Aboutvanessaoz Expertise I have been online for five years now and I come in contact everyday with people online who have all kinds of stories about why they are online and the time spent here. I feel confident that i can guide someone with an addiction on the right path or help someone know if they are addicted or not.
Experience I spend many hours a day online and spoken to people who have been addicted to the net. When i first discovered the internet, i know i became very addicted to it so i speak from personal experience about how it effected my friends and family.
Question QUESTION: This is my first time using this website, so hopefully I'll come up with some help in all this mess.
So, basically my boyfriend, now 26, is addicted to his computer - not just web surfing, but also playing videogames, as well as overeating. His food habits are appauling. The guy seems to think fat is a food group, and the sheer quantity of food he eats is unreal. His father has had liposuction about a half dozen times, and both his sister and ex-girlfriend have struggled with eating disorders in the past. I realise his family isn't the healthiest environment when it comes to eating right, but the worst thing is he is constantly trying to get me to eat all the same junk he's slowly killing himself with, despite having told him my feelings on several occasions. A while ago I literally told him that his cooking made me want to throw up, because after almost 2 years of asking him nicely to stop offering me greasy, sugary, fatty foods I really don't enjoy, he still brings me breakfast in bed, well over 2000 calories at a shot. Which puts me in a situation where I can't complain that I have a man willing to make me breakfast in bed, but it seems his kind gesture is really an attempt to make me fat, despite the countless times I've told him I neither enjoy this kind of food, not have any desire to try it, especially first thing in the morning! And if he's not eating, he's sitting in front of his computer playing videogames, chatting with other "gamers", or watching videos of everything from cartoons to youtube injury compilations. When he's not sitting on his backside, clicking a mouse and shovelling 87000 calories into his mouth, he's being a total workaholic (he's a chef, no less), spending 18 hour days in the kitchen and getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night, 6 or 7 nights a week. He seems to live in the extremes, and it's impossible for someone like me to adapt to the neverending series of problems he presents. One minute he's killing himself with work, the next with food, the next with his computer. Granted, the computer is probably the least dangerous of all his weird little habits, but watching him decay like this is killing me. I have tried everything I possibly could to help him get on track, but the fact is, I also have a life and responsibilities, and it's not my job to be the mother his own mom couldn't be. I can't just quit my job or drop out of school to be his full time food and internet police. The guy has no self-discipline, and although I do see him trying, it seems his addictions are stronger than to two of us combined.
I don't know what more to do. He's talked about seeing a councellor and a dietician, but part of his addictions of being totally lazy and I know actually making an appointment and keeping it may or may not materialize. Also, he complains he never has any money, but he can pay per month to play a videogame, buy a new computer or videocard, or he can spend five times what I spend on groceries and go to restaraunts, but he can't find the money to get help. It's a never-ending cycle!!
Yesterday I was ready to leave him. I don't want to break up, because despite all this, he really is a wonderful, caring man who I'm fortunate enough to say is also one of my best friends. We have a very honest relationship and we've been through alot together travelling and sharing some major life milestones in such a short time.
I need to understand why someone would allow themselves to rot like this! He says he doesn't know why he does what he does, but to me it just seems like he's got a wound that just won't heal, and he's trying to bury it under pixelated demons and chat rooms and a half a pound of bacon.
Please help. I haven't the energy or the time to watch over him and monitor him. His willpowers isn't enough to beat this thing, and getting him to take the first step seems impossible. I can't stage an intervention because his family are all a bunch of food / drug addicts themselves and probably wouldn't know destructive behavious if it bit them in the face. His only other friends are internet pals or fellow chefs and that really doesn't help me one bit.
Any advice you can offer would be most appreciated. Thanks for reading this little rant of mine. I've really no one else to talk to.
ANSWER: hi,
thanks for emailing me and i will try to offer you the best advice i can give.
i know what your going through to some extent. my story doesnt have a happy ending because the love of my life passed away in august of this year because he had numerous problems with his health due to not getting enough exercise ( spending too much time on pc ) and eating the wrong foods.
it was made harder because i live on the other side of the world and over the last six years he has been in an out of the hospital, once going to a clinic in new york for obesity problems. he lost weight and gained weight and eventually his heart and organs just couldnt take it anymore and he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure at 32 and passed away just after his 34th birthday.
im not writing this to scare you but to tell you that this is a problem just as you typed it to me and im know you care about him very much and i dont want this to happen to you also.
you brought tears to my eyes because i could feel the pain your going through, i tried so much to get him to do the right thing and he promised me he would, but he never did. its not too late for you boyfriend to make those changes and live a wonderful life with you.
the main problem is that your trying hard and he isnt listening to you. i would say to let him read this but im not sure if you want him to know you have gone to this length to get advice to help him through this.
