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Why do we gnaw on carrots or reach for a bun? Of course, to satisfy hunger, replenish nutrients and energy. But often we sit down at the table for no reason at all. Food helps to warm up, dispel longing, keep up the conversation, and demonstrate culinary talents. It allows you to enjoy here and now – and at least a little love.
Pain, a lot of pain, darkness, then a strong push – and a light so bright that it makes you close your eyes. A newly born baby is crying. From a warm, cozy home, an unknown force pushed him into the unknown. But falling to the mother’s breast, he calms down: he immediately received food, warmth, and protection. So food in his mind is in the mind of each of us! – once and for all intertwined with love.
Appetite in relationships
40-year-old Natalya tells how she once again experienced that strong feeling: “I immediately understood this: when I fall in love, I stop wanting to eat. At all. I can’t look directly at the food. I used to think that it was something with the stomach, I ran to the gastroenterologist. And now I understand – love happened again. But the “unloading” period, Natalya admits, does not last long – until the relationship has moved into the stage “we began to live together.” At this point, the appetite returns. And feelings, on the contrary, begin to go away, as if they were forced out by joint coffee in the morning and evening potatoes with meatballs.
“Having got a partner, Natalya begins to get bored,” says psychotherapist Marina Novikova-Grund. – She is no longer a gambling hunter who, chasing the beast, forgets to eat and sleep, but the keeper of the hearth, and this role is clearly not to her taste. If hunting brings Natalya joy and this joy saturates her no worse than borscht, then joint evenings with a partner cause melancholy. She eats so as not to yawn – and eats until another object, new interesting prey, attracts her attention.
Food as a sign of care
Olga, 35, is an administrator at a small dental clinic. She lives alone and hardly cooks at home: a couple of yogurts with a bun are enough in the morning. He takes a few loaves of cottage cheese with him to work and eats them with tea. And at three o’clock, her beloved boss comes in and treats her with sausage and cakes: “You’ve been on duty all day, you need to eat.” And Olga honestly eats everything to the crumbs: “I don’t really like it, but it’s so nice when they take care of you.” And in the evenings, a neighbor brings her either a pile of pancakes or a saucepan of cabbage rolls: “Eat, Olenka, they turned out delicious. You don’t have time to cook.”
Olga dreams of losing weight – ideally 10-15 kilograms. But can you really do it if everyone around, seeing how hard she works, how helpless she is in practical life, they constantly feed her? “It seems that she gets joy from food only if she “takes food from her hand”: it’s lonely to cook for herself,” says Marina Novikova-Grund. “She probably once chose the passive role of a child in need of care. Her loneliness is also connected with this passivity: many want to caress Olga, but no one dares to “adopt” her.
Way to sort out the relationship
Svetlana is Olga’s age. But she doesn’t need to lose weight. True, her husband thinks differently: “He watches every piece that I eat. Here I love coffee. In the morning I pour myself a cup, and he looks with disgust and says: “You drink it like an alcoholic vodka, your hands are shaking.” For dinner, I cook vegetable soup for myself, as he calls it gruel. God forbid, I’ll put some additives in myself or I’ll fill the dish with sour cream – it gets furious and says in a sweet voice: “Here’s a good girl, another spoonful – oh! – and you will become a pig. No, don’t think, he loves me – he is proud that I am writing a candidate’s thesis, I know two languages. He tells everyone that his wife is smart and beautiful. But with food… I don’t understand.”
In Fellini’s Casanova, the hero enters into relationships with many women, but he finds happiness not with any of them, but only with a mechanical doll. It seems that Svetlana’s husband is also shocked that his wife is alive, says Marina Novikova-Grund: “He loves only part of her – intelligence, beauty, demeanor. And the “animal”, bodily part – the one that eats vegetable soups and screams loudly in bed – is rejected. Behind the admiration for beauty lies a neglect of the body in the name of the spirit. And the rejection of a part of the personality is accompanied by food violence. Perhaps someday Svetlana will decide to break out of this cage – for now, she is forced to keep herself within limits: having grown fat, she will cause genuine anger of her husband.
Is it possible to make friends with a refrigerator?
There is nothing easier than eating. And there is nothing more difficult than eating with pleasure, without guilt and fear of “bad” foods. Diets disrupt our relationship with food, but according to writer Jamie Cat Callan, you can always come to an agreement:
“I believe that problems with food arise when we begin to be at enmity with it. Instead of fighting food, why not make friends with it? Then after a while, you’ll have fewer secret midnight meetings with groceries in the pantry. Why? Because when we make good friendships with food and introduce close people to our edible friends, food ceases to play the role of a secret lover. Rather, we make our lovers our lovers, and food takes its rightful place in our hearts and lives. It becomes just food, something that strengthens relationships, brings joy and satisfaction. And provides a way we can show love.”
Food instead of self love
50-year-old Tamara is a lush, charming woman. Her mouth is constantly moving in a bizarre chewing dance. She eats all the time – and when she makes a financial report, and when she communicates with colleagues, and when she is talking on the phone. Tamara began to constantly eat and get better when her husband went to another: “That ill-fated evening, having found his note on the table, with shaking hands I automatically began to pinch off pieces from the loaf and put them in my mouth. Tears and resentment choked me, but the barricades of bread balls that I built in my mouth did not allow grief to escape. After eating half a loaf, I took two cold cutlets out of the refrigerator and swallowed them … I eat so as not to cry. The first time Tamara allowed herself to burst into tears only in the therapist’s office.
“Problems in relationships with food always make you look at other relationships in a person’s life: with a partner, friends, children, parents. But most importantly, on relationships with oneself, says clinical psychologist Svetlana Bronnikova. “Greatly simplifying, we can say: the root of eating disorders is a violation of the relationship with oneself, the inability to love and accept oneself.”
Our attitude towards food can be seen as a metaphor for how we relate to life. If someone has stomach problems and is forced to diet, there is probably something in his existence that he is not able to digest. If he overeats, then in life, most likely, he also mechanically, passively absorbs everything that happens to him, without assimilating, going with the flow. In general, the desire to eat more than necessary is an indicator that many vital human needs are not satisfied. And above all, the need for love. After all, food is, of course, love. But it will never replace the tenderness and affection of a living person. As well as our self-care.