How To Keep A Relationship Together When A Disease Disrupts Your Marriage is a post from: Save Your Marriage When Everything Else Fails Try This
When Illness Disrupts Your Marriage
If a family member has been diagnosed with adebilitatingillnessit can have a devastating effect on your marriage.You feel as if your world has been shaken up and torn apart. Your hopes, dreams and aspirations change.
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You change, and your marriage changes. Theillness could be any type of disease, physical or mental. The diagnosis can have a different impact on each spouse. Most couples handle it the wrong way.
Instead of working in a way that brings each other together,they end up tearing each other apart. So, how to keep a relationship unharmed is the question.
Ashley and Andrew’s world was shattered when their son, Austin, was diagnosed withautism. The stress between themhas become unbearable.
They argue all the time. They feel as if they’ve become two different people, and have drifted apart.
Austin’s care falls directly on Ashley, and Andrew’s actions tend to put more stress and strain on her.Andrew works to support the family, sowhen he comes home, he’s exhausted.
But Andrew does not recognize that Ashley’salso exhausted at the end of the day because she’shad to deal with Austin’s schedule.
Andrew willallow Austin to watch TV, sometimes for as long as two hours. As a result, Austin gets off schedule and, at times, hasa complete meltdown, whichAshley has to deal with.
Andrew will also interfere with the Austin’s schedule regularly because he thinks he knows the best way to handle the situation. His ideas only make matters worse, and Ashley ends up spending time dealing with the results.
Recently, they started fighting about money. It was becoming hard for both of them to know how to keep a relationship. Their insurance covers only a small part of the cost of Austin’s medical expenses, and there are certain things that Austin needs that have to comeout of their pockets.
Every year, they spend between $35,000 and $40,000 above their insurance premium. Andrew loves Ashley very much, but feels that his wife doesn’t understand their financial situation.
He feels they cannot keep spending the way they have been, otherwise they’ll be broke.Andrew’s scared to death he’s going to run out of money one day.
Andrew also feels that he cannot talk to Ashley anymore.She worries all the time, and as soon as he says something to try and calm her down, she yells and screams. She does not think that Andrew is paying attentionor taking her or the situationseriously.
Even the strongest marriage can be put to the test
Even the strongest marriage can be put to the test when a family member faces anillness.When the stress gets too high, you reach a breaking point where you stop listening to each other and they reached that point.
They hold fast to their own opinions, and they push each other away.What’s happening here is that they’re added to the problem.Now, not only do they have to deal with raising their son in the best way possible, but they also have to deal with theirdiffering opinions. So they’vecreated two different issues to deal with.
The first thing they need to do is to accept the fact that their son has autism. This was not part of their plan.They are trying to make life normal so that Austin is like every other kid.But their situation isn’t normal.
It’s putting a lot of pressure on them, which is causing them to stress out.Their reality cannot match their expectations, and so they need recognize this andunderstand that they can only do their best. This will help them heal.
Two-step strategy to get your relationship back on track
Here’s a two-step strategy that you can implement to get your relationship back on track when there’s anillness in the family.
1. Dial down your temper. Ifone or both of you have a temper,you need to break that cycle immediately so you can both work toward acommon goal. So the rule is, whenever youhave an issue to discuss,you need to wait 10 minutes before starting the discussion.
This allows the temper to die down, making it easier to openly communicate about the issue.It may sound trivial, but that’s the starting point in order to rebuild your relationship.
2. Change the rules of engagement.You need to discuss one issue at a time. Andrew and Ashley are dealing with Austin, their finances, and how they communicate with each other.
They’re mixing up different issues and,in the process,not making any progresson any of them.Deal with one issue at a time and watch your relationship move in a whole new (and positive) direction.
It’s never easy dealing with anillness because it adds an additional challengeto your marriage. If, however, you can recognize and accept that your life has changed and work toward a common goal, you have a great opportunity for success.
Work together to overcome relationship breakup, on one issue at a time, with love and respect for each other and that is half of the battle.
By Dr. Ellen Kreidman, Ph.D
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