Some of us may not have had sex or been in a close personal relationship in years. Or we may be in partnerships, but find it difficult to be emotionally close. Or we may be the members in S.L.A.A. who seldom speak in meetings, disappearing the instant the meeting is over. We may be those who, outside meetings, are barely social. Or we may be the kind who do not have intimate friendships. We may have many acquaintances, but no one we’re really close to. Or we may have close relations with only certain people, such as our children, but keep our distance from anyone else. There are many other varieties of anorectics as well. But whichever kind we are, in some important way, all of us have distanced ourselves from experiencing love.
As anorectics or as people with anorectic tendencies, we may have a wide range of feelings and responses. Some of us feel overwhelmed in social settings. Others of us get high by socializing with a great many people in order to keep ourselves from intimacy with any one person. Some of us feel incapacitated by shyness in relationships with others. Others of us are in relationship but are passionate only in one area of it; for instance, we may be emotionally invested in the relationship but remain sexually or socially unavailable. Or the opposite: we may be sexually invested, but emotionally detached.Just as our feelings have a wide range, so do our behavior patterns.
For some of us, anorexia might take on the form of an overwhelming dread of making phone calls. Some of us function well in particular situations, such as the workplace where intimacy is not usually valued, but find we are distant with family and friends. Others of us have used alcohol or drugs to become emotionally withdrawn. Or we used them to become sexually, emotionally, or socially daring, while essentially remaining out of contact with others in any meaningful way. In this way, we have used other addictions to act out "anorexically".
