The way we relate to food is almost always a mirror of the way we are in relationships.
During my 20 years of clinical practice as a psychotherapist, I have found that my clients who struggle with a restrictive/binge or binge/purge cyle can often also carry a pretty intense anxious attachment style that intermittently turns avoidant. If you have an anxious attachment, you likely feel a deep, constant need for closeness and a high sensitivity to any sign that a loved one might be pulling away. When you are avoidant, you tend to run the other way when someone tries to get close. And you can have both attachment styles at the same time. The same way people who binge are the same people who restrict, the people who binge on love are the same ones who starve themselves from being loved appropriately.
Have You Ever Been "That Girl?"
Have you ever been that girl?
The one who was completely in love with that boy — the one you were sure you were going to marry and have babies with.
You thought about him constantly. You couldn’t stop talking about him. You drove your friends crazy. You checked your phone again and again to see if he had texted you.
And when he didn’t, you felt anxious. Scared. Depressed.
You talked to your friends about it endlessly, analyzing every text, every word he had ever said to you. Trying to figure out what you had done wrong.
Why hadn’t he texted?
Deep down, you knew something had shifted.
But you didn’t want to believe it.
So you texted him.
“Are we still on for Friday?”
“What are you up to tonight?”
You found excuses to reach out.
You even found ways to “accidentally” run into him.
The Conversation You Were Afraid Of
Eventually, you meet him for dinner.
And he says it.
“This just isn’t working for me.” He tells you, “But what? Why? What did I do?”
“You’re great,” he says. “I wish I could… but I just don’t feel the same way.”
“But you did!” you insist.
“You used to! How do your feelings just change like that?”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
And you cry.
You cry a lot.
“But we’ve only been dating for like two months,” he adds.
“Ten weeks,” you correct him.
He leaves.
You are sitting alone at the restaurant crying hysterically.
The food in front of you suddenly looks disgusting.
You can’t eat.
So you don’t.
Not that night.
Not the next day.
Not the day after that.
Soon you become almost addicted to not eating.
You convince yourself that if you lose the weight you think you need to lose…If you fix yourself, if you become a better version of yourself… He will love you again.
It doesn’t matter whether you are 18 or 81. This is what anxious attachment looks like.
I have seen it in my practice over and over and over again.
What Is Anxious Attachment?
In 2026, our attachment figures are often represented by a blue bubble on a screen.
For someone with an anxious attachment style, “digital silence” can be a massive trigger.
The phenomenon of being ghosted, “Seen” receipts without a reply, or a perceived shift in texting tone can trigger a primitive alarm in the brain.
Your body interprets this digital delay as a threat of abandonment and your nervous system is on high alert.
When that alarm goes off, your body searches for the quickest way to self-soothe and regulate the rising panic. That can often be a quick fix binge.
To break this cycle, we have to recognize that the urge isn’t about the food—it’s a protest against feeling disconnected.
Attachment style describes how we learned to relate to people when we were children — and how those early experiences shape our adult relationships.
For this article, I’m focusing on anxious attachment.
While both men and women can have anxious attachment styles, women tend to show it more openly, while men more often fall into avoidant attachment patterns.
Interestingly, these two styles often attract each other.
Anxious and avoidant partners often find each other like magnets and the result is often a relationship that feels intense, dramatic and deeply unstable.
These patterns usually begin in childhood.
They often develop in homes where caregivers were:
• inconsistent
• emotionally unavailable
• highly critical
• preoccupied with their own struggles
Jessica’s Story
Jessica (not her real name) grew up with a narcissistic father who left her mother when she was only 18 months old.
At thirty, when he gained access to his trust fund, he moved from Massachusetts to Los Angeles in search of a more exciting life.
Jessica’s mother stayed behind, angry and bitter.
Jessica’s father visited every few months.
And when he came, those weekends felt magical.
They went into Boston together.
They ate at the Hard Rock Cafe.
They rode the Swan Boats.
They got ice cream at Faneuil Hall.
They shopped in Harvard Square.
They visited the Children’s Museum.
For 48 hours, Jessica felt loved.
Then he would drop her back at her mother’s apartment.
