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Ellie: My Friend is Fat
NB: I got this from thatbadadvice.
My close friend of 50 years has always been supportive. She started gaining weight 25 years ago. It became worse 20 years ago when she moved to the U.S. Despite a few (ill-advised) attempts at weight control, the bulk keeps growing. She visits me annually. Her face remains pleasant-looking but I find her body, limbs, and trunk painful to look at. She recently retired as a doctor, puts efforts into getting “in shape,” acknowledges that she’s fat, but doesn’t acknowledge obesity. She says that she has only enough energy to stop gaining weight, not enough to lose some.
She attributes her weight gain to In Vitro Fertilization treatments, menopause, stopping smoking long ago, and various drugs she must take to control some medical problems and depression. I have trouble accepting those excuses especially considering her medical knowledge and experience.
I’m starting to feel disgust, and fear showing repulsion at her next visit. I don’t comment but she probably picks up my negative vibes. She says she’s trying to love herself and her body.
How can I learn to just accept her body or blank it out of conscious vision?
Worried Friend
You’re a long way from acceptance and for some reason, that part is about you, not her.
She may have objective knowledge as a physician, but is emotionally incapable of applying that knowledge to herself.
Her excuses have some validity. IVF can play havoc with a woman’s hormones, menopause then brings its own challenges, and certain drugs do make weight loss more difficult.
If you feel repulsion, you shouldn’t have her stay with you. Recommend a good hotel nearby, and go out with her. But constant contact may expose your inner feelings and that could end the friendship.
She’s responsible for her own life. If the topic arises, you can say you worry about her. But she already knows the health risks.
My close friend of 50 years has always been supportive. She started gaining weight 25 years ago. It became worse 20 years ago when she moved to the U.S. Despite a few (ill-advised) attempts at weight control, the bulk keeps growing. She visits me annually. Her face remains pleasant-looking but I find her body, limbs, and trunk painful to look at. She recently retired as a doctor, puts efforts into getting “in shape,” acknowledges that she’s fat, but doesn’t acknowledge obesity. She says that she has only enough energy to stop gaining weight, not enough to lose some.
She attributes her weight gain to In Vitro Fertilization treatments, menopause, stopping smoking long ago, and various drugs she must take to control some medical problems and depression. I have trouble accepting those excuses especially considering her medical knowledge and experience.
I’m starting to feel disgust, and fear showing repulsion at her next visit. I don’t comment but she probably picks up my negative vibes. She says she’s trying to love herself and her body.
How can I learn to just accept her body or blank it out of conscious vision?
Worried Friend
You’re a long way from acceptance and for some reason, that part is about you, not her.
She may have objective knowledge as a physician, but is emotionally incapable of applying that knowledge to herself.
Her excuses have some validity. IVF can play havoc with a woman’s hormones, menopause then brings its own challenges, and certain drugs do make weight loss more difficult.
If you feel repulsion, you shouldn’t have her stay with you. Recommend a good hotel nearby, and go out with her. But constant contact may expose your inner feelings and that could end the friendship.
She’s responsible for her own life. If the topic arises, you can say you worry about her. But she already knows the health risks.
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Fuck you.
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(Yeah, someone in this situation is disgusting, and it's not the "friend.")
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This sentence is a thing of beauty. In the utterly "a perfect example of its type" way, wherein its type is just so, so unfortunate. I would like to hand the LW a list of all the drugs with "weight gain" as a side effect.
I am also rather bewildered about what the LW expects the "friend" to do, given the identification of previous attempts at weight-control "ill-advised".
Also to me, the LW just seems to have . . . so many issues. Like there seems to be a part of them that genuinely understands that the way they are thinking is wrong. I mean they are actually not commenting, and they're afraid of the "friend" picking up bad vibes, and the actual advice they ask for (which the responder doesn't give) is how to learn acceptance and ways to stop having these feelings, presumably so that they dn't hurt their friend.
I mean at this point it feels like the only useful answer is "serious counselling and education", but.
(And like, yes: I actually have sympathy for the friend dealing with that. "Disgust" is not an emotion we necessarily feel out of conscious volition, and isn't actually simple to turn on and off like a switch. It's a process to dismantle it - a very necessary one, one that I feel in this case they're morally obliged to do because it's based on non-acceptable things, but . . . the LW also seems to actually realize that and again, their actual request is "how do I learn to accept her".)
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