Hi Puma,
You sound just like me. Pain has been the third person in our relationship for 27 out of the 28 years we have been together. I have always tried to protect him. He is beyond wonderful, beyond supportive, beyond compassionate and he would fly to the moon if it could help ease my pain. Even though I know all of this, I have always tried to keep the pain to myself as much as possible
I do talk about it when there is a need. Like Shadowbox & FredFriend shared, I know he needs to know especially if it is new pain or if it has become that extreme overwhelming kind of pain. You know the kind where we know we are in the kind of mood that we are not so much fun to be around, grumpy, angry, scared all those feelings we go through when our pain levels increase.
Our guys sound so much alike, he can take one look at me and tell when my pain is bad and he can tell when I am not telling him the full story when he asks how I am doing. I know all this and I still will say things like, No, really I am okay or it isn’t anything I cannot handle.
He also knows I am lying to him but for the most part he rarely calls me out on it. He will patiently step off to the side and let me do what I need to do to try to ease the pain. If he see’s nothing is working then he will step in and say something like, “are you ready to tell me what is going on and how bad the pain really is, so we can work on this together?”
Over the last year, my pain levels has taken a severe nose dive. In all the years I have been dealing with increasing amounts of pain over the years, never have I had a year like the last one. It seems like the pain increased daily and just kept on climbing. I shielded him from most of it, (it helps that he works out of state thru the week) but still he can tell when he is home that things are different. It wasn’t until after