I've lost about 12 pounds since the first of October. I haven't had to white-knuckle, I've been eating more intuitively and trying to fit exercise in when I can. This is such a different way of going about weight-loss.
We went on a cruise to Mexico the last weekend in September. As I sat on a beach in California waiting for our flight home, I read a book about figuring out your emotional attachment to food and what is keeping you eating when you're not hungry and your body doesn't need the calories. The book describes a technique called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) which involves tapping on pressure points on your face and chest as you move through the strong feelings. Somehow, the tapping retrains your brain to not turn to food or other habits as a way to numb these hard emotions.
I sat and thought about my own issues with weight gain, which started when I was 18. Emotional eaters tend to start in childhood with bingeing or general overeating but I was a normal, healthy weight all the way through puberty. I had a normal relationship with food. A sweet tooth, sure, but I rarely stuffed myself or snacked. My mom made sure we had food so I never felt scarcity or food insecurity.
What I realized on that beach was my overeating started right around the time I started dating my son's father. He was a big guy back then, eating large amounts of food like he used to when he was in high school and playing basketball for several hours each day. Though he was no longer that active, his eating habits continued and he gained almost a hundred pounds. We would go to fast food restaurants as dates, Taco Bell for lunch, Jack in the Box milkshakes after picking me up from work. Carl's Jr, Taco Time, KFC, etc. He would take me to get whatever I wanted.There was a new-found freedom there and food represented bonding. I felt close to him when he bought me food, and he was more than happy to buy large quantities for us to consume together.
But those habits didn't really get started until after we had been dating for several months, and I realized it really took off after we began a sexual relationship. This is the point on the beach where everything started rushing in and I couldn't help but feel tears welling up. There is so much shame wrapped up in this that I have waited until after speaking through everything with a therapist to type it all out. Even so, with no one reading this blog, I feel terrified to put it in writing. But healing requires I move through this, and I'm more afraid of things staying the same.
Sex has not come naturally to me. For all his faults, I really was lucky to find a patient and understanding partner in my son's father. I had never even kissed a boy before him. I had originally decided I might wait until marriage for sex, but my teenage hormones mixed with the excitement of new love had me ready much earlier than that. I did wait until I was 18, that felt important to me and Matt respected that decision. But until the actual day we did a lot of experimenting, as teens do. All of my experience with sex had come from media and porn. I got very curious about porn around age 16 and consumed quite a bit. Of course, I didn't realize at that age that porn is not a representation of real life. In porn, women are mainly objects for a man's pleasure - also the women are spontaneously aroused, easily orgasmic and multi-orgasmic. I believe I internalized a lot of this and it translated into my real-life experiences. I was not prepared for real life, where I take a while to warm up, I have sensitive "brakes" that halt the process, and I have a noisy brain that cares more about how my partner is perceiving my performance and cannot seem to just let go and enjoy the process.
This led to the first time I faked an orgasm. And when Matt thought that I had reached that level of pleasure he was SO happy. It bonded us closer, but it was hollow for me. I felt broken, like something was wrong with me because I didn't fit the checklist of the sexually desirable women found in porn.
This went on for over 6 years. I felt trapped in the lie, I felt I couldn't get myself out of the hole I had dug. All I knew was the shovel I used to dig it. In those first few months I knew something was off - I also knew it made him so happy so I continued. But I wasn't getting my pleasure, I wasn't getting what I wanted or expected from sex.
There's a theme my therapist has pointed out in my life and that's my feeling of paralysis at asking for what I want. It's as if I feel making requests of others will be met with conflict, disappointment or outright denial. I have attributed this to my mom -- she had a rule when we were out shopping that if we asked for something, even if she had intended to buy it, the answer would be no. I clung to this rule and it spilled over into other aspects of my childhood. I was never the squeaky wheel. If my needs weren't met I stuffed it down and lived without it. I figured if I was deemed "worthy" or "deserving", it would be provided to me. I thought that if I spoke up, I was no longer deserving. So it became a way to be "good" and win mom's approval.
What I struggle with now is this question: Was my personality shaped by that rule or did that rule give my natural personality guidelines it could latch onto? I have been really examining that question and I continue to go back and forth. One thing is clear, whether it was nature or nurture the consequences have truly held me back in a lot of areas of my life.
So there I was, sitting in the cool sand in the shade of a giant pier, in my body that has carried extra weight since those early days of my adulthood. And I recalled a conversation Matt and I shared in his van in the college parking lot probably 4 months after we had become sexually active. He wanted to know why we weren't having as much sex now as the beginning. I remember thinking that it was a lot of effort on my part with little reward. I was rarely to never reaching climax. It just didn't feel worth it. But I couldn't find it in me to tell him that. I just looked into my lap, noticed my jeans, which had been fitting tighter, and mumbled that I had gained some weight and didn't feel comfortable in my body or being naked with him.
