A Real Relationship

As my "Battle of the Bulge" series attests, I am all about embracing healthy eating and, in turn, healthy weight. While studies make contradictory conclusions every week, it shouldn't have to be about extremes. 

The middle-ground is quite roomy. It shouldn't be about weight, it should be about food quality (meaning mostly produce) as opposed to Red Lake 40. I was quite surprised when I saw that was an ingredient in a yogurt. Yogurt? I now have to be scared of yogurt? 

What should never be tolerated is eating disorders. I am still saddened by the news that such conditions has a high rate in our community, since that it proves a disheartening truth: Many of us, the religious, the proponents of bashert, aren't being real. 

We think just because of one or two unbalanced and loud mothers of eligible boys that weight has any bearing in dating. This isn't about a fantasy character in a comic book. This is about the woman one is supposed to spend the rest of one's life with. 

Such a loose grasp of reality seems to have no comprehension that what exists today can, and will, change with the tomorrow. OK, she's skinny now. Maybe so are you. A life decision based strictly on the present—human beings are designed to transform, mentally and physically. Adaption is always to a species' benefit; why else was the Borg the scourge of space?

In a Modern Love piece, the narrator describes her eating disorder, which no one, including herself, realized she had. She starved herself, she threw up if "necessary"; but it was only when she met the man of her dreams that she was able to eat a meal and keep it down. 

Although we’re often told that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself, my experience was the opposite: I couldn’t love myself until I fell in love with someone else.

She shed her frighteningly petite frame and embraced the one that is now thirty pounds heavier. She realized that her emaciated self was not what really mattered, especially when it came to marriage. 

We think of our external selves as the means to "snare" a spouse; if I am this skinny, if I wear the "right" outfit, if I don the ideal amount of makeup, if I focus on shallow aspect of me. 

Sure, I want to be svelte. But for me. Because I have a sneaking suspicion my special someone won't notice if I am ten pounds heavier. I dress. But for me. Because very few men I know are aware of labels, or proper fit, or what suits a woman's build. I wear makeup. But for me. Because even if a guy would prefer I wear less paint, that lipstick is an expression of my own self.

Reality is not my weight, my wardrobe, or my mascara wand. A relationship should be based on reality. So it is comforting to know that when I start out on a date and the fellow seems quite cheerful upon laying eyes on my carefully calculated appearance, an hour later he cannot tolerate what I have to say, and grimly disposes of me on my doorstep. 

He couldn't stand the real me! I sigh in relief.