dating while chronic: part two

its all a balancing act

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During the week of May Term break, Cal did the most. My mom entrusted me with him in a way that she never has with anyone. It made my heart beam. I felt safe, loved, and undeniably supported. But, I also started to feel something else... a tad of resentment. You see, Cal played baseball for the U of R. As a result, he was pretty much non-responsive and busy during the day while out on the field. This left me alone, in pain, and extremely bored in the dorm just recovering. Nobody is to blame for this, it's just a fact and it was rough. I too was supposed to be out on the field every day that week... my team was practicing. But, nope, I was stuck in bed because once again I had surgery. I started to feel like I couldn't accomplish anything meaningful. Cal was going to practice, changing my bandage, cooking for me, administering medication (+ keeping track of side effects), and not once complaining. I felt like such a burden on him. I worried about this changing how we interacted aside from him helping me. I didn't want to lose our happy fun side. I didn't want us to also revolve around my pain. So, we made it as much fun as possible. At night he would make a yummy dinner, watch episodes of HOUSE, and then start a MARVEL MCU movie marathon.

Worries aside, it ended up being an amazing week. I took advantage of the time with myself and reflected on how my life had changed so drastically so quickly. In high school, I became too comfortable not expressing myself in my old relationship. To the point of a shallow co-dependency. I was hiding away the real parts of myself just to make them feel comfortable or like everything was stable (and I didn't even have chronic pain then). It had become a personality trait that ingrained itself within me whenever I started to feel like the world was going to come crashing down on me. Shell up and hide behind the "picture perfect" partner ideal, even though the feeling wasn't reciprocated. I hated hearing "oh what's wrong now"? This is something that Cal and I had to work through together, feeling comfortable with being vulnerable when I needed it, and always knowing that he wasn't going to judge or toss blame. I feel so lucky to have a life partner who helps me grow my inner self-confident voice. With an injury like mine, one that continues to regress despite the effort, it can be shameful. I blamed myself for my pain, for the surgeries "not working", and last but not least, I blamed myself for weight gain. I was struggling with insecurities left and right.

Trust and communication. It's really what dating with a chronic illness is about. Trusting each other to talk through our inner struggles with my pain and communicating ways to accommodate. Yes, I'm the one dealing with the pain every night and day, but watching your partner struggle is not easy. I asked Cal what the hardest parts are dating someone with chronic pain were, here's what he had to say:

"knowing that as much as I help I can never make it better"

"feeling guilty continuing with my daily routines/exercises"

"I think the hardest thing is communication. In every relationship, open communication is key to being able to grow as a couple. Somebody dealing with a chronic issue, especially pain, is going to be more internal than external with their feelings because if they were external all the time it would be mostly about the pain. Nobody wants to feel like they complain too much, so it becomes habitual to internalize the struggle and that habit can project onto other things like asking for help and asking your loved one to change something they’re doing because the pain is overwhelming

So sometimes the way someone with chronic pain communicates is with nonverbal cues and you have to be willing to look for those and act on those as if they’re open communication.

Communication is key to helping each other become better people and that’s fundamental to a long-term relationship. This requires being honest about each other’s flaws/mistakes. That’s hard in any relationship to do in a way that doesn’t make the person feel like it affects your view of them/love for them. But Someone dealing with a chronic issue is typically already thinking about themselves as having flaws and may feel like they don’t deserve to be loved by someone without a chronic issue. So if you point out flaws/mistakes it can make things worse if they’re in a very self-critical mindset already. So you have to understand the time and place for that kind of communication and when it’s just the time to push it down and be a supporter, not a life coach."