In sickness and in health

To start my series on how long term illness impacts relationships, I thought I'd cover the hardest one to write first: romantic relationships. Anyone will tell you that romantic relationships take work, let alone when there's something additional adding pressure that there's no easy way around. Then again they will also say that going through these issues will only make you stronger - something I will absolutely agree with.

For me and my husband, my health took a nose dive only 7 months after getting married, and in that time we had already experienced a truly traumatic bereavement (something the doctors believe was actually the last straw for my body/nervous system); so to say that our wedded bliss had come to an end quickly is quite the understatement (unfortunately this seems to be a theme in our relationship considering my life turned rather dramatic when we had only been together 3 months, popping that initial new relationship bubble, but I digress). With this nose dive, my husband became my carer, chauffeur and chief dog walker overnight. To say that at this point we didn't expect for this to still be the case 18 months later is definitely accurate, with us both expecting I'd be back up and running within a couple of weeks; how wrong we were. 

Now picture this: overnight your other half has become practically bed bound, unable to work and unable to function as a normal human being, on top of this you have a good professional job to hold down, a dog that has become your full responsibility and you're also dealing with grief. This is where my husband found himself in April 2024; for anyone, just a handful of these factors would be enough to deal with, let alone all of them, yet somehow my husband has managed to. I suppose there's an element of 'just get on with it' and those eternal vows of 'in sickness and in health' ringing in the ears, but bereavement alone is a difficult thing to go through as a couple, no matter the rest. How my husband has managed this long I do not know, especially as I have only just really started to be able to help with daily tasks to lighten the load. 

Now it would be naive to say that our relationship hasn't been affected and we're happier than ever, of course it's been impacted. For one, it feels as though our lives have literally hit the 'pause' button, but time hasn't, so plans we had to travel and bucket list activities have had to take a back seat, this also applies to any thoughts we were having regarding starting a family. Secondly, I feel like a burden 100% of the time, a feeling that, I imagine, will not dissipate until I feel like a fully functioning member of society again; the problem is this makes me feel as if I am constantly an issue for my husband and stopping him from living his life despite him trying to ensure me of the opposite in me. Finally, anyone will tell you that being unwell will stop certain 'activities' partaken by couples, this will always put a strain on things where relationship satisfaction is concerned - there's also the element of it being hard to be romantic and loving when you're scared of hurting your partner or flaring their symptoms. So to put it bluntly, long term illness has a huge impact on all aspects of romantic relationships.

Despite all of the above, I genuinely believe that we are stronger because of my illness, incidentally it has forced deeper more meaningful conversations that perhaps we may not have had (financials being one of them). So, to call back to the start, I do feel that we are stronger both because of and in-spite of this chapter in our lives.

On that very long note, I will leave it there. Ta ta for now!