Separate struggles with weight and romance

I'm a retired professional, middle-aged woman, divorced, with children and grandchildren -- a close family. I have battled weight for the last 30 years with yo-yo dieting and virtually no success in my attempts to slim down. At the same time, I have had, in addition to two divorces, other romantic relationships along the way, a couple quite serious, others less so, but none of which was successful for very long. I am wondering if my obesity is to blame for my failed relationships or that my failed relationships are to blame for my obesity. Although I would very much like to have a nice man in my life, I seem to keep myself unattractive to men like a safety measure or buffer so that I don't get involved. Sometimes I feel like my own worst enemy. Can you help me?

-- S.D., Tucson, Ariz.

There are the facts, and then there is how the facts function. The fact is, you are overweight. How that fact functions, you believe, is that it keeps you buffered and safe from romantic involvement. Your analysis of yourself is that you at once desire romantic involvement and perceive said involvement as some kind of threat from which you need to be protected.

Great analysis! I would easily agree, because your analysis is identical to my analysis of every human being I've ever known. That is, every human soul longs for intimacy. That's how we're made. Romantic involvement is one particular type of intimacy, and it's uncommon to meet someone who doesn't yearn for it. Yet, equally obvious in the human condition is the near universal ambivalence about romantic involvement. We're terrified of it. Threatened by it. And with good reason. I tell people all the time: "Falling in love is just as sublime -- and just as scary -- as you think it is."

This is a long way of trying to encourage you not to overreact to your self-analysis, because it's really more an analysis of the human condition. I'm saying there is nothing remarkably wrong with you. You have mixed feelings about intimacy. Everyone does.

And there are myriad ways to manage and mitigate the threat of intimacy. Your particular way, you believe, is to be overweight.

Can I help you? Strictly speaking, no. This worldview you have postulated has me standing outside of your prison cell. You are inside the cell, bound in chains, pleading for help. The problem is, of course ... the only key is in your possession.

I can't help you. But I can encourage you to set yourself free.

I want to make you a skeptic. I want to increase the amount of time you spend questioning your assumptive conclusions: "The reason I'm obese is because of past, failed relationships. ... The reason my relationships fail is because I'm obese."

S.D., of this I'm certain: You can't know that you know that! You simply can't.

Probably the only thing you can know that you know is that you are overweight for the same reason everyone is overweight (endocrine disorders notwithstanding): Your eating and exercise habits could have no other outcome but that you are overweight.

I'm encouraging you to radically separate your struggles with weight from your struggles with love, because these two things might or might not be connected. And, if they are connected, they might or might not be causal. And, even if we could know they were causal ... well, all roads lead to Rome, regardless.

If you are sufficiently sick of being overweight, it won't matter why you are overweight. Losing weight will require radical changes in your relationship not first with men but with food and exercise.

What if you said, "To hell with past, failed relationships!" Yes, those hurt. A lot, even. But romance is a great mystery. No one can guarantee safe passage. The largest part of what makes great romance great is that it is never entirely in our control.

What if you rewired your motive to be overweight? Or not to be? What if neither of these outcomes had anything to do with men, romance or the past? What if the only authority you consulted regarding your weight was the authority of your own self-respect?

Then you would be free to do nothing ... from the conscious core of your self-respect. You also would be free to make changes ... from the conscious core of your self-respect.

I think your speculative, psychological interpretations might be a distraction here. Even if they are true.

Originally published in View News, Feb. 22, 2011.