How To Eat When You're In Love/Not In Love

An eternal quest

Before we begin, a small disclosure.

This piece first appeared on my TinyLetter on February 13th, 2021 - five years ago - when I was living alone in my tiny apartment, dramatically overthinking food and life in equal measure. I was single. Independent. Slightly unhinged.

I thought I’d reshare it because Valentine’s Day just passed. And I found myself thinking of all of you. Yes, even you - with the situationship that has quietly crossed fiscal quarters.

Consider this a gentle nudge. What follows is presented exactly as 30-year-old me would have wanted you to read it: mildly chaotic, deeply opinionated, and entirely convinced she was doing public service.

Proceed with caution.

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Illustrated by Ellie Sparkes - prints available via the instagram: @eleanor.sparkes

“Years, lovers and glasses of wine; these things must not be counted.”

Anthony Capella’s famous quote from his book, “The Food Of Love”, makes me think about all the meals I’ve eaten with everyone I’ve tried to woo.

What’s more delicious? The feeling of new hope you get when you meet someone new, someone who has the potential to be your “the one”? Or does your food taste better when you’re with them? Are you “ooohing” and “aaahing”, “this tastes so good!” you say as you lean forward to feed them a bite off your plate.

Do you remember how food tastes when you’re with your potential “the one”? Do any of us remember how the food tasted on those first 50 dates? I don’t. Because I’m busy picturing how they’d taste, how their kiss would taste. How would our love taste? Safe, but every bit delicious, comforting, and yet adventurous.

I don’t think I could remember the taste of anything I ate with my last partner for a very long time. From dreaming about wanting to be with him, to courting him, to finally being with him - there was a huge transition in the way my approach to flavour changed. It became about what he wanted to eat, what he wanted to taste. Everything we ate, everything I cooked, was for him.

It was bland. Tasty, yes, but lacking passion. Lacking true intimacy. Every time I tried to improvise by adding more flavour, there would be resistance. And yet, I would persevere because good cooks never give up.

Over time, I despised cooking. No matter how much I cooked or how differently I would cook, it would just not leave me feeling nourished or well-fed. I wanted to eat, I wanted someone to cook for me. And thus, my relationship ended. I stopped cooking for my partner, in the weeks leading to our eventual breakup. I had lost the appetite to eat, I had forgotten what food smelled like when it was being made in our home. I forgot what it felt like to cook out of love for even myself. The desire to eat and savour had left my being.

As a single person today, I’ve realised that the single greatest joy any of us have, and can hold on to dearly while our lives fall apart, is eating. Why do we only remember to nourish ourselves when we’re single? Why does self-care come into the picture only when something devastatingly heartbreaking occurs? Could we promise to love ourselves even when we’re in romantic attachments?

How do you eat when you’re not in love? You eat like a person that’s in desperate need to reconnect with a lost part of themselves, a part we somehow “managed” to overlook while making our lives, our meals about the other person. The need to reconnect is now more than just meeting sustenance, it’s a call to your inner self. You gently coax the person inside you to come out of the shell they’ve gone into, the war is over. The kitchen awaits, you’re paying for gas and electricity. You have a working fridge. You remind yourself that you were also a person with an irrational thirst for a chocolate milkshake that you could enjoy only when you made it at home.

Sure, you’re not the world’s greatest cook - but hey, you can whip up a good meal that satisfies every singeing fibre in your heart. And because there are no romantic distractions, you go back to nursing yourself. Not all days are great, but they sure seem to be getting there.

So, why do we only remember to nourish ourselves when we’re single? Why does self-care come into the picture only when something devastatingly heartbreaking occurs? Could we promise to love ourselves even when we’re in romantic attachments?

I hope we do because we will definitely forget to eat and savour food when we begin falling for someone new. We’ll forget the meals we ate with them on the first few dates because the meal is just a mere accessory. A part of our grand scheme, a game we play while courting that special someone.

Eating is self-care, whether or not we have a special someone by our side.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

P.S. Stay safe. Eat-in, while you eat-out. :P