Something that caught my attention in a post about an eating disorder…

I’m Taro. There’s no point telling someone who’s mentally unstable that they’re mentally unstable—they won’t take it in. I think the real question is whether you can keep seeing them without saying that and simply accepting it. I once dated a woman with an enormous appetite. She’d start with appetizers, move on to the main course and dessert, then go back for a second round of appetizers. Just when I thought she was finished, she’d start on a third round. I nearly lost my mind. She’d even open a bag of chips in the taxi on the way to the restaurant, and when I scolded her like a parent—“Stop eating snacks before dinner!”—she’d argue back, only to completely defeat me once we sat down to eat. The overwhelming sense of defeat was something else. Eventually, the only restaurants we could go to were all-you-can-eat places. When other customers gave us a thumbs-up after seeing the stack of plates we’d accumulated, I felt this strangely complicated sense of exhilaration. About a year after we broke up, I searched her real name while drunk and found out she’d won a food-fighting competition. Her prize money was about equal to the total allowance I’d given her（笑） If you enjoy spending time together, I think you should keep seeing her. If you can help, then help her; and even if you can’t, if you like her, you can still meet up and just go with the flow together. Being mentally unstable may be an illness, but it’s also part of someone’s personality. Looking back, memories with distinctive people are nothing but fun.

If you don’t mind, you could keep seeing him. I don’t think you need to keep telling him to go to the hospital. He clearly isn’t listening, so it’s pointless—just leave him to it.

I don’t like doing things I think are helpful when nobody asked me to, because I find it unpleasant when people do that to me. So if someone asks for my advice, I’ll say that I think they should see a doctor. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t bring it up. And I don’t think meeting someone because they say they need the money for food is enabling them. I feel that worrying about or commenting on how they use their allowance is simply overstepping.

I don’t think there’s much the questioner can do until the woman comes to them for advice. If she looks like she’s binge-eating, she’s probably in the middle of bingeing and purging right now. I was in a pretty bad place myself before I started papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan). I was borderline anorexic and went through a period of overdosing on medication, too. I gradually reduced my medication on my own, but the final push came from the papa (a male supporter) I’m seeing now. Whenever I got through a day without taking my medication, he would praise me, saying, “Good for you!” That made me happy, and I was able to keep cutting back. That said, this was only the “final push” after I had genuinely wanted to quit the medication and had managed to make progress on my own to a certain point. I don’t think my papa’s presence was everything. He simply helped me with the final step. The same goes for an eating disorder: unless the person themselves strongly wants to stop—unless they hit rock bottom—they won’t move toward recovery. Try Googling “hitting rock bottom addiction” and imagine what state that girl is in right now. If she hasn’t hit rock bottom yet, unfortunately, I don’t think anything you do will make a difference.