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"How do I tell someone I love about my binge eating?" Part 2: an interview with my ex-partner

Lucy Newport • Feb 06, 2023

Reading time: 12 mins

As you consider telling someone you love about your experiences with binge eating, questions often come up like “how should I tell them?”, “When’s the right time?” and “What do they need to know?”. This is why I created my guide “How do I tell someone I love about my binge eating?” Part 1 where we look at how to have this often vulnerable and difficult conversation. 


But other types of questions also come up; the more nagging questions like “how will they take it?”, “Will they think of me differently?” and “Will it affect our relationship?”. Of course, everyone’s relationship is different and we each have our own ways of dealing with challenges, not to mention ideas about what binge eating actually is.

Even so, I thought it would be helpful to give you another perspective and ask my ex-partner and now close friend Mark some questions about his experience when I told him about my own bingeing. At this time we had been together for about 8 years (we went on to be together for over 12 years) and I had been bingeing for at least 10 years. 


This is an incredibly open and oftentimes vulnerable conversation and it’s taken a lot from us to be able to put it into the world. However, we both feel these are some of the most important insights we’ll ever share and know they’ll help many people. It had to be done!

We’re coming at this interview from the perspective of those who were in a romantic partnership, but lots of what we share can be applied to other types of relationships too, like close friends and family. We hope this will help you to feel more reassured about bringing up the subject with your own loved one, and have a more positive and productive conversation…


Lucy: "From what we both remember, I gave you some glimpses of insight into how insecure I felt about my body and my strained relationship with food from 2-3 years into our relationship. However, it wasn’t until 8 years in that I explicitly told you about my full experiences with binge eating.


You remember more about that day than I do, so can you set the scene, please?"


Mark: Some context for the reader: at this point in time Lucy and I were living in London, in houses about 10 minutes walk from each other. We’d recently spent 5 months together travelling around South-East Asia and were now working on our own business projects from home during most daytimes. We frequently met up on benches in front of the docks near Lucy’s house to have a chat and spend a bit of quality time together.


"I still can picture everything about it so vividly.


On that day, I had a clear sense that you were very nervous, and you quickly broke into telling me that you had a problem with binge eating. I’ll leave out my emotions and reactions for this question, as that’s a whole topic in itself, and will focus on what you said and how you said it.


You told me in full detail the extent of what your binge eating routines were. About often going to the supermarket twice a day, despite having not much money at all, and buying a shocking amount of junk food and consuming it in a single sitting after each of those shopping trips.


You then described how you’d started binge eating in your teens when you went to the shop at break times, and also mentioned that you’d been bulimic for roughly a year in your early twenties. 


From almost immediately after the beginning of the conversation you were crying. It didn’t feel right to invade your space while you were telling me something so important, but as soon as you’d finished I put my arm around your shoulders and we cuddled up as I replied.


People were walking past throughout (it’s a reasonably popular area for walks) but I vividly remember not caring about them at all. I’m sure you were the same."


Lucy: For anyone wanting to know more about my personal experiences with binge eating, I’ve written an article detailing how it started, my bulimic period, what I tried to recover and how I eventually did recover. You can read it here. 


"Mark, can you remember what your initial thoughts were as I told you? How did you feel?"


Mark: "My immediate emotional response was a very sharp shock. While you were talking it seemed like I was in a dream, or a film. I knew you’d had a challenging relationship with food sometimes but before that moment I had no idea it had been outright bingeing. I found the bulimia part particularly shocking.


Very quickly, that shock changed to a strong pang of sadness for you, at everything you’d been through.


Almost equally quickly after that, a deep feeling of compassion blended in with the sadness. I wanted to give you a big hug and make you feel better.


I listened very carefully, as everyone definitely should when someone is telling us something so important, but I knew that in the back of my mind there were faint hints of practical thoughts already being formulated about how I should behave and how I could help. At this point I wasn’t thinking about my own needs or feelings at all.


