@Twinklelight my husband is unwell but doesn’t know he is ....
It seemed like a mid-life crisis at first, but the picture is becoming clearer in bits and pieces along the way.
We sold a business that we had worked in for 25 years. My hubby had been working 100hr weeks, and I now know that this is a recognised OCD pattern of behaviour. When we sold the (main) business he turned his attention to losing weight, because his family are weight-obessessed, and he had been in BED (B**ge Eating Disorder - the site won’t let me use that word) throughout his working life and was way overweight. I can’t tell you how much he lost across the next year or two, but it was a lot. He had lost that much before and re-gained it .... this time was different ..... he became really aggressive about it, and emotionally aggressive with us. This got further and further out of hand as his formed ED spiralled into several other forms that come under the umbrella of EDNOS (Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified) .... he is exercising obsessively and compulsively (known as Anorexia Athletica), he is so food-focussed and obsessive-compulsive that it’s called Orthorexia, he seems to have Body Dysmorphia because he can’t see how thin he is (other people are commenting and staring) and he has a massive Chew-Spit habit going on in secret.
The worst of it all was personality and values changes, and he became emotionally abusive without being able to recognise that he was. His mother was so much like that, behind his back, when we were first married, and his brother’s not much better, that that was the first time I was seriously thinking about leaving. The thought has been with me for the last few years, but sometimes the safest thing to do is stay where you are and try to “hold the fort”.
It seems there is a personality disorder driving the eating disorder, but none of this has been diagnosed, because it’s still invisible to the health professionals. He is masking the identifying features of an eating disorder, but that can’t go on indefinitely.
Although all my kids are grown now, the youngest two have been affected by all the strife, so they are under mh professionals, and we are trying to get them recovered.
That’s my story ..... my hubby has become someone else, who lives to eat the same food every day, spit out “forbidden” foods, and run and work out.
