As part of my ongoing eating disorder recovery, I am making peace with food. As a part of making peace with food, I am (re)reading "Intuitive Eating" which advocates a non-diet approach to eating/food. There is a section specifically devoted to the deprivation/craving dichotomy: "The moment you banish a food, it paradoxically builds up a 'craving life' of its own that gets stronger with each diet, and builds more momentum as the deprivation deepens."
All of a sudden it hits me that the reverse is also true. I dread the start of new relationships because it triggers all kinds of desire that I don't know how to moderate. The moment I start to feel "new relationship energy" is when I start setting up barriers and rules for myself that ostensibly are to prevent me from making a fool of myself, but really end up causing me massive amounts of insecurity and anxiety. And because I don't give myself permission to enjoy and participate in the NRE, the "craving" ratchets up enormously which in turn triggers more attempts at deprivation.
The book advocates giving yourself permission to eat unconditionally. No bargaining (cheesecake today, salad tomorrow); no limits (well, only half the doughnut...); and no judgment (I'm so bad for wanting to eat this) for your choices.
I wonder if I'd feel better if I gave myself unconditional permission to enjoy new relationships, to communicate when it felt natural to me, and to express affection genuinely without measuring it against my rigid standard of how much is acceptable when. I'm surely bound to fuck it up a little at first, but I might actually learn to trust myself over time.
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