Unmet Commitments and the Erosion of Trust

This morning, Ma'ikwe and I woke up together in the same bed for the first time since Oct 15. That was a long stretch without rain. Naturally (given that we're both process wonks) we spent most of our time between eye opening and our first warm beverage discussing our relationship.

This is a tender topic. Ma'ikwe has been struggling with chronic Lyme the past three years, and the trip we are on now (attending a facilitation training in Ohio) is the first one we've taken together since January (other than to see her doctor). While my extensive travel allows me to make the money that supports the marriage, it means that I'm away from Ma'ikwe when she needs help—both domestic and emotional—thereby straining our bonds.

It's a Catch-22 where my attending to one need is inextricably linked to neglecting others. While navigating this dynamic would be hard enough, it's worse than that. We're also facing additional challenges:

o  As she wrestles with long-term debilitation and near-constant muscle and joint ache, it's damn hard for Ma'ikwe to do meaningful work. This limitation translates into an erosion of her self-esteem, and she has found herself starting to resent that I have choices she doesn't (simply because I'm not sick). 

o  Chronic Lyme (as distinct from acute Lyme, which most often can be treated successfully with serious doses of antibiotics if taken soon after onset) can have a profound impact on personality. While some of these changes may be reversible with the restoration of health, we don't know: a) what portion, if any, of what's going of for her now in terms of a shift in how she feels about our partnership is due to the disease; b) whether those feelings will change even if her health returns; or c) whether she will ever recover her health—20% of chronic Lyme patients don't. That's a lot of ifs.

o  Part of what's hard for Ma'ikwe is that she lives in a house that's not finished being built. It happened that the onset of her Lyme symptoms coincided with the start of work on her home at Dancing Rabbit in 2009. While that project is pretty far along, she doesn't yet have running water and that's a hardship that is irrevocably linked for her with my failure to complete the work on her cistern and water system. At the outset of the project I promised to install the plumbing and wiring and the work is still not finished.

Generalizing from this one constant burr in her saddle, her continuing need to haul water has become the poster child for the way I make promises I don't keep, and the way I prioritize other commitments ahead of the ones I make to her. Essentially, Ma'ikwe is questioning why she should stay in a relationship where her basic needs are so little supported by her partner. Ouch!

To be clear, I don't fail on all my commitments, or even most. Yet it's true that I regularly take on more than I can handle. Overfilling my plate means that things are frequently falling on the floor, and Ma'ikwe is tired of seeing her needs trod upon as a casualty of what she considers a character flaw. While there remain good things about our relationship, right now they are under siege. She's wondering if there's any realistic prospect of our manifesting enough time together to repair the damage. 

To her credit, Ma'ikwe is sharing these heavy thoughts and feelings with me while there remains an opportunity to work through them. But, just as with her struggle with Lyme, there's no guarantee of a happy ending: there's only a chance. It's up to us both to make the most if it.

Making Lymeade

Ma'ikwe and I had a heart-to-heart talk this morning about the strain in our partnership. While it's not easy to sort out how much of this is triggered by the onset of Ma'ikwe's struggle with chronic Lyme disease, and how much is revealed by her battle with a long-term debilitating illness, problems are problems however they're revealed.

The pivotal issue we worked on today was my emotional engagement about how her health issues are affecting me. Having witnessed the gradual diminishment of her energy level and how much she needs to focus on recovery, there has been a concomitant reduction in her ability to initiate contact with me, or to inquire about how I'm doing. (To be sure, there is still a substantial amount of sharing that happens spontaneously between us; I'm just reporting a significant drop off in what Ma'ikwe initiates about how I'm doing.)

In my attempts to adapt to this change, I made a parallel cut back on what I initiated about myself, for fear of putting her in a bind about needing to raise her energy to be present for what I'm sharing when she may not have that energy to give. From my perspective I was trying to be sensitive to her energy budget and not invite her into examinations where she'd either be at risk of: a) feeling bad for turning down my invitation; or b) risking exhaustion for rising to the occasion. I didn't want to put that pressure on her.

While that may sound good, my curtailing my sharing has had the consequence of Ma'ikwe not feeling as connected with me. Yuck! While she was right this morning to point out that she's never turned down an invitation to discuss what's happening in the relationship, I have seen her overspend her energy budget and crash afterwards. I've been sacred of encouraging her to do too much, and don't want to be seen as selfish (asking her to place her health at risk to attend to my issues).

Ma'ikwe made it abundantly clear how important it is to her that I not edit what I share with her, as the strength of our relationship is directly proportional to our emotional sharing. In an effort to be kind and appropriate, I was inadvertently starving the connection! Mind you, I was not declining to respond to a direct invitation. Rather I was not initiating in response to Ma'ikwe not initiating. Boy, does this get messy!

When we got past the hurt feelings surrounding this dynamic (it was a bumpy ride) I was able to share what's been going for me—including my fear that she might die on me in the night—and we were able to break through to a much more tender and flowing place. Whew.

Because Ma'ikwe and I don't live together (she's at Dancing Rabbit; I'm at Sandhill Farm, three miles away) we're ever mindful of ways we can interweave our lives. In that regard we've been successful in developing a joint career in process consulting, but the viability of that is challenged by the Lyme disease, which makes it onerous for Maikwe to travel.

