To think DH should have told me he was changing his mind?

Who on earth wants to be the only one eating while husband and friend sit by and watch? Sounds bloody awful. Even worse that he knows it’s particularly awful for the op who would rather not eat at all than be watched eating.
I would have asked him to take it straight back, no way would I have sat there eating on my own like a bloody lemon.
I bet he holds down a perfectly normal job too with normal responsibilities, and yet cannot remember that his life partner feels very strongly about being watched eating on her own!

Just to be clear, ITS NOT YOU, its HIM.
Very rude and almost antagonist.

Yes for people living with those with MH problems.....to have recognition they don't have to set themselves on fire to keep the one with MH issues warm.

Do you think that was helpful

Edit - actually posting what I did above has prompted me to refer myself for CBT as I’ve realised how controlling my anxiety is!

You need CBT
You can’t expect your husband to think of everything when it is anxiety driven. Not a medical issue

anxiety is hypothetical

I’m really sorry, I don’t think that’s a remedy. Having to always go to the counter or be the last to order.

Thats the ED not the remedy, as a pp said.

I know how you feel OP - I have a toilet anxiety that I need to be the last to go to the loo before we leave the house and everyone else has to be ready to go before I do. So I can walk straight out of the house and we all leave once I’ve been. It’s pretty crippling and irritating for other people, I’m aware, but if someone tries to mess with it or manipulate me into not being the last, the whole thing becomes 100% worse. It’s not really a strategy though - a strategy would be a thought process I could come up with to not mind not being the last.

Wrong think? Are you saying it's socially unacceptable for posters not to agree with op?

Hmm, this is tricky. I often change my mind last minute about stuff like this - fancy something and then actually don't. I wonder if your DH might have though "actually I don't fancy one, but I don't want to ruin it for Edddie (maybe especially given your ED) so will go ahead with her order". Not saying his reasoning is the correct one, but it might have come from a good place.

Re whether it rational or irrational to feel like fat, gluttonous, awful person about eating a cream tea - I can confirm it was definitely irrational.

Oh OP, would you not prefer to get to a point where you could enjoy the cream tea that you wanted regardless of anything, that's what I would be focusing my energy on. I wouldn't say it's an eating disorder, more disordered eating brought about intrusive thoughts. Think how free you'd feel without it and instead of living by your strategies work to reduce them till they're no longer needed

If someone is worried about what other people are wearing because someone is going to get labelled “A Right State” or “The Scarecrow” then yes that would be unpleasant.

What you’re putting forward is (a)If I eat the most I am an awful fat glutton, plus (b) I monitor what you eat, to make sure I am not the glutton, but at the same time (c) You eating more than me says nothing about you.
Can you see why people might struggle to believe part (c) and why they may not like to participate in part (b)?

Can you also accept that you are simultaneously saying “Yes, I do think everyone judges everyone else at the table for gluttony” and “No, that’s twisting my words.” You are playing both sides here on the one hand you do think people are nasty judgmental when it comes to making choices about what to eat; on the other hand you don’t think think that at all when it comes to owning that thought process.

In your last reply you talk about being safe: and the obvious question is Safe from Whom? What bad thing can actually happen if someone eats part of a cream tea?

@Edddie Regardless of anything else OP a lot of people, including myself, would not be happy at being presented with food when no one else was eating, if they had been under the explicit impression that the others were eating too. That in itself is not unusual. I would have not been happy and I love food. Obviously there are other issues involving this and I wish you lots of luck in managing it (my mum had an eating disorder).

@Edddie,I’d suggest you never ever waste energy engaging with trolls and wrong-think. It’s pointless. IRL, what you need to figure out is why your DH did it, and if you can trust him not to do it again. That’s the only important part of this. Good luck x

@Edddie in an ideal world, he would have at least warned you, but, in the moment, for whatever reason, he forgot, or judged he couldn’t come back to the table, to pre-warn you and ask if you no longer wanted your order (it would have got very complicated and probably would annoy the person at the till). If it were me at the order point, I would have got quite flustered if I would have to leave the queue and so on. I might have said to you ‘sorry, I know the change will have unsettled you, but it was chaos up there - let’s share it’ or I might have forgotten. If you then (gently) mentioned it, I would have said ‘sorry, I should have thought, will try not to do that again’ but I would expect you to let it go after that. Have you spoken to him about it? Unless he did it deliberately (which sounds unlikely) given he seems pretty supportive, I think give him the benefit of the doubt here.

You may not see this but having seen your updates, I'll just add tuppence more - kindly, a strategy that is wholly reliant on the actions of others may be a useful stop-gap for beginning to manage your disorder (and well done for coming that far -it's no mean feat) but, as you have seen, it is quite fragile and shouldn't really be seen as the end of the road. There's no point in debating the reasonableness or otherwise of your feelings but please be kind to yourself AND to your husband. It's a difficult thing to navigate for everyone.

I hope you are still receiving specialist support and can work through this with them, hopefully finding some more sustainable long-term relief.

You’re not sounding very well.

You have an eating disorder. By definition, your behaviour is not “normal” and is actually negatively affecting your life, and it affects those around you. It is a disorder, meaning it is unreasonable. Your behaviour is unreasonable.

Your strategy to handle this is no strategy at all; it’s literally just your disorder being in charge. And now you’re going to let it get worse. You’ve just posted that from now on, the disorder will control even more of the situation because you will always have to order last etc.

Your disorder is fully in control. You don’t have a strategy. You need better therapy. Get more help. You cannot possible walk away from this thinking your behaviour is reasonable. It is perfectly ok for someone else to decide they don’t want to eat, anytime at all.

I wouldn’t want to be the only one eating either especially if I had been told they were eating (it was their idea in the first place!) and I don’t have an ED. Is there any chance they did it on purpose to see how you dealt with it (in a thoughtless rather than spiteful way if your dh is normally a good person). It seems very odd for them to change their minds.

Agree, and at what point are the children going to be brought into having essential roles in this strategy?

It is not helpful for you to ask for opinions when you don't want them, but you clearly need to see a specialist therapist urgently. Your approach is allowing your eating disorder full control and that will get progressively worse the longer you leave it.

So true: also the implication that someone else is coerced into playing the role of The Glutton to keep your eating disorder happy is very very unpleasant.