Refusing to eat as a means of control??

[Bluecatblu]

I have recently learnt that SIL will sometimes refuse to eat when she is upset / angry at DB. She will go without food for 1 or 2 days without food or until DB repeated asks her to eat.

Has anyone experienced someone doing this? The refusing food is intentional; she refuses to eat despite being hungry.

A friend says it’s a form of control but another said it’s a form of self abuse.

It depends on whether she makes a big deal of her starvation and rubs it in DB's face.

People suffering with anorexia will go to extraordinary lengths to pretend they are eating. Some of the tricks I used to pull included:

1. Sitting at dinner and cutting up the food then secreting the bits in my lap
2. Putting together a plate of food, flushing 80% of it then leaving the rest on a plate in the kitchen to give the impression that I'd eaten and got full
3. Chewing and spitting out garlic bread to make my breath smell like I'd eaten something
4. Making a big show of buying food at lunchtime then surreptitiously chucking it
5. Inventing meals I'd had and telling my family/colleagues how delicious they were in great detail
6. Buying food, flushing it and putting wrappers in the bin

It's time consuming, expensive and quite complicated to pull off.

Whereas, if your SIL is making a big deal of it and going round with a face like a wet lettuce, then yes she's manipulating your DB, and also probably eating on the sly.

I have known two people do just this.
My horrible grandmother would take to her bed and refuse to eat if she didn’t get her own way. Did not have dementia or an eating disorder or any mental health issue. Had been dominating and an emotional blackmailer to anyone she thought it would work with all her life. Chose her victims carefully and never tried it with anyone it wouldn’t work on.
Stepdaughter who had anorexia actually said if you don’t do what I want then I won’t eat. Again only tried this with people who she knew would comply.

Would you say it wasn’t manipulative/emotionally abusive if someone cut themselves in front of their partner after an argument? It’s the same thing. Whether or not it’s intentional. And I used to have anorexia.

It would really depend on the individual and what was happening for them. I'm sure in some situations it is manipulative, others it's a trauma reaction over which the person has no control.

Not at all. Many people have stated that the SIL likely has a mental illness, but that it maybe manifesting itself in a way which is abusive to her husband.
It sounds like a horrible situation. OP hasn't given us enough info to know what's truly going on (she probably doesn't know herself) so people are speculating and sharing their own experiences.

So I would agree this, but also say that regardless of whether it is manipulative, it is emotionally abusive - I would say it can also be DV if the person is forcing the other person to watch them self harm or is put in a position where they live with the fear of their partner self harming in response to an argument.

So whether or not the person is manipulative or just extremely unwell, it is abusive to the other partner.

I think using phrases like “…the person has no control” are unhelpful and infantilizing.

We all acknowledge that (regardless of why) it is absolutely unacceptable to do this is front of children. We do expect people to engage with others to the extent that their trauma reaction is not handed on to their children.
The other concrete action people can take is to listen and be prepared to hear how the behaviours impact on those closest to them, especially those who witness their out of control actions.

People absolutely do have Control and agency, which we know, because if they really didn’t we would section them. Of the people here who engage in this, none of them think they should be sectioned- they have enough control to avoid that.

I’m in no way minimizing the distress /unhappiness/ feelings they can’t cope with, but I am saying people are responsible for their own actions and the consequences thereof.

My point is that it would not do much harm to the person who is fasting so why is the husband begging her to eat?

She does it to punish him and herself. He's an emotional man and is obviously upset to see her do that. Give it a few years he won't give a shit if she continues. Her husband will wake up and he will either leave or tell her what he thinks of her and her manipulation.

I doubt it especially if it's after a tantrum and she has not got her own way. He needs to fuck her off.

I see where you're coming from, but unfortunately this really is not the experience of people in the midst of flashbacks. If people were able to switch trauma off and on like that, that would be great, but it just doesn't work like that.

Obviously, I don't know the situation or experience of the SIL in question, but I feel there are too many assumptions going on in this thread. We don't know how her husband behaves in arguments, or why his telling her how much he cares and how concerned he is makes no difference. It's possible she just stops eating as a passive aggressive form of abuse, but it's also possible she feels powerless and internalises blame because of the situation she's in or because of mental.illness or trauma.

Wow what a fucking loon. Can your DB leave her? She sounds horrendous.

Wow what a bigot to use the word loon after reading some of the replies on this re mental health

If they have children I'd be concerned most for them. Children see this stuff and think its the right way to react.

Whether she is doing it as manipulation or not, her children's welfare trumps hers so she should stop it, or get therapy, or he should take the kids and leave.

I didn't read them so I wasn't talking about them anyway. The SIL is engaging in abusive behaviour. I'll save my compassion for someone more deserving.

You didn’t read them? Surprise surprise. People with mental health disorders don’t deserve compassion? Wow. This site never fails to amaze me.

We don't actually have enough details to know if the SIL is engaging in abusive behaviours, or reacting to covert abuse.
Either way, she needs to seek help, and it wouldn't hurt for her DH to go for therapy as well.