Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

At his request, I’ll be bringing my boyfriend home to meet my family this Christmas. I was surprised when he brought it up; on TV, the boyfriends always dread meeting the family and do so grudgingly. Also, on TV, there is a canned laughter track when the boyfriend disagrees with pop on politics and mom on religion and offers to milk the cat.

The man set about memorizing my family tree on our third date — and that’s when I knew he would be staying for a while. But, no amount of explaining to him what it’s like to be in a house with my 6 siblings, their spouses and children, dogs, neighbors, and a dozen other refugees of every stripe can dissuade him. He’s giddy with excitement.

No, my boyfriend isn’t perfect, but he’s wonderful. We’re going on a year and a half together now, and if it’s true that opposites attract, we could be the poster children for Making It Work. He’s content and I’m ambitious. He takes things easy and I just go go go. He is black and white and I am shades of gray. He is Mr. Abstinence while I struggle to delay my gratification in even the smallest of ways.

So, he finds it impossible to understand why I can’t just stop eating cookies.

After all — years ago, he just stopped eating meat. Before we met, he decided to give up sugar one day on the hunch that the sugar caused him migraines. He still suffers from migraines, but he won’t eat sweets. Why would he eat sweets? He gave them up. He makes do on the Los Angeles streets carless — the transit system map burned into his brain like neural pathways. When he was 15, he gave up masturbating for three years, for crying out loud. Have you ever heard of such a teenage boy?

When we met, he was working as a clerk in a soon-to-be-bankrupt record store. After the tower fell, he then spent nearly 10 months unemployed. I survived 8 of those months as supportively as I could, but the toll of his paralysis was too much to bear. In the summer, we broke up in spite of being very much in love. I told him why. I offered to help. And, in the interim of “just friends” (with occasional benefits), I helped him with his resume. I edited dozens of cover letters as he sent them out. I pumped him up for interviews and, in the end, he landed a sweet internship. It was truly a team effort. Things have been much better since then.

So, the fact that he cannot figure out how to be supportive of me when it comes to losing weight is very disheartening. Because he is so all-or-nothing, he cannot understand how leftover Weight Watchers points can legally transform into a scoop of ice cream. In his mind, if you are on a diet, there is no place whatsoever for ice cream. He gets frustrated with me, if I just need to have an “off” day and eat the breadbowl along with the soup. He doesn’t mind me eating fourteen donuts and a gallon of hot chocolate on any given day. He curls up next to me just right and whispers that he loves me and the way I look, and that if I never lose a pound, it’s just fine with him — as long as I’m not trying to diet. Once I announce that I am undertaking a Program, a System, an Eating Plan, his all-or-nothing motor goes into high gear.

I’ve tried to explain this to him. We’ve talked about it many times. I usually start the conversation by saying, “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to find a way to work together on this as a team, but I’d like to try.” The weight of his judgment and frustration is too much for me — a confirmed emotional eater — to bear. I feel so much shame when he reacts to my food choices that I overeat. He is not the only reason I overeat, but he is a consistent one.

He loves me. He wants what’s best for me. He would stick by me if I never lost another pound as long as I live. But, he is having trouble supporting me when I want to do things differently than he would.