Hey y’all! So I started seeing this guy at the end of August casually but he’s come to be one of my closest friends. He’s really sweet and kind and supportive and I value his presence in my life a lot. I do know that he has a history with depression and anxiety and he was just put on SSRIs. He’s mentioned that one summer his eating habits got a little disordered in the sense that he was a little restrictive and body imaged focused, but I never noticed any huge red flags with his eating when we first started seeing each other. In fact he was always encouraging me to eat with him and he was making an active effort to try to put on weight
Recently, I’ve started to notice a lot of small things that are really concerning to me. I mostly come over at night and there are days when he says that he either hasn’t eaten since he’s seen me or ate only something way too small for someone his height (he’s 6’3) like a pastry. And I only really hear about it if I mention being hungry so I’m sure there are times when I don’t bring it up where he goes all day without eating. He has a scale in his bathroom which by itself isn’t strange but could be combined with his history with disordered eating. And I’ve noticed him losing weight since the summer really fast.
At first, I chalked it up to seasonal depression, but I was doing some mild stalking of his TikTok follows and noticed he followed an ED recovery account. I worry that he might be struggling with something and not have anyone to talk to about it because people are laughing it off. The other day I mentioned that I never see him eat anymore offhand when he said he wasn’t hungry and he just laughed it off.
I don’t want to force anything on him, but I am worried and want to know how to let him know that I’ve noticed and am here if he wants to talk. How should I do this/should I do it at all? We’ve had pretty serious conversations about his mental health before, but always when he’s come to me. I worry about making him hyper conscious of it or that he’ll feel awkward.
TL;dr: close friend that I have sex with/am slightly romantic with might have an eating disorder and I’m worried and need advice on how to bring it up without being pushy or making him self conscious
1 comment
I think its worth the awkwardness TBH. Open with your *feelings,* “Hey, I’ve been *feeling* concerned about something and I want to talk about it.” Then your observations, “You’ve lost a lot of weight and you keep mentioning not eating.” Only then go for “I think you might have an eating disorder.”
Part of why I suggest starting with the observations before your conclusions is because of flow of conversation, but also because even if he doesn’t have an eating disorder, if he is failing to eat because of depression that’s bad, if he’s losing weight in an entirely unplanned fashion that’s very bad, and even if he’s losing weight in a planned fashion without an ED there’s still healthy and unhealthy ways of doing that that are worth looking out for.