Navigating Relationships with a Chronic Illness

I’m going to do my best to keep this piece as objective as possible for what I would imagine are pretty obvious reasons.

Navigating your first relationship(s) as a young person is a challenging rite of passage I’m sure many of us know all too well. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I know everything there is to know about relationships because that is far from the truth, however, I have picked up on a few nuggets of knowledge in regard to having a relationship with an individual such as myself. (This is also not supposed to be a “how to guide” for any potential future boyfriends).

Firstly, I’m sure it’s fairly obvious that there’s another layer of complexity when one partner has additional needs that intervene and influence daily life. I wholeheartedly believe that it takes a special type of person to enter a relationship such as this, one where they are aware of the circumstances and risks they are taking by choosing to share this life.

There are so many aspects of this (personal experiences of mine included below):

• Annoyances as basic as bed-bound days or breathless walks

• Hospital trip after hospital trip (planned or not, day or night)

• Taking it upon themselves to memorise and understand the information leaflet of every single medication in the cupboard just to remind you of which foods can’t be eaten or which side effects might be a result of what

• Providing basic care when their partner is too unwell to do it themselves (very little dignity in these situations)

• The psychological impacts initially on the individual and then the partner

• The potential deterioration as the years goes on and the increased responsibility

• The notion of having children

• And although everyone around me HATES when I joke about life expectancy, that is a huge factor to contemplate and for someone to willing open themselves up to that kind of pain and stress is tremendously admirable

However, this is an excellent method of screening men. I’m not a sadistic person but I do enjoy just dropping little hints of the CF life to any man that I hang around just to gage on their reaction. If the reaction is nervy then you don’t want to put the poor chap through anything more than that, if it’s insensitive, then perhaps they're just not quite mature enough to deal with it and are simply, not the right fit and if it’s just flat out offensive then they were clearly an arse to begin with and wouldn’t be worth going near anyway. Although saying this, I do have time for a tasteful bit of humour regarding the whole thing, because if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. And if they're comfortable enough to make a joke, then it's a safe to assume that they're comfortable with the entire thing.

A couple of years ago, I was talking to a boy (who shall remain nameless) and we were only talking, it was nothing that would’ve hurt if it had ended. I had a hospital appointment one day that hadn’t quite gone in my favour, they probably said I’d need to be admitted again or some such. Whatever it was, as you can imagine, I wasn’t in the best of moods, needed to cry, needed to rant but nobody was in when I came home so I took a risk and decided to text this boy EVERYTHING that had happened in leu of a family member.

At the time I considered it a terrible mistake because he read and ignored me for at least two days. Because of this, I considered myself an absolute failure, I figured that because this one boy couldn’t quite handle the news, whether that was because he was utterly repulsed or was unable to articulate an appropriate response (in hindsight it was most likely the latter), it meant I was void of worthiness. So long story short, I was a disaster, cried because I’d convinced myself that I was going to die alone and was completely unlovable as a result of my damn genetics. And of course, if you know me, you'll know that crying is my default response to almost everything. I went back to the hospital the following week and just broke in front of one of the physios wailing “I’m never going to find anyone”, sparing little thought for the fact that I hadn’t even left our village and hadn’t met a fraction of the people I’m going to meet in my life. It's all round dreadfully embarrassing I know.

In hindsight, now with three years more experience, still not loads in the grand scheme of things but nevertheless, it was harsh to expect anything more than radio silence from a guy who had barely got out of school.

I don’t think I carry this constant anxiety of being rejected every time I interact with men because my attitude is why should I even give them the time of day if they can’t handle me and all my baggage... however, it still dwindles in my mind that there will be NOBODY willing to take it on board. In fact, I often present it very swiftly to drive boys away and give them an opportunity to leave (I hadn’t even realised I did that until late night conversations with friends).

I should say that of course I have had boyfriends who were never afraid of my CF, if anything it’s added to the relationship so I shouldn’t worry but you can’t always drop the irrational thoughts.

To wrap this horribly soppy blog up, although I wear my CF like an absolute bloody boss, I still use it as a shitty stick to keep men away and when it doesn’t work, I’m riddled with anxiety over whether they’ll bugger off for that reason or another. It’s an exhausting battle in my head and one I’m yet to conquer. I'm also aware that I could have just woken up everyone who previously would've been game for a relationship with someone with additional needs to all the negatives and sub-consequently put them off the feat for life.