Roommate Hell·
KITCHEN FEUD OVER DIET
A fitness-obsessed roommate clashes with a new girlfriend who opens up about an eating disorder, asking for diet concessions that spark a tense kitchen boundary fight.
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The fight started in the kitchen, over food scales and junk food, and ended with one roommate telling another, bluntly, that her eating disorder was not his problem.
The poster is a college student living off campus with two other people: a friend and the friend's girlfriend. The girlfriend is new to the apartment this year. The poster says they have lived with the friend for the past two years without any issues, but now there's a third person in the mix, and the tension is coming from the kitchen.
The poster describes themself as strict about fitness and food. "I'm a gym goer and take my fitness and diet pretty seriously," they wrote. They track macros carefully, sometimes weigh food, mostly eat the same meals, and draw a hard line at junk food and alcohol. No casual bites, no drinks, no exceptions.
Then the girlfriend pulled the poster aside.
According to the poster, she said she has an ED and that seeing the poster be so strict about food makes her feel self conscious and "triggers her desire to relapse." She asked the poster to change some of the things they do around her so she would feel more comfortable at home.
The poster asked what that meant in practice, and the girlfriend laid it out. She said the poster "shouldn't weigh food in front of her in the kitchen," "should be less strict with my diet," and "should stop refusing junk food when she and her bf go out to get some and ask me to have some."
That's where the conversation turned.
The poster told her she didn't really have a right to ask that. They said they hoped she was okay, but "her ED isn't really my problem." The girlfriend didn't take that well. She called the poster an AH.
The roommate who matters most in the middle of this, the poster's friend and the girlfriend's boyfriend, isn't picking a side. According to the poster, "my friend, is refusing to take sides."
So the apartment is left with one roommate weighing food, one roommate asking for changes, and one roommate stuck between them, keeping out of it while the argument sits in the kitchen with the rest of the groceries.