In casting about for what she might do instead, she been inspired to focus on Lyme disease patient advocacy. Not finding it easy to get the information or support she craves herself, she's been inspired to develop that for others and it's given her a worthy cause to devote herself to that's within her energy range and doesn't call for travel. Having been dealt a bag of lemons, I love that she's determined to make lemonade. Or this case, Lymeade.

Ma'ikwe admitted today that she's worried that this new calling may lead her away from our marriage (because I don't identify with Lyme, this isn't my calling) but this wasn't a trigger for me. If she ultimately decides she's better off moving away from our partnership—because Lyme advocacy is where she can be most of service in the world and I'm in the way—then she'll be leaving me for the right reasons and I wouldn t want it any other way.

While I fervently hope that won't be what happens, and that we can find a way to stay strong in our partnership even if we're marching to different drumbeats, I am not afraid of the things that are outside my control. It takes all the energy I have to focus on the things that I can influence. My challenge is to stay vulnerable and transparent, and see what happens.

Who knew that partnering could be this hard?



  

On Having a Chronically Ill Partner

My wife, Ma'ikwe, has chronic Lyme disease.

She had been suffering from symptoms (including joint ache, stiffness, fatigue, nausea, and occasional vertigo) for about nine months before receiving a definitive blood test in 2010. After treatment with heavy doses of the antibiotic doxycycline in the fall of that year, she enjoyed about 15 months where her health had rebounded to about 80% of normal. Then the symptoms returned around the first of this year.

Unfortunately, the same antibiotic treatment was not nearly as effective this time around, and she's eight months into trying a bewildering combination of protocols in a determined effort to regain her health. [See We Went to the Doctor and the Doctor Said… from March 24, 2012 for more on the disease and how Ma'ikwe has been treating it. See The Lemon and the Lyme from May 9 for how this has been a strain on our relationship.]

Two mornings ago, we lay in bed and Ma'ikwe was in tears, lamenting that she wasn't getting the support from me she needed. 

As her state of depleted energy has persisted, her patience is wearing thin with her slow, up-and-down progress in battling the illness. This journey is made doubly tough by the need to cope (as best we can) with the record-breaking heat assailing the Midwest this summer. Ma'ikwe is worn out, and she has diminished tolerance for:

My Not Listening Well Enough

This has a number of components. First, I sometimes repeat questions that she's already answered. 

Second, I have a tendency to talk over her when we both want to talk at the same time. 

Third, it's relatively common for me to share a past, related challenging experience of my own (if I have one) when she reports something that's currently being hard for her. While I think I'm bridging to her reality, she experiences it as my hijacking the conversation. Instead of continuing to be present for what's going on for her, she feels I'm turning her distress into (another) occasion to talk about me. Not good.

Fourth, our styles of sharing are different. While I like to walk through what's been on my mind since we've last shared, in a stream of consciousness monologue that jumbles together the trivial with the momentous; the humorous with the vexing in an unedited litany, Ma'ikwe prefers to be drawn out and then listened to without interruption. If I ask questions (in an attempt to better understand a thread), she often feels knocked off center and disrespected. In short, Ma'ikwe offers me what she wants in return and then feels cheated when I don't track her stories accurately enough or quietly enough.

While none of these communication issues is peculiar to our marriage, they add to the challenge of our successfully weathering the Lyme siege.

Right now, it mostly needs to be about Ma'ikwe and my challenge is to adapt better to what works best for her. It's not about what's fair or balanced; it's about what's possible and needed to get through a hard time—with each giving in proportion to what they can.

My Not Bringing Things Up

While Ma'ikwe ordinarily appreciates my being willing to talk about what's bothering me, it's hard for me to know when she has sufficient energy to hang in there with me when I'm churning about something in our relationship. How fair is it for me to ask my sick partner to listen to my lamenting about what's hard for me?

While I'm convinced that some of the time I should do this anyway (picking my spots for when her energy seems most able to handle it), it is damn hard to sort out. There are many days when it appears that it's all Ma'ikwe can handle to just hold her own life together, and I am loath to burden her with my concerns as well. Instead, it seems prudent (or at least humane) to just put such concerns on hold and wait until her constitution has been restored to something far more robust before bringing up relationship issues.

Unfortunately, this leads to her bringing up hard stuff far more than I, and that, understandably, pisses her off as well.

My Touching Her in Irritating Ways

While cuddling and touch have been an important part of the vocabulary of our intimacy throughout the seven years we've been together, it's much trickier these days. Ma'ikwe suffers from fibromyalgia-like symptoms and even light touch can be painful. Usually my touching her back is pleasurable for her, but not always. Now, sadly, something that we used to look forward to very much has become uncertain, and we touch much less.

• • •

Hardest of all, we don't know how long we'll have to hang in there before things will get significantly better. We don't know if Ma'ikwe will ever fully recover or if it will again be OK for me to touch her casually and we'll both enjoy it. I have a much deeper respect these days for that portion of traditional marriage vows that goes "… for better and worse."