he has to be the one who wants to make the changes to both is eating habits and his internet addiction. other then pulling the plug on his pc ( which i would be tempted to do) there isnt much you can do. being on his back isnt going to help, men have very good selective hearing and what you say wont mean a thing as i feel you are seeing this for yourself now.
being a chef, im suprised he doesnt have better eating habits but he shouldnt be forcing them onto you. again, he has to make the changes and only if he wants to change.
i was accused of nagging at times because i would ask him if he got any exercise or what he ate today, eventually we did break up just a few months before he died and im sure it was over my constant questioning him on this issue. i just wanted him alive, but that was not to be.
if you feel showing this to your boyfriend might snap him out of his addictions then please show him. if i can help one person by sharing my story, then it will be worth it and darrell want died in vain.
take care and i hope i have helped a little...
vanessaoz
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: You helped alot. And also, let me extend my deepest sympathies for your loss. I know there isn't much I can say or do to make it easier on you, but know that my heart goes out to you, and your are in my prayers, as is he.
I would, however, like to ask you for a favor, which by all means, feel free to decline if you feel it's too big a favor to ask. If it's not too difficult for you, I'd like to know what you tried in your situation, and how well it worked or didn't work. I know in the end, things didn't work, but in all fairness you were across the globe and clearly your partner had these problems long before you came into his life. If this is too painful for you to answer, then by all means don't. I don't want to open any old wounds.
The problem in both our cases seems to be a lifestyle choice, and for me, it's very difficult to sit back and observe. I work, I go to school, I work out, and I take care of my mother as she has health problems as well. I really haven't much time for videogames or doing things that will jeapordize my health. I have to juggle my time carefully to make sure all my homework is done, my home is fairly clean (I'm no Martha Stewart, that's for sure, but I try to keep a minimum standard somewhere in my busy schedule!), driving my mother around and all those other little things that take up every waking minute of the day. The slightest little cold or upset stomach, and my whole month is off schedule. I'm struggling to catch up in class, earn the hours at work I missed, and so on. It really devastates me to see him intentionally cause harm to himself, not just physically, but mentally and socially too. His basic survival skills are rotting away, and it's starting to cost him jobs, friends, and our sex life is pretty well over at this point.
In all honesty, your words did scare me. I DO fear he will end up dead before he's 35. I see him killing himself, and the weight yo-yoing, and the constant false starts everytime he tried to get his life together and fails one more time. We visited a developping nation together and even the sight of starving children living on the streets, right in front of his face, wasn't enough to make him realize what he's doing to himself. Somehow I don't think your story would have much more of an effect on him.
I guess at this point, I'm grasping at straws. I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope I'm not being too difficult asking you these things. If so please accept my sincerest apologies.
Thank you again. I appreciate your words more than I can say.
Answer hi again,
your right, i didnt see him daily, not like you see your boyfriend and that has to be harder for you when its there in your face everyday.
one time when darrell was in hospital, they couldnt do much for him except send him to this obesity clinic in new york. like i said it worked and he lost a lot of weight, they taught him what to eat and how to prepare it but after 8 weeks he had enough, and as much as i tried to talk him into staying, he left the clinic and went home, back to his old lifestyle. i understood he hated it there but it was helping him, i tried to encourage him to stay but nothing i said worked.
everytime he was put into hospital and icu he was there for months, he would lose weight, come home and tell me he was going to change. we spent less time on the internet so he wouldnt be just sitting there but i think because of different time zones he would be on when i was sleeping. he told me he was going to start going to the gym, but he didnt. it got to the point where he struggled to breathe and was on oxygen all the time. he had sleep apnia, another condition caused by his weight.
i know his family, didnt do much to help he was a 32 year old man, they couldnt tell him what to do do but they did the grocery shopping and i would of liked them to have chosen better for him but it seemed to be always take away and his mum is pretty big too, i guess she couldnt say much to him about his weight.
at one time, i would try to monitor what he ate and do the diet with him. to keep each other honest to help motivate him but that worked for a short time then he got bored of me asking him what did you have for dinner??
it really has to be something he wants to do not for anyone else but himself. you cant force him, i guess you could try saying you leave him but im not in favour of blackmail. its not healthy in a relationship, its sad that you are young and you have a nearly non exisitant sex life. he probably thinks you love him no matter how he is, and like you said in your earlier email, all his wonderful qualities he has. you are looking on the inside of him for who he is but he cant see that right now, just like i did. my guy had a wonderful heart and soul and was just a beautiful man, his life ended way to short. i loved him for who he was on the inside not how big he was or how small he was. i wanted him to get healthy for himself to have a better quality of life, but like i said, he has to want it for himself and only he can do it.
all you can do is encourage him to stay on track with both is internet addiction and eating habits. its up to you if you want to live this kind of lifestyle or if you want to move on. its not an easy decision i know that for sure.
wish i could give you a quick fix but i cant...
good luck and i wish you both the best..
vanessaoz
