I think a mixture of socially-conditioned undereating plus the inexplicably ubiquitous practice of being on the pill is a deadly combination. Never have I been more bat-shit crazy than when on artificial hormones. Adding that on top of the narrow focus, fragility and rigid mindset resulting from mild restriction made things very hard. And I never even restricted anywhere NEAR that badly!!
In fact, my boyfriend kind of finds me hard to deal with now because I am so rambunctious and generally fine that he no longer can feel like the protective sane one, and is more aware of his own difficulties as a result. It is definitely a common theme amongst ED recoverers that they are HAPPIER and more mood-stable than ever (AFTER an initial period of dealing with lots of emotional shizzle that was locked up before and deadened in ED).
I don’t think this is vastly gender-specific. Women may have more hormonal fluctuations naturally (you have no idea how annoyingly aware of one’s own crazy you can be, yet unable to do anything about it), but add in the societal pressures to under-eat and be on the pill and you massively exacerbate these differences, rather unfairly resulting in women being labelled as crazy.
Bottom line- find someone who is not silly about food and get to grips with natural contraception methods, and you should be fine!
