I Told My Girlfriend She Needed To Lose Weight, Now She Has An Eating Disorder

I’ve been dating my girlfriend for three years, happily for one. We met senior year of college and hit it off, and it was awesome to have someone around while adjusting to life after college.

The problems started about six months after graduation. I noticed my girlfriend had gained about 10-15 pounds in this short period of time. She was a naturally thin woman, which I knew would be trouble as she got older because she’d simply never had to worry about weight, so she had no idea how to manage it. She was used to eating whatever she wanted and never exercising. When she started sitting at a desk all day, this turned into a problem.

Worried about her health and not one to silently broil about something I told her what had happened and asked if she had noticed and what she planned to do about it. She just dissolved into tears. I (of course) felt horrible for making her cry, and decided to help her make healthier choices when we were eating together and hope that solved the problem without having to bring it up to her again.

To my surprise, this worked.

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I taught her some healthy recipes for chicken and veggies that I usually made for myself when she wasn’t around. I helped her realize that restaurant menus are tricky, and to simply choose the most naked protein and veggie combo she could find. Eventually, I even got her signed up at my gym and showed her how to use the equipment.

Of course I enjoyed this. She had more energy and lost the weight almost immediately. And, more importantly, I was no longer concerned for our future. I knew that she now had the tools to manage her weight for the rest of her life. I thought I’d successfully solved this whole problem.

But, she started to withdraw about a month or two after this all started. We used to see each other more nights than not each week, but now she was working out after work and going home to sleep (alone) at 8pm almost every night. I thought, maybe she was sick or had a bug or was having a stressful few weeks at work. But this went on and on and on. She never had energy for anything (especially not sex). She became even more sensitive, crying over almost anything, and she avoided me like I was the plague.

A whole bunch of dramatic, drawn-out shit happened next. At some point, I realized she wasn’t eating. I caught her in a lie about having eaten with her family one day when she spent the rest of the day at my place. Why would she lie about having a big lunch with her family and then not eat for the rest of the day? Oh. Here we go, we are dealing with this eating disorder now.

I think it’s fair to say that this has ruined her. She is a shadow of the lively woman I met three years ago. I can’t leave her because I wonder if my trying to improve her health in some way caused the destruction of it. Besides, at this point it’d be like abandoning a child that can’t fend for itself. She’s wholly dependent on me forcing her to eat, forcing her to go to therapy, talking to her while she’s crying, always telling her how much I love her and how beautiful she is.

I don’t understand how this could happen to a person. She was normal and attractive before, how could this be her life now? It’s a completely different person. It really is like dating a small child or an injured animal. Maybe she will get better one day and return to her old self. It’s certainly not happening anytime soon, and it’s not for a lack of trying on either of our parts. I can see she is trying as hard as she can to get better, and I’m doing as much as my schedule will allow. I just want everything to go back to normal.