It was a thought I suspected he’d had. But I never expected him to say out loud.
‘Sex with you isn’t fun any more,’ said my boyfriend one Sunday evening, after he’d rejected my advances again. The reason? I was ‘too skinny’.
He was right; I was indeed very skinny. But that didn’t make his words any less devastating.
Over the past six months, as I struggled with an eating disorder, I’d been gradually losing weight from my already slight, 22-year-old frame. My size eight jeans hung from my twiglet legs like curtains, my once ample bottom now deflated.
Prior to my preoccupation with calories, there was little wrong with our relationship. Having recently graduated, we were brimming with first-job adrenaline and limitless energy.
Like most couples in their early 20s, we had a lot of sex. But then I got sick.
At first, he didn’t seem to mind my shrinking frame; intimacy was as regular as always. But as the months went on, and my figure went from boyish to seriously ill, I could feel his libido retreat.
And then he revealed the cold, cruel truth: I was ‘too skinny’ to have sex with.
I immediately burst into tears. The smidgen of confidence I had left was destroyed. I felt hideous, repellent, gross.
At first, he didn’t seem to mind my shrinking frame, writes Eve Simmons
He only said those words once. But I heard them in my head most days until we eventually split eight years later, six months after our wedding. They were especially loud when he stopped telling me I looked nice before we went out for dinner. Even after I hit full recovery, with my body back to normal, I couldn’t quite shake my skinny self-image and assumed he still saw me as the hospital patient who wore leggings that were three sizes too big.
I thought of these words again, almost a decade later, as I listened to Lily Allen’s new album West End Girl.
While most have focused on the jaw-on-the-floor allegations about her ex-husband David Harbour’s sexual habits, there’s a part of this story no one seems to be talking about. Because for the majority of the couple’s marriage, Allen was suffering with some form of eating disorder.
Speaking on an episode of her podcast Miss Me? last year, she revealed she’d struggled with food since she moved her family to New York in 2020. In the months leading up to her admission, she said she’d ‘stopped eating’.
‘I’m not hungry. I obviously am hungry but my body and brain are so disconnected from each other that my body… the messages of hunger are not going through to my brain,’ she explained.
Obviously, we don’t know the truth about what really went down between Allen and Harbour. But as someone who watched anorexia gradually de-sex her relationship, I couldn’t help but consider the impact of the illness.
My eating disorder began in 2014, shortly after I started my first job in fashion journalism, fresh from my postgraduate degree, aged 22.
Maybe David Harbour struggled to support Lily Allen with her eating disorder
On paper, my life looked fortunate; I’d landed my dream job at a major newspaper, had virtually no responsibilities and was hopelessly in love with my first proper boyfriend, who I’d been dating for nine months.
But beneath the surface I was battling a swathe of insecurities that constantly told me I wasn’t good enough. And so I began an extreme attempt to fit in with my model-like colleagues – by obsessing over the calories, sugar and fat in every morsel that passed my lips. Soon, I became tormented by thoughts about food and exercise, which ultimately left little brain space for anything else. Within six months I’d lost a fifth of my body weight and, after a referral to the local NHS eating disorder clinic, was diagnosed with anorexia – the deadliest of all mental illnesses.
I was initially enrolled in a daytime programme, which involved intensive therapy and group meals between the hours of 9am and 3pm. But despite the staff’s best efforts, my weight continued to drop. And so by September 2014 – three months after my diagnosis, aged 23 – I was admitted to an inpatient ward for round-the-clock care.
Six weeks later – and a stone heavier – I was discharged to continue my recovery at home, with the support of my mother and then boyfriend. What followed was six years of painstaking recovery. Eventually, aged 29, and after 200-odd therapy sessions and endless diet plans, I regained both my body and the ability to eat peacefully again.
Remarkably, my relationship seemed to withstand the illness. He lovingly prepared calorific pasta dishes to super-charge my weight gain. We told each other that this journey meant few couples were so bonded together as we were. But – apart from his one upsetting confession – neither of us had the courage to face the fact that anorexia had robbed us of intimacy.
Although our sex life did eventually recover, it was never the same as it was before my illness. I was rarely in the moment, caught up in anxiety about my body.
The physical impact is one thing. Then there’s the shift in dynamic. Once a partner has been instructed by medics to cook you fattening meals to stop you wasting away, their role changes, as does yours. My ex and I fell quickly into the roles of rescuer and victim, and not the hot ‘damsel in distress’ kind. I was a fragile vessel to be cared for, nursed and protected. All deeply unsexy adjectives.
Eating disorders also breed distrust. I’d promise him that I’d eat breakfast when I got to the office. But how was he expected to believe me? I’d spent the best part of six months prior to my treatment recounting extravagant lunches when in fact I’d been surviving on a cup of clear soup and a carrot.
Although our sex life did eventually recover, it was never the same as it was before my illness, writes Eve
I could tell he was also uneasy about me going out drinking after work; I’d inevitably go without dinner and settle for a midnight slice of toast, inhaled beside the kitchen counter. I was only an unhealthy weight for five of the nine years we were together. But his quiet nervousness remained, as if I was always one skipped meal away from a relapse.
I absorbed his anxiety and was often plagued with worry about not eating enough. Was my chicken sandwich lunch sufficient calories? Was it ever normal to ‘not fancy’ dessert?
I’ve no doubt that there are plenty of men who’d have ridden this storm with open communication, kindness and perhaps a bit of couple’s therapy. That, I think, is a recipe for romantic survival. Unfortunately, this was not the case for me. I’d try to bring it up and would be met with immediate resistance; it was too depressing to talk about in any great detail. We didn’t need to keep going over it, he’d say, it was time to move on.
And indeed for a long time we seemed happy together, with no indication of what was to come. In May 2022 – eight years after that awful conversation about my body size in bed – he sobbed throughout our wedding ceremony, telling me he wished I saw myself as he saw me: beautiful, smart and caring.
Yet when our break-up arrived out of literally nowhere – just six months after our wedding – I learned that he felt my illness had taken up too much of our shared emotional bandwidth. He deserved some attention too. He felt pressure to keep me ‘well’, and was fed up of shouldering what he clearly considered a burden.
It was all news to me. As far as I was aware, my partner was among the most selfless, caring and generous of men. Never before had he given the slightest indication that he was holding the years of unconditional support against me.
And so, as the cliché goes, he found himself someone (younger) at work to pay him the attention he felt he was missing. He insisted there was no funny business, but couldn’t answer when I asked if he’d met someone else.
I often wonder if the relationship may have survived if we’d explored the impact of my illness with a trained professional. Or if he’d articulated those feelings of resentment earlier on. But by the time he realised he wanted out, he wasn’t interested in my suggestion of couple’s therapy. The romance was dead, and there was no reviving it, he’d decided.
Maybe David Harbour also struggled to support someone with an eating disorder. Maybe it had nothing to do with his and Lily Allen’s break-up. If the former is true, it’s a shame he also appeared to find solace in other women, as opposed to having an honest conversation with his wife. It’s worth saying it takes a particular toad of a person to conduct an affair while your supposed beloved is battling a deadly mental illness.
So my message to those who love people with eating disorders is please don’t be afraid to tell us how you feel about our weird eating habits. We appreciate that we’re annoying and irrational. Exercise patience and compassion, perhaps with the help of a psychological professional. Don’t bury it all until the day you decide you’re not in love.
But please, for the love of God, don’t ever tell us we’re too skinny to have sex with.
- What She Did Next by Eve Simmons (Dialogue Books, £22) is out on January 8, 2026, and available to pre-order now
