Looking back at my thirty-plus years in program, I see that a big topic that “drives” a lot of people’s disease – and more importantly why they eventually relapse – is sexuality.

By “sexuality,” I mean a great number of constituent parts. While it can be about sex (the physical act), it also encompasses a great many other topics: dating, body image, attractiveness, self-esteem, intimacy (not the sexual type), relationships in general, and of course, love.

These topics each within themselves have multiple levels, just like the food. They are the cause of many relapses and often the core engine of fear that drives some to be chronic relapsers. While part of the chronic slipper wants recovery, another part inside is terrified of it. To that side of their brain, recovery might lead to sexuality and intimacy, and that complex component is scary.

The whole “mating dance” involves many facets of all this – topics like rejection, body image, and self-esteem. Body image issues often stem from a childhood where families or other children judged us by our appearance. In school, we had to endure the ordeal of getting chosen for teams (or often not getting chosen for teams – or chosen last). This was an essential test of acceptance by others. I remembered that feeling, and some years later when I got to dating age, thought of how it was going to be when I got rejected by someone I liked. Psychic wounds like that often affect our behavior for the rest of our lives – unless we have a program to change it.

It sounds a bit like pandering when I say this at a workshop or retreat, but I truly believe it: “Women have a harder time with weight loss and sexuality than men do.” In looking back at my first significant weight loss when I was in my 20s, I don’t think I had a clue of my actual attractiveness to women. I had no sisters, was not raised around any women with whom I could talk, so I was naïve to all of the non-verbal communication that goes on between men and women. I understand it a little bit more than when I was younger, but it’s still a bit of a baffling road to me – so thank God I’m married and don’t even need to think about it as much these days.

Women, on the other hand, are not so lucky. If they reach a normal weight range, they become the unwitting center of attention – wanted and unwanted – almost immediately. They are no longer invisible to men. For some women this attention can be very stressful. The one thing we don’t get with attractiveness is the accompanying filter for people we don’t want to attract. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a filter that made you attractive to only the people you wanted to attract? When it comes to the rest, however, leave me alone.

 As I said, when it comes to recovery from compulsive overeating, women have it harder than men. Unlike most addictions, recovery from this addiction actually comes with its own set of problems, something not found is most other 12 Step programs.

All of this love/hate relationship with attractiveness is, unfortunately, a major cause of recidivism and relapse within food programs. Not only is unwanted attention hard to take, sometimes even wanted attention brings with it problems. In the cases of wanted attention, it comes with the added pressure of going on dates, dealing with the possibility of rejection once you really start liking someone, and much more. As a result, often the person who professes to want to be thin and attractive sub-consciously says to themselves “life was a lot easier and simple when I was sitting alone with my goodies watching a movie on a Saturday night.”