Her mother would yell at her for enjoying time with her father.
Sometimes she even hit her.
Jessica quickly learned that her safety depended on keeping her mother calm.
She became hyper-compliant.
She tried to anticipate her mother’s moods.
Her father became her fantasy — the person who would someday save her.
But when he remarried, everything changed.
His visits became less frequent.
Sometimes he promised to come and cancelled at the last minute.
Jessica remembers waiting in her room all day for him to arrive.
Finally the phone rang.
Her mother came in and said he wasn’t coming.
“Just couldn’t get away,” he told her.
“It’s okay Daddy,” she said. “Will you come again?”
“Of course I will.”
He rarely did.
The Story Jessica Told Herself
How Anxious Attachment Shows Up in Adults
Eventually Jessica stopped visiting her father.
And he stopped visiting her.
Jessica came to believe something very powerful: Her father left because she wasn’t good enough. She was:
Too fat. Too ugly. Too needy.
If she looked more like her stepmother — a supermodel — she believed she would have been loved.
Adults with anxious attachment often feel deeply insecure in relationships.
They constantly look for reassurance from the people around them.
But reassurance rarely lasts.
The anxiety returns.
They become clingy or hyper-focused on their partners.
Ironically, this often pushes their partners away.
Which reinforces their deepest fear.
No one will ever love me, why would they? I am completely unloveable.
Jessica as an Adult
Jessica became obsessed with two things:
• achievement
• her weight
She wanted to prove she was acceptable.
She ran marathons.
She rose quickly through the ranks of her law firm.
Yet she still found herself obsessing over men who barely treated her well.
Enter Richard
Jessica began dating a man named Richard.
Richard described himself as a painter.
In reality he mostly lived off his parents’ trust fund and spent his days getting high and playing video games.
Jessica believed she had found “the one.”
She showered him with attention.
She bought him gifts.
She cleaned his house while he played video games.
She cooked him meals.
She believed she was proving that she was the perfect partner.
Eventually he started pulling away.
One week he stopped answering her calls.
Finally she texted him asking if she could come over.
He said he had a bad head cold.
So she made homemade bone broth and cookies and brought them over.
When he opened the door he was wearing only boxers.
Behind him was a woman wearing his T-shirt.
Jessica screamed.
“How could you do this?”
Richard looked confused.
“Why are you so upset?” he said.
“It’s not like we were exclusive. We’ve only known each other for two weeks.”
The other woman laughed in the background.
The Cycle
Richard texted her a few weeks later.
Jessica went right back.
The pattern repeated for years.
Every time he texted her she felt euphoric. Every time he disappeared, she panicked.
In the meantime she tried harder to become “good enough.”
She starved herself.
She ran miles every day.
She did back-to-back SoulCycle classes.
Eventually the restriction collapsed into binge eating.
Her eating disorder was managing the anxiety of abandonment.
What Was Really Happening
At the core of Jessica’s story were two emotions.
Love and fear. But the fear eventually became stronger than the love.
Jessica never stopped to ask herself an important question.
Did she even like Richard?
If she had answered honestly, she might have realized something surprising.
She didn’t love him.
She didn’t respect him.
She was simply terrified he wouldn’t love her.
In therapy Jessica began to understand something important.
She had always been whole. The men she pursued weren’t the ones she actually wanted.
She remembered that she didn’t need a man to save her and that she in fact was the one person who had actually rescued her. She rescued herself.
She had thought that she needed her father to rescue her from her angry mother. But she was an adult now, and she realized that she had saved herself, nobody else had done that for her. She needed to stop relying on unreliable, self-absorbed people.
As her self-worth grew, she began choosing partners with more secure attachment styles.
These relationships were calmer and less dramatic.
And, as Jessica admitted, they were less exciting — but they were healthier and she began to feel safer. That is how the real shifts began to happen.
As she began to feel safer and more balanced in her brain, her relationship with food started to stabilize.
Ask Yourself This Final Question
Do you actually love the person you are chasing?
Or are you afraid they won’t love you?
Are you spending more time trying to “fix” yourself and change yourself to make someone love you?
Or are you allowing yourself to become yourself to make you love you?
