Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Food as a Relationship Issue”

The relationship between husband and wife is complex enough without adding the food factor. When one spouse is the “overeater” and the other is the food moderate, there are more hidden dynamics than in an Ang Lee movie where warrior-acrobats are leaping all over the place. Crouching tigers are nothing compared to the marital interactions of the couple fighting fat.

If one partner is struggling with weight, both partners are “in the soup”, because what one does will affect the other. When you have been in an intimate relationship for any length of time, there are bundles of unseen emotional connections between you and your mate. These are the ties that bind, and the bonds that tighten the screws of ripple reactions. Your mate goes on a diet; you get to be either a supporter or an enabler. Your mate goes off the diet, you are affected. Either way it's a recipe for conflict.

My point is that both parties own the problem, yet each in a different way. The overeater/dieter is struggling with reigning in appetite and getting enough exercise. It is the dieter's issue, but not in isolation. His or her motivation, discipline, (or sometimes rebellion) is played out in the cooking pot of the marriage. The so-called moderate eater is stewing inwardly about what to say and what not to say. There is a temptation to be the food police, nagging, reminding, or even disposing of the bon-bons, like the alcoholic's mate who goes around emptying liquor bottles down the drain. Moderate Mate is drawn in, like it or not.

So what the moderate mate says or does, how he/she reacts to the dieter, will make a difference in the overall system that they both live in. Too much or too little response will make the problem worse, and become a source of hostile interaction around the issues of control, self-esteem, and self-confidence.

You have to wonder how Jack Sprat and his wife worked it out. The nursery rhyme seems to imply that there is some kind of balance, even beyond the kitchen, but how do they do it, considering that Jack and his wife are polarized around the food problem? In my perspective Jack can't escape with some superiority complex simply because he avoids fat. I say, if he wants to stay in the marriage, and hold onto his reputation in the world of fable history, he has to decide, before it's all over, how to detach with love. When the last chapter of his story is written, readers want to know, can he express his love without becoming co-dependent or just plain annoying?

So maybe for Jack and all partners of the dieting mate there should be a support group, patterned on the Alanon principle. I salute them because in Alanon itself the spouses of alcoholics learn how to understand themselves better, as well as their role in the problem. Step one is to become more aware of what is really going on underneath the surface of the relationship. Step two is learning some new notions of acceptance, which is crucial not only for acceptance of the “problem” person, but, more importantly self-acceptance of themselves as enablers/supporters. Alanon members are cautioned not to take ANY action until they have passed through the first two steps. Only then can they discover what it means to be lovingly detached, and paradoxically to be lovingly involved in creating solutions to the kinds of interaction that the substance problem presents.

I think there is a parallel here for the couple fighting fat, struggling TOGETHER to preserve the marriage when conflict is on the table.

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