When I was growing up there was a couple on my block. She was heavy and he was thin.
My mother who never failed to notice anything, particularly weight, would comment: She is heavy, but he is thin. Periodically, we would run into them and my mother would repeat "she is heavy and he is thin." Appearances had great meaning to my mother, but she would never permit herself to say anything beyond that.
As I got older I began to wonder about that couple. Did she want him to be thin and smaller than her? Did he want her to be heavy? If she died and he married someone else, would the next woman also be heavy? If he died, would she again choose a man smaller in frame than she?
Apparently, neither of them minded and they have as far as I know, lived out their lives with the normal happinesses and miseries known to people who live in this part of the country. And yet the question still intrigues: was he thin because she was fat? Was she fat because he was thin?
Recently, an obese man I know confided in me that part of his obesity is his identification with his mother. We were eating at a social function and he said with a degree of shame that when he gets overweight as he is, he begins to have breasts.
Naturally, the thought made me very sad. There must be better, less hazardous ways of identifying with his mother. Why was he stuck in that way? That was a question that would have to wait for another day, but apparently, in order to deal with his dangerous weight issue, one would probably have to explore his relationship to his mother.
The funny thing is that we tend to think of our bodies as belonging to ourselves and they do of course, but they seem to develop in relation to somebody or something. For example, in past decades pediatric studies have revealed that the onset of puberty in young girls is getting earlier. Some studies have shown that in households where the father is absent, the girls tend to mature earlier.
Our bodies seem to react to people and to things. We know that people age under stress, they shrink, expand with sadness and happiness. Many people I know are trying to lose the same 10-15 lbs for years. Freud noted that people tend to play with objects, they might throw them or damage them or maintain them because they are representatives of people, usually important people in their lives. People they have strong feelings about.
When we overeat, or under-eat, exercise, work out or not work out, lose weight or gain weight, in addition to strong environmental factors, we might also consider that we are sending messages to people. The idea that we are always in profound communication to somebody might help some of us make progress.
