Can Girls With Eating Disorders Have A Love Life?
Who’s gonna date a girl with an eating disorder? Who’s gonna love a girl who’s killing herself?
I sat across from my therapist, arms folded over my chest and spoke with a frustrated yet heartbroken tone of voice. I wondered how on earth someone could love me; despite how deeply I longed for a relationship, what person out there would spend their time loving a girl who starves herself to (almost) death? It didn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense.
The short answer to the question, “Can girls with eating disorders have a love life?” is, yes.
It can go a variety of ways, though. Perhaps the relationship will cause you more stress, more frustration, more self-consciousness, more self-critique, more of a reason to seek control from the eating disorder. Perhaps the relationship will cause you to realize how loved and accepted you are, giving you the freedom, strength, and support to recover — to take care of yourself. Perhaps the relationship will end and break your heart into a million pieces, leaving you worse off than before. Perhaps the relationship will have minimal effect on you.
No one is guaranteed a specific outcome when dating. Therefore, it can be so incredibly difficult for someone with an eating disorder to dive into it because after all, control and predictability are things people with eating disorders seek out endlessly. Especially if we’re already struggling with a mental illness, we may not be able to cope with the devastation of a breakup. Or, maybe we’re not able cope with facing one of our deepest wounds — being rejected.
Don’t get me wrong, every year I spent struggling with an eating disorder is also a year I spent wishing I could find my own Edward Cullen, or Brad Pitt, or Augustus Waters type of love. I thought a relationship would help me to recover. I thought if I could find someone who loves me in the way I am unable to love myself, that I would find and feel the validation to accept myself. Sadly, I found no such thing.
So again, “can girls with eating disorders have a love life?”. Yes, so long as you understand that they have a mental illness and are in need of serious help to get on and stay on the track of recovery.
The reality is, Edward Cullen and Bella Swan aren’t real; Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie did divorce; Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters were parted too soon by death. Love doesn’t always work out between people, even for those who are seen as “perfect”, or at least very close to it. Someone with an eating disorder can have a love life, but can they truly have a healthy relationship with another human being if they are incapable of taking proper care of themselves?
Will they be able to receive the love their partner wants to give them when they hate themselves? Will they be okay with their partner uncovering the vulnerable, broken parts of their heart and mind? As much as I would like to say it’s possible, and see the glass as half full — the answer to the latter questions is most often, no. I can say from personal experience that an unhealthy relationship is more probable than a healthy one.
It used to frustrate me when I heard people say that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself. That’s not entirely true, but there is a portion of truth there. It’s possible for you to love someone else more than you love yourself. It’s possible for you to give your heart to someone and accept them without fully accepting yourself. I know. I know because I’ve done it before. The hard part is allowing someone else to love you and receiving their acceptance. If you don’t love yourself; if you believe your ugly; if you can’t understand how anyone would want to be with you, how can you believe someone else does?
Consider it like this: someone constantly trying to show you they care about and love you, that they want to know and understand you. Yet, you don’t believe or accept their compliments towards you because you don’t see yourself as you really are. Because as much as you want to be loved and accepted, you also cannot believe that anyone would — after all, you can’t even love and accept yourself.
It seems then, that the goal is not to just have a love life, but to have a healthy love life. One where you can love and be loved; one where you can accept and be accepted.
Sometimes singleness is the best for your mental health. Sometimes a relationship changes everything and pulls you out of rock bottom. One thing that is always, though, is that we never know until we walk out our choice.
