, because you are together with other people—I mean, I don't learn DIY because there are people I can pay to do it. It's a slightly poor analogy, but I think you sort of get what I'm on about.

E: So that suggests that in general you agree with what's commonly said about eating disorders, i.e. you can't fully recover from them?

D: No, I don't mean that. I just mean you'd be confronted with the need to have to cook for yourself and feed yourself, and I know that you just find cooking fairly boring, and that when I'm not around for any length of time you tend to run out of ideas—you end up eating the same things. You'd have to acquire that discipline of doing it yourself—but I have no doubt that you would. I sometimes get the feeling that the shared joy we have over food, that that element would be lacking, and it would become a slightly utilitarian endeavour for you, rather than something pleasurable, but that's probably the same for a lot of single people. I remember when I was single, having to cook for myself; it was a matter of having to do it—obviously flavours and so on came into it, but I'd often eat the same thing day in day out because it was easy. But no, I fundamentally don't worry about you ever relapsing into anorexia. I have other slight concerns about you: things to do with your career. At the moment you're going through quite a stressful period with lots of work, and I think about how you/we would deal with that in future, when, if you have a permanent academic job, it's likely that that'll just be how work looks in the future—but that's got nothing to do with anorexia, that's just life management, I guess.

E: Well, it might have to with anxiety and perfectionism, which are related to anorexia—but I guess lots of people have them without having an eating disorder.

D: Well yes, OK, I will qualify that: I think that when the pressure is put upon you, in some areas I think you will still always prioritise yourself and your physical and emotional needs lower than the work you have to do. I still think that's the case. And whether that's an artefact of your anorexia, or whether that's just the upbringing you've experienced, with a perfectionist mother who values work and productivity above all else, I can't say. But that is something I still observe in you. But then I don't feel qualified to necessarily criticise it, because as you know, I tend to err on the other end of the spectrum!

E: Finally, do you think your own attitudes to food, weight, or body image have been changed by living with someone who used to have an eating disorder?

D: Well, yes, totally. As you know, before we got together, I was somebody who'd been overweight as a teenager, and whose self-confidence was lastingly affected by this definition given by others, of being overweight, and as a result not as attractive. And I grew up, and slimmed down, but even at times when I was at a normal or low body weight, as a result of crash dieting, I'd still perceive myself as being overweight, so I think I was probably somewhere further up that same sliding scale as you were on, as an anorexic person, and had we not got together I don't know if I'd have naturally evolved away from that, as a personal evolution away from that cycle of dieting, getting sick of the restrictive nature of it, bingeing, becoming overweight again—or getting to what I perceived as a level of overweightness that was just disgusting. Yeah, the whole way I lived my life was basically shaped by the idea of achieving some sort of state of physical perfection—that my life would then be perfect, that I'd then be getting all the girls, that I'd somehow become a much more dynamic, outgoing individual! When first getting together with you, it would have been impossible to be like that and for it not to have had a huge negative impact on your recovery, so I basically had to just—as you know, I went slightly the other way, and just ate and ate and ate a lot with you, and even without you! But in a way that was a process of freeing myself from my self-definition always being bound up with weight. It's helped me to get to a point where my sense of self-worth is not defined by my appearance, and where I put much more emphasis on how my body performs for me, and how I feel within myself, rather than any sort of external benchmarks—arbitrary, unrealistic. That's a big point, the unrealistic expectations I had of myself previously, and ideas about how people would perceive me as a result. I think that's really just been wiped away through being with you.

E: I guess it could have turned out differently if we'd met when I was still ill, and not trying to recover: we could maybe just have encouraged each other.

D: Oh, we just couldn't have been together, I don't think. Your obvious lack of interest in a relationship, and my overriding insecurities, would just have made it impossible, I think. And this probably sounds awful, but having somebody other than myself to nurture, and to look after, has really helped me to help myself as well, I think, because it's created a very forgiving environment, I think: a mutually supportive environment. And I also think the obvious parallels—differences in degree but not in kind—between what you had suffered and where I had been in my own head and in my own experiences—I think your recovery helped my recovery, and probably vice versa.