How many of you feel your marriage has been damaged?
I think its a contributed to my divorce
A marriage is supposed to be honored though out sickness and health , good times and bad but unfortunately we don't always get to see our spouses/partners true ability to handle the bad before we commit to them. I've be with my now official domestic partner"for 5 1/2 years, when I started getting seriously sick all of a sudden 2 years ago he was supportive but as time went on i was getting wrose and thus had to try several different medications... With that came my mood swings and emotional side effects , thats when our relationship suffered. He would tell me I was being a bitch (I was lol) then I would yell at him then cry fo hours!it was totally not me:/ the worst part of the fighting is I made me even more sick and my breathing so labored and painful. Ive always be great at communicating my feelings so to have him completely miss the point constantly was unbelievably frustrating and disappointing! After months of this endless cycle he finally under stood how chemically altered and emotionally fragile id become by having a heart to heart with me and my orthopedic dr, great dr and person! It took a 3rd party to present my situation and feelings to him ...my dr was saying all the things I had so many times before but I guess it didn't sound like "bitching" coming from him. Im much wrose now, fighting its an option anymore so he had to learn to be more patient and understanding and I try to not punish my loved ones with mood swings.I know for sure my ex husband , daughters father wouldn't have supported me or stuck around to take care of me.
Didn't realize I was physically I'll. Chalked up symptoms to perimenopause or depression. He thought I was lazy. And his "friend" had him convinced I was looking for attention. Or I even enjoyed the sympathy. Couldn't sit by pool, couldn't do a lot of outdoor stuff. He thought I made excuses not to do stuff with him. Fast forward diagnosis is piecing things together. I wish I could say to him and his good friend, now his wife, I wasn't lazy, I was sick! What's your excuse!
Hmmm…this is a big issue for me right now. I feel like my marriage is falling apart. Aside from my illness, we had to deal with my daughters heroin addiction and borderline personality disorder. The past few years have been absolute hell. Right now, we are just like room mates. It breaks my heart because we have been together for 18 yrs. it just feels empty. We just go about our separate business and I don’t know how to get it back.
Jend719 19yrs of marriage. Teenage ddaughter,borderline personality / bipolar. The stress with the illness
And I was not diagnosed. Communication communication. I regret so much.
I was sick and easily irritated plus can’t go out on a sunny day. I made it easy for her…
Lupus does affect marriage & relations. A lot of men have trouble dealing with chronic illness in their wives. They expect them to carry on with work, children & household chores & when they can’t they get aggravated. Some men can’t deal with sickness @ all. The divorce rate is higher in Lupus pt’s. I’ve been married for 26 yrs, diagnosed with Lupus when my son was 3. My husband has not been very supportive, especially when I had to quit my job. We definitely have had our moments. I believe if we didn’t have my son I wouldn’t be married.
Definitely! My husband's family values your ability to work above everything. Everything. If you can't work, you are either lazy or useless or both. Since my husband doesn't believe I'm really that sick (YES, he told our therapist he doesn't believe it!), he now thinks I'm just lazy and useless. He is constantly short with both me and our son, bordering on nasty most of the time. His friends have commented on it and one even told him he thinks my husband hates my son. I can't get a divorce because I was STUPID enough to sign a prenup and without his income I would probably wind up in a homeless shelter. I've been a SAHM for so very long and became disabled years ago but never considered filing for disability. Now I don't have enough credits to qualify for disability, so if I left and I wasn't granted spousal support with insurance supplied, I will be destitute and homeless.
Oh hell yes, it has contributed to the downfall of my marriage...the thing I hate most about Lupus.
I've been very blessed...my husband has really stuck beside me, supported me and helps me. There are days that are tougher for him than others...especially when this all began 3 years ago...and I still fear that he will eventually give up and walk away. That's my own insecurity though and not because of anything he has ever said or done. Our marriage is very different than before this started, but after 20 years, I can honestly say I love him more than I ever have. I wish for everyone there were more husbands/wives like that...those who supported through thick and thin and who gave 100% all of the time.
I found out he remarried because his new wife sent the pic to my phone. He was my best friend. He suffers from bipolar so we always knew struggle. It became hard for him to focus on helping me. Especially if he though I milked it. Outside influences didn’t help. Now he can only help me with her by his side. He remarried just over 1 month ago. 1 month after he tried to move us closer again just to help me. I’ve struggle to get out of bed every day. I struggle to forgive. If only so I can heal. Older children not too much help. They got their own issues. Wow u guys get it
Wow, I['m so, so sorry. Jerk doesn't even being to describe him, but I'm glad you got out. <3
Ann A. said:
I know that having lupus contributed to my divorce.
I gave birth to my second child in March of 1973. In June of the same year I earned my BA. The only jobs that I was offered were the same kind of low pay long hour jobs that I had been working without a degree. When the cost of paying a baby sitter was factored in along with car fare, clothes, and other incidentals it did not make any sense for me to work.
My husband hated that. He wanted me working. Then I was offered a fellowship to attend graduate school. The fellowship paid more than the jobs and opened the door to a brighter future. But between grad school, two kids, and an unsupportive husband, my lupus symptoms increased in both frequency and severity.
I looked at the pluses and minuses of everything in my life and I realized that the biggest drain on my energy was my husband. He was like a black hole. He sucked energy out of me but he never gave any back. Being with him was like having three children; but one of my three children, in addition to outweighing me by a hundred pounds, never listened to anything that I had to say, offered me no help around the house, no help with the children, no emotional support, humiliated me in front of my colleagues, and ruined my credit with his poor financial decisions. There were like 10-15 last straws that broke this camel's back. Here are just a couple of example.
It's Chicago in the winter time. I have to take clothes to the laundromat to wash them. I am pulling clothes down icy snow covered streets while he is at home on the couch asleep. I ask him to watch the baby while I walk to the supermarket pulling that same cart. When I get back the baby is on the first floor with the landlord who found her on the front porch wearing nothing but a really soggy diaper. The baby has gone into the pantry and found my supply of light bulbs and had great fun breaking them while barefooted. Her Dad is asleep on the couch.
I asked him "Did you at least feed her?" His reply was, "She didn't say she was hungry." He had eaten three times while I was out but it never occurred to him that if he was hungry so was the baby.
I asked him to keep the kids while I went to a party with my classmates after our statistics exam. By the time I got home at 8:00pm he had called everyone in my Rolodex asking if they knew where I was and accusing me of having an affair with one of my classmates. He was the adulterer not me.
At some point I knew that in order to survive, I would have to leave him. So, I did.
My health improved. His declined. Six months after I left he was calling constantly explaining that he had developed bursitis and now he understood how a person could feel fine at one point in a day and be wiped out in another. But my heart was already broken and as a student of human behavior I knew that he would never change. It was not in his nature to be empathetic, supportive, or faithful. He died a few years ago but not before leaving a second wife in a similar predicament. Thank goodness she is healthy and my children's much younger half siblings are also doing okay.
Yeah lupus contributed to my divorce - but the vows said - "in sickness and in health." So, I do not blame lupus, I blame my ex-husband for expecting me to respect the vows while he ignored them. He was a selfish, self-centered, narcissistic man who used my illness to try and beat me down and then turned around and the same thing to a healthy woman. Lupus simply brought his nature into bold relief and forced me to make a choice - stay in a marriage that was clearly damaging both my physical and emotional health or leave. Without lupus I would have stayed, longer but I would not have been able to stay forever. Sometimes when the marriage vows have been broken you can't put the marriage back together again.