What My Eating Habits Taught Me About Love And Intimacy
I love Chocolates and Ice Cream…when ever I get them and put them in the fridge, I am unable to keep them for a long period of time. I end up eating them quite fast. No matter how much of it I get, I just go through them really fast, as long as I have them in my fridge. And what do I do when they are over…nothing really. It is not like I go out immediately and buy more of it and stock them in the fridge. There are sometimes weeks and months apart from me eating chocolate or Ice Cream.
For a long time, I was trying to make sense of this behaviour. Because I know that I am not the Greedy type. I did however realise that I have a rather unhealthy relationship with Food that I like. I also knew that this dynamic that that I have with my eating habits is also reflective in my life as well.
If there is something good in my fridge, that I like, that tastes good, that gives me a lot of pleasure when I consume it, I tend to just consume as much of it as I can. I consume it as if someone is waiting to take it away from me so I try to eat as much of it as I can before this ‘perceived’ someone can take it all away.
Also, it tastes so good that I don’t want anyone else to have it either because, technically, these are my Chocolates. My mother had a habit of hiding chocolates from me in the fridge, she would give me a part of it saying that this is my share and then hide the rest. I feel that this is what she did with her love as well. She just gave me what she thought that I deserve and then just hid the rest of it somewhere. She also has a habit of hiding her purse somewhere and then not being able to remember where she put it when she needs to get money. I feel that this is also the case with her love, she hides it somewhere because she believes that it is so precious and valuable but she is then unable to find it when it is needed the most.
This is probably the problem with treasures and why people bury them. When something is precious or valuable to us (like a treasure), we tend to hide and bury it so that others cannot get to it or have it. But when we bury treasure, no ones gets to see it or make use of it. And the value of treasure is perceived only if it is visible. No ones cares about a treasure that is unknown or not appreciated because it is unknown.
Back to the eating habits. if it is good, it will not last, someone else also will want this, so I need to finish this off, I don’t want to share this because its so good and I may not get something like this again soon so, let me just have to all…I NEED TO FINISH it…so that no one else can have it.
This is what we sometimes do with things and people that we love…that mean something to us…specially with our intimate relationships. I love someone…someone loves me..that is so amazing…they are amazing…lovely people…I feel good…being with them gives me the same sensations of eating chocolate or ice cream. Things that I loved as a kid but never really got as much as I wanted. Or maybe those things represent Love, happiness and joy and have deep emotional and intimate connotations from my childhood. Maybe that is what my father got me when we went out, maybe that is that I had when I was happiest when I was a kid with my family. And for all the lost time and love and happiness in my life…
So when we are in an intimate relationship and this other person is making us feel good by giving their love, care and attention that we crave for, we feel like it will end soon or that “this is so good, I need to get all of it. or someone else will want this too”. So what we do, just like with the food…is Consume all that love, care and attention and the person who gives us that… WE FINISH THEM! because we don’t want anyone else to have them but ourselves. Not their family, not their friends not their hobbies and interests. We finish them because we don’t want anyone else to have them.
Now here’s the thing with consuming our favourite food and consuming people. We can go out and buy Chocolates if we want them again but we cannot buy people or their love once we have consumed all of them and finished them. They are just spent and consumed and have nothing more to give us, and they leave us. We then spend time distracting ourselves with work and other things to make us believe that we do not need them and what they gave us, until we achieve some emotional independence…or at least an idea of it.
Then someone new comes along and Its like we found a new pack of Chocolate and start consuming it all again. A little bite here and there because we don’t want to seem greedy but then because we know that it is always ‘in my fridge’, we just tend to open it up anytime that we want to take a bite and sometimes a chunk.
We need to teach ourselves that if it good, it can last, we deserve it, no one is going to take it away from us, unless we give it away or make it worthless to us.
