How the eating disorder reaches into your relationships — and how recovery brings back closeness, boundaries and desire.
Eating disorders feel very personal and very isolating, but their ripple effect plays into everything — relationships with family, with friends, and with romantic partners. Food-related secrecy, lying about food, avoiding meals with others, making excuses about meal decisions: these create hostility, distrust and distance between you and the people who love you. Emotional closeness, communication and physical intimacy all take a hit.
There's also the physiology. When you're restricting, your body starts to switch off non-essential functions — your period, the ability to have children — and focuses its limited energy on vital functions like your heart and brain. When you're starved, food is what runs through your head: what am I going to eat next, how do I decrease my portions, how do I get out of this gathering. Having a boyfriend or girlfriend, or sex, is frequently out of the question. You might also feel uncomfortable in your body, not wanting to be seen — whether because you realise you're too thin or because you still think you're too big.
I got my eating disorder at around the age of 13, before I'd really experienced puberty. I then maintained it for several years, which meant my first real experience of puberty was when I was already 18 or 19. Throughout all that time I had very little interest in relationships, and my sexual desires were very low. That's not an exaggeration, and it's not a surprise — my hormones were terribly suppressed, so my body naturally had no energy for anything other than food-related thought.
I also had some negative experiences before and during university, and each one pulled me further back from intimacy. I maintained my independence and wasn't very open to relationships, until I met my current partner. In that relationship I've had to do a lot of letting go to foster a newfound sense of intimacy and closeness with another person — and through it I learned a whole lot.
It's not a personal failing — it's biology. When you're restricting, your body switches off non-essential functions and focuses its limited energy on vital functions like your heart and brain. Hormones become terribly suppressed, which is why my libido was practically nonexistent during my eating disorder. A starving body has no energy for anything other than food-related thought.
Yes, it can. Eating disorders can do a lot of damage to your hormones, but in general, once you gain weight and get back to a healthy weight with enough food, these things are often resolved. For me, all the damage I'd done to my body was undone — my hormones rebalanced, my period came back, and everything returned to normal. So much of the eating disorder's damage is reversible.
Start small. Boundaries are a skill, and I had to learn them — I used to feel unworthy and put everyone else's needs before my own, which only made me feel worse. Practise saying no to small things, be honest about what feels okay and what doesn't, and remember your needs and wants matter. Setting boundaries boosted my confidence more than anything else.
In many ways: food-related secrecy and lying create distrust and distance, you may avoid meals with others or push people away, and the eating disorder can make emotional closeness feel impossible. Physically, your body switches off non-essential functions when restricting, and you may feel uncomfortable being seen. Recovery changes how you relate, and lets you get much closer to people.
Remind yourself that if your partner is ripping your clothes off, chances are it's not because they're repulsed by your body — it's the opposite. The eating disorder makes you see yourself through its eyes, not your partner's. Prioritise weight gain and enough food as the foundation, move at a pace that feels right, and communicate with your partner about where you are.