I’ve been thinking about how in a lot of ways chronic illness is kind of like a marriage. This post isn’t as serious as most of my posts, I wanted to have a bit of fun, and take a light-hearted (tongue-in-cheek) look at how chronic illness is like a marriage.
Sometimes we get stuck in relationships we don’t want to be in. I’m pretty sure that for all of us chronic illness is one relationship we don’t want to be in. Chronic illness isn’t like any marriage we want to be in, chronic illness is like a bad marriage that you can never leave.
It’s for life (in theory) – chronic (by definition) means that you are stuck with it for life. Unlike a real marriage, you can’t leave this marriage with chronic illness. You’re stuck. Although, sometimes (if you’re lucky) you can find ways to make it better.
It requires picking your battles. Living with chronic illness requires balance, and constantly trying to figure out when you should say no, when you should say yes, and when you should just walk away.
It takes work. Just like a relationship or a marriage, it takes work to live with chronic illness. We are constantly having to make choices, make adjustments and learn what will work.
Chances are you will go from dressing up to leave the house, to wearing your pajamas every day. It seems like often in relationships we stop trying to impress. Of course, when it comes to chronic illness we have a whole new reason for staying in our pajamas. Now if all just had a guy like this…
Sometimes it keeps you up at night. I’ve had partners who snore and keep me awake at night. But, just as often it’s my chronic illness that keeps me awake. It’ll wake me up at night to let me know that it ran over me with a mack truck, or smacked me in the head with a frying pan.
Sometimes it leaves you feeling smothered. There are times in every relationship when we just need our space. We’d all like our space from this relationship with chronic illness, but sometimes it seems like the harder we try to get space, the more we get smothered.
Sometimes you just want to throw in the towel and tell it to get out. Granted in most relationship do have the choice to leave, but with chronic illness, we are stuck.
While you don’t want to give up on a relationship, you have no choice in your relationship with chronic illness. We can’t give up. We’ve got to keep going and push through. Hopefully, your relationship treats you better than your chronic illness.
How to Help Your Chronically Ill Friend Feel Worse
Dealing with the “Worse” in “For Better or Worse”
Lennae says
Love your post, I agree that that living with a chronic illness is a lot like marriage too. lol
Lennae xxx
Kayla @ TheEclecticElement says
I personally love when people do these meme and gif posts! They’re so entertaining and they really do punctuate the point you’re trying to get across 🙂
I completely agree with this whole thing! I like the comparison between chronic illness and marriage, too. It’s definitely a new way to look at things and I think it may help non-chronically ill people relate to our situations just a little bit more.
Jo-D says
Your message, as always, is spot on. However, the moving videos, especially the very rapid ones, plus their proximity within your post, messed with my eyes, seemed contradictory to the sensitivities of FMS as they made me want to look away to protect my eye/brain connection (ie, I avert my face if something similar is on TV b/c it can cause me instant confusion and anxiety), and distracted from my ability to concentrate on the great message contained within. It might work if they’re were less images breaking up the text, maybe one or two; or if you used stationary pix with clever captions.
Thanks for asking for feedback- your willingness to do so is appreciated.
Jo-D
Julie says
Jo-D,
Ya know, I’m really glad you commented. What you posted is exactly the reason I’ve avoided trying to do one of these in the past. They are fun but I often find myself having the same issues with posts on other sites that have the animated gifs. They are cute but they can be difficult to look at, especially when there are multiples of them.
Julie