Escape from Intimacy by Anne Wilson Schaef

Author:Anne Wilson Schaef
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-02-19T16:00:00+00:00

Stories of Relationship Addicts

Relationship Anorexia

Tony was in his mid-forties when he discovered that he was a relationship anorexic. He had grown up in an Italian family in an ethnic neighborhood in a large city. He was not terribly interested in relationships and did not date much in high school— even though he thought he should—and spent long hours worrying about why he did not. His family expected him to get married, and he assumed he would. He seemed to have no concern for who he should marry or why he should marry or what kind of relationship would lead to marriage. He felt bewildered about the whole thing while secretly thinking there must be something wrong with him. While he struggled with all this confusion, he ate. Food was a comfort.

Tony asked the first woman who showed any interest in him to marry him, and she did. He had no idea what to do next, so he progressively withdrew and “ate” over the next few years. He was depressed and withdrawn, yet obsessed with having this “relationship.” He did nothing to develop a real relationship and was content to be in a marriage. After a few years, he decided that he was gay and left the marriage for a relationship with a man. He approached this relationship the same way. They quickly moved in together, he withdrew and ate, and nothing happened. After a few years, they split up, and Tony now lives alone. He has not really let go of this last relationship, nor is he “in” it. It just “kinda hangs around.”

In the meantime, Tony has decided that he is an overeater, and he is successfully working an Overeaters Anonymous twelve-step program. He also believes that he is a co-dependent. As we were talking one day, he said, “Do you think there is such a thing as a relationship anorexic?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you think?”

“I think I am one,” he said. “I always have these kinda ‘fringe’ relationships. I am not really in them, and I can’t seem to get out of them.” His old “lover” was still around, had followed him to a new city where he had a new job, and Tony was constantly worrying about the “nonrelationship.”

“I know how I get when I am in my addictive disease around my eating disorder, and I observe that I have the same thoughts, feelings, distortions, highs, low self-esteem, control, and dishonesty around my avoidance of relationships. I believe I am a relationship anorexic,” he said. “I avoid relationships, and I obsess about them all the time. When I am obsessing, I exhibit all the characteristics of my addictive disease.”

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