WOW did this memory blow me away. I had tried to use the little extra weight on my body as a shield, as an excuse to not be sexually close to my boyfriend. So I've been eating too much consistently because it was a pleasurable way to bond and feel close to and feel taken care of by Matt. And the extra weight was my way of forming a barrier against being physically close so I didn't have to pretend to be enjoying myself when in fact I was frustrated and resentful.
I felt sobs catch in my throat as I came to terms with the fact that it was all my own doing. My own fear of rejection, my inability to speak up about my own wants and needs and trust that my partner wanted for me what I wanted for myself. It was that rule coming back to haunt me - if you ask the answer will be no. I wanted those who cared for me to prove it by anticipating my needs with perfect accuracy, but if they couldn't do that I learned to live without it. But this was such a huge thing to live without, my sexual health was suffering and I was using food to replace what I felt was missing. I was using food to placate the hurt and resentment. I was attempting to withdraw, and potentially using food as punishment.
And as tears fell down my face I saw myself now, and how much shit I had gone through since that seemingly innocent conversation. Matt assured me that the extra ten pounds did not deter him, he still found me sexy as hell. I found my worth in being a sexual pleasure object for him, not realizing that I am worthy JUST AS I AM. When our relationship was starting to dissolve 6 years later, I thought it was because I had been giving him only enough sex to keep him placated -- most nights I pushed him away. (I'd like to qualify all this and say I HAVE had REAL orgasms during sex and I was a healthy masturbator as well. So it wasn't all terrible.) I thought if I told him the truth and healed my dysfunction our relationship would improve. I was wrong. He cried so hard that night I told him the truth- I was faking 95+% of the orgasms he thought I was having, and I certainly was not able to orgasm more than 1-2 times per session (I had been faking multiples, up to 10 or more per hour).
It took at least a week for us to try anything sexual. I felt free but also very raw and vulnerable. I didn't know how to fix it, but I was willing to try. A moment that stands out in my mind was him saying something to the effect of "wow you're still not close?" as we were trying doggy style with me massaging my clitoris. Those words and exasperated tone were cutting. I realize now after some research into female sexuality that his frustration increased my frustration and the apparent unmet expectation of a quick orgasm really put my sensitive brake on. Instead of enjoying the sensations and playing and touching and experimenting, he had made it clear that he found me and my body lacking in some way. Even if his intentions were not to this effect, the message I got at that moment was his pleasure was dependent on me stroking his ego with an orgasm.
Our relationship continued to decline until he finally broke up with me and began dating another woman almost right away. We lived together and continued to sleep in the same basement for several months. We slept together twice after the break-up and if I hadn't realized how he was manipulating me in my vulnerable state, I'm not sure how long a casual sexual relationship would have continued.
I did tell my current boyfriend, Will, about my theatrics in the bedroom pretty early on into our relationship. He only said "please don't be that way with me". And he has always been open to whatever I need to be sexually satisfied. But even from the very beginning I still struggle with faking orgasms. Though I'm nowhere near the 10+ orgasms in the marathon sessions with Matt, the rate of me achieving orgasm is probably around 10-20% of his orgasms.
So I'm still not experiencing a healthy sexual relationship, and I've been sexually active for over 10 years. The longest I've gone without intercourse is 6 weeks after the birth of my son back in 2009. I have plenty of opportunity to practice, I just get very high anxiety about asking for what I need.
As I cried on the beach, both Will and my best friend Maddie noticed and came up to me to be supportive. I cried again later that night as we ate dinner in the airport. I bought my own little snack plate and bottle of water instead of eating the cheesy pizza or the greasy nachos they purchased. I didn't gobble down the cookies they passed out during the flight. I asked for tea instead of soda. I felt so different in that the worries and stress about food choices didn't bring about an emotional response - it was just food. And I was able to see how the decisions I made with each food option would influence my health and my weight.
So this is where I am now. I'm fixing my relationship with food - no longer using it to fill a hole that sexual pleasure should fill. No longer wrapping my weight around me like a cocoon or a shield. I've started to open up to Will slowly about my troubles. He has always maintained that it's up to me. If I'm not getting what I need I have only myself to blame. And he's absolutely right, as he usually is.
Maddie has also researched the EFT method and has begun tapping away her own issues regarding food. She initially saw my change in habits as a threat I think -- she ended up confiding in me that the book wasn't giving her the same epiphany I had and she was afraid of being left behind. So we just talked for several hours about our families and how food and weight played a role there. She's doing better but I think there is a lot there to unpack.
The biggest change is now I don't spend my evenings and weekends absentmindedly snacking. If I'm slightly hungry at bedtime I don't freak out. If I really crave something I will have a small serving or I will wait until my next meal. Food is just NOT a big deal like it was. If I feel myself slip into that mindset I get curious about it, looking for the WHY behind the emotion. Then I tap away the attachment. As I stay the course, I will reach my goal weight around April next year.