After we said goodbye and each went home, for the rest of the day I still mostly felt a mixture of shock, sadness for you, and compassion.


Over the next few days, as I thought more, sadness crept in that you didn’t feel you could tell me about all this until 8 years of us being together. At first, I felt like after all the things I’d done for you (especially being your carer after your awful experiences with your tonsil and wisdom teeth operations, for example) that you’d have been able to tell me much earlier. But I quickly realised that this wasn’t fair, and that it was clearly incredibly difficult to tell anyone, even a loved one, something of this nature. So, after processing things, by the end of that week I didn’t feel the slightest bit annoyed, offended or angry :) I almost exclusively felt sadness and compassion for you."

Lucy: "What did you know about binge eating and binge eating disorder at the time, if anything?"

Mark: "Next to nothing. Just some stories on the news about the occasional famous person (e.g. I think Princess Diana said she had been bulimic at some point), and there was nothing practically useful in those stories - just gossip or sensationalism."


Lucy: "What do you think I did well when I told you about my experiences?"


Mark: "I’m not sure whether you were holding anything back, but it certainly seemed like you were being very open - I was pleased (though sad) and proud of you for that, and still feel that way now. You weren’t afraid to say things that probably felt embarrassing, like the amount of food and money involved in your binges. Again, I was and am very proud of you for that.

It was good to hear as much detail as possible - I just wanted to understand. Partly to be able to empathise with you, and partly to hopefully be able to help and be supportive in the future. You held yourself together very well, which helped you to be coherent and convey the message in an effective way."



Lucy: "I’ve grown a lot since then and I’m sure I would do things differently now. What do you think I could have done to help you understand me and what I needed better?"


Mark: "This is the hardest thing to share, but please be clear that I don’t mean it in a negative or blaming way. Also, there are plenty of things I would have done differently in hindsight, so I can hardly say this in a negative manner, only in a constructive, supportive and caring (though difficult) way of hopefully helping you, and helping others in similar situations…


If, somehow, we could go back in time and get you to change what you did, it would have been to tell me explicitly about your binge eating much, much earlier. As in, years earlier. I know you feel you partly did that after 2-3 years, but if you did attempt to do so then it was in such a way that I had zero idea that you actually meant binge eating.


We were in a partnership, and it could have made a big difference to helping you heal faster if we’d worked together on it from near the beginning with the actual core issue in mind. For example, I helped you to go to a counsellor for anxiety, but it turned out I was working in a direction that wasn’t getting to the core of your problems, even if it did help in some ways.


Also, given the significant impact on our sex life of your weight gain hitting your self-esteem and confidence, which eventually played a large part in our breakup (though that was totally amicable, for the record - to the readers of this!), not knowing the main reason for that weight gain - and your mental health challenges - until 8 years in meant it was almost impossible for us to fix it and change the direction our relationship had taken. I’m still sad about that, though there’s truly no blame or anger, I promise :) - I truly do understand why it was so difficult :)


It’s worth pointing out that my weight gain must have played a part too, despite your protestations to the contrary - which I feel bad about because I regard that behaviour by me as selfish, as opposed to you having a medical condition, which wasn’t your fault.


***With all this in mind, I would just plead with anyone suffering from binge eating to be open as much and as early as possible. Nice and caring people will understand***


A good way of thinking about things like this is that when you’re in a partnership it will work so much better when both sides understand the important things that are going on with the other person. Sometimes the partnership can’t work quite right when that knowledge isn’t there, which I think is one of the bigger things that happened to us.


But in terms of what you actually told me on the day, I think you did very well. You probably couldn’t have done much better, really! :)"



Lucy: "You mentioned weight gain a few times so I want to add here that weight gain often isn’t the problem to be solved. I didn’t fully realise it at the time but my binge eating and weight gain were a reflection of how I was feeling within myself. It was when I stopped trying to “fix” what and how much I ate or how much I weighed and did the deeper inner work that I was able to recover from binge eating. 


