The bit about her skin growing around the seat looks a little odd. Can skin do that? Does this mean that if I hug a tree long enough, then I'll enter into a permanent relationship with it? I know a few people who never seem to move from the same barstools - now I know why ...
I've heard about this kind of thing before and it often involves people who are so overweight that they can't move themselves. As far as I'm aware this is such a growing problem that there are calls in the USA for a law against 'feeding abuse'. This is where someone is so large they can't prepare food for themselves but those who are caring for them don't seek help, instead continuing to feed them so they maintain their weight induced invalid state.
Possibly a form of agoraphobia, but yes, skin will grow around an object if it doesn't move for a year or so.
I do think they should investigate the boyfriend for neglect.
As for the feeding abuse, I've never heard of that, although it sounds like a codependancy thing. As long as the person is helpless, the caregiver feels "needed" and therefore validated. Codependancy takes many forms.
It doesn't say if the girlfriend was overweight... I had assumed that she wasn't and thought that it just sounded wierd.
but....
I saw a documentary on channel four a few years back called (tactfully) 'Fat Girls and Feeders' It showed several couples where the man continued to feed their overweight girlfriends... these ladies were literally the size of the double bed they lay on, they couldn't walk, a few of them couldn't roll over with out help. One girls mother eventully called the fire brigade to knock down a wall of the boyfriend's house so that her daughter could be lifted (with a crane) to safety.
This world is made up of some very weird people.
Ann Pan
"Some days you're the dog,
some days you're the lamp-post"
Major confession time. When I met my ex 8 years ago I was really slim and quite fit. He came across as really caring and thoughtful and, although he was a larger guy, he was also quite fit and good looking.
Soon after we got together he started taking me out for meals or cooking for me and I started putting weight on. When I tried to lose the weight he would feed me more. It was so gradual that I didn't realise what was going on at first. Then it became a bit more obvious, he would buy chocolate and, if I didn't eat it, he would get moody and difficult. It sounds really silly now but when I was in the relationship it was very difficult not to give in. I put on 6 stone over the 4.5 years we were together. It got so bad that my knees were constantly in pain and I found it difficult to walk upstairs. It took a lot of courage to stand up for myself and start losing weight and, as soon as I did so, he left me for someone fatter than me.
I know it was all to do with his insecurities but I was slim when we met and was attracted to him. Why did he feel the need to make me fat?
Zoe I can understand completely, people do use food to control others. My parents wanted children for years, brother came along and the sun shone out of his arse as far as they were concerned. Came ong unexpectedly a year later and well wasn't wanted to put it bluntly. My mother overfed me, I became fat, I was ridculed at school, had no self confidence, every time I said I wanted to lose weight she became a diet saboteur. Putting guilt on me if I wouldn't eat the pudding she had spent so long cooking etc. The weight gain continued even as an adult (turned out there was then a medical reason for it). I was a size 30, I eventually got the right treatment for the medical condition and lost 5 stone in two years, it wasn't easy, but it the drug allowed me to diet like a normal person. Since then also being married to a good man who loved me when I was bigger than I am now, the weight is still slowly coming off. Oddly enough the thinner I got the worse the relationship with my mother got - she could no longer control me, eventually she sent a leaving card saying sod off I never want to hear from you again. I think she finally realised that her controlling behaviour had lost its power. Like Zoe, it can be hard realising what a person is doing.