Eating Disorders: A Fish Story

By pennstatelive Penn State

Even Goby fish do it.

Dieting, that is.

Some eat less on purpose, nearly starving themselves.

Why, you may ask? You'd think that dieting would be a death sentence for a tiny osteichthyes, no bigger than a bloated paper clip. But some Goby fish see slimming down as survival.

Researchers measured gobies and showed a hierarchy in which each fish had a five percent size difference from the Goby above and below it. When an inferior fish beefed up, its superior would try to drive the power eater out of the group. Thus, the inferior starved as a way out of imminent confrontation. And likely death. (Gobies can't survive alone.)

This fish story doesn't just apply to our marine friends; it bears on human behavior, as well. When I wrote Lying in Weight: the Hidden Epidemic of Eating Disorders in Adult Women, I profiled many couples, in which one partner had an eating disorder.

"Who partners up with a woman weighing 85 pounds?" I asked.

Any one of five categories of men (or women if the male is the one with the eating disorder or the relationship is same-sex). One of these categories fits the Gobie profile well. I called him the, "Macho Man, Control and Conquer."

He is an executive, doctor, attorney, military officer, or minister. He's the man used to managing other people, assigning duties, and being aggressively in charge. He chooses a partner with an eating disorder because she will accept his alpha position, and by extension, her subordinate one. Meanwhile, she starves to shrink into her Stepford role, in part because she feels she cannot exist alone.

This dynamic and others have prompted psychologist Cynthia M. Bulik, PhD, Director of the University of North Carolina Eating Disorders Program, and her colleagues to pilot an intervention for couples in which one member is suffering from anorexia nervosa.

Called, Uniting Couples (in the treatment of) Anorexia Nervosa (UCAN), the intervention starts with the premise that eating disorders are not simply a teen thing. Adults develop anorexia, too. And when they do, they are often in relationships.

Intimacy is tough and tougher still when one partner has an eating disorder. Both partners feel the effects. Therefore, both might benefit from treatment, in this case cognitive-behavioral couple-based interventions that have been successfully employed for the treatment of depression, anxiety disorders, smoking cessation, and cancer.

Back to the fish. While they are not likely to respond to cognitive behavioral therapy, offered by a well-intentioned guppy, fish do construct power imbalance in relationships. Under the sea, these hierarchies help maintain a stable, noncompetitive society.

However, fish are fish and they can maintain smaller sizes without becoming mentally ill.

Humans often can't.

This story begs for a happy ending. And there are some. In all the stories that I have heard about eating disorders in relationships, I like this scenario best: the eating-disordered partner reaches her breaking point. She taps her inner strength and fights back. Not with food, but her voice. She swells up in her body, as well as personality. And the couple renegotiates their relationship.

Or she, healthier, leaves him to look for a better partner. She has figured it out. After all, there are more fish in the sea.