That aside, do you think my telling you about my experiences with binge eating changed our relationship? If so, how?"


Mark: "I’d like to first say to the reader that I completely agree with what Lucy said above about the core issues that she (and most people in a similar situation) are forced to deal with to recover from binge eating.


From my side, once I’d processed things for a couple of days the impact of you telling me about your binge eating was all positive.


You being so open with me helped me understand you better. This made me able to make occasional (hopefully useful!) proactive suggestions, but mainly to be supportive when you needed it - in the right way.


The sex aspect was almost certainly too far gone to make a difference, so the impact of knowing about your binge eating on that situation was neutral to me.


And you telling me made zero difference on the negative side. I didn’t think badly of you at all for suffering from this condition. The opposite, if anything. My thoughts in the previous question about telling me earlier were in the back of my mind, but I accepted that what was done was done and there was zero blame - it’s so difficult to tell someone these things. That’s one of the reasons we’re doing this interview! So I definitely understood why things had happened the way they did. Sometimes bad things happen to nice people (like you).


In summary, you telling me did help me, and our relationship as well (through that greater shared understanding, and a sense of fighting for something important together), but any differences in my opinion of you were positive, not negative.


As a final point, and you’d have to confirm this, but I always thought telling me made more of a difference to you than me, but that’s a good thing! :) And, as I’ve said, it definitely made a significant positive difference to our partnership."

Lucy: "I would agree with that. It’s exhausting hiding binge eating from anyone, let alone the most important people in your life. I think at this point I felt utterly relieved, especially by the fact you received it all so well.

How has your understanding of binge eating changed since that time?"

Mark: "I didn’t realise how prevalent it is, or about the potential triggers. A shockingly high percentage of my female friends said they’d had troubles with binge eating after I told them about you (only after you’d made it public, not before, to be clear!) So my experience with you has made me more aware of binge eating and more empathetic toward people who suffer from it."


Lucy: "What advice would you give to someone preparing to tell a person they love about their experiences with binge eating?"


Mark: "My advice to people would be:


Most importantly, as I’ve mentioned: please please do tell your loved one as soon as possible. Try to be self-aware and avoid procrastination (if that’s happening, which would be understandable); and/or try to get comfortable (with the true belief) that the vast majority of people, especially your loved ones, will be completely understanding and supportive.


If you’ve started dating someone and are already binge eating, the longest I’d wait to tell them is 3 months. Set that as your maximum, and ideally talk about it earlier, if you feel you can. As I mentioned earlier, your partnership will have an inbuilt flaw in the dynamic if you don’t do this soon enough, and it is likely to lead to much bigger problems in the future. I know it’s really hard, but please do bite the bullet and try! I’m saying all this with the benefit of lots of hindsight. I never would have thought of this at the time. But now you’re reading this interview you can apply these learnings and avoid many of the problems that Lucy and I had :)


If you’re in a relationship and binge eating starts during it then that is trickier. But I’d try to stick to the 3-month approach there as well.


Definitely read and re-read articles like this one to make you less uncomfortable about telling people that matter. If you can talk to people in person or on the phone who can help you (with advice, sharing their experiences, etc) then that would be even better.


When you do tell someone about your binge eating, be as open as possible: ideally 100%, not holding anything back."

Lucy: "Thank you so much for sharing your perspective! I really appreciate it and I know this is going to help many people. Is there anything else you’d like to add?"


Mark: "Not really :) You asked very good questions and drew out all the key points :) As I always say: I am very proud of you for overcoming binge eating, and for everything you have done to help others with binge eating issues."


Mark has also kindly answered more questions in my guide “Someone I love struggles with binge eating, how can I help them?” Part 2: an interview with my ex-partner. This interview is aimed towards someone whose loved one is struggling with binge eating but I do recommend that you read this one too, before sharing it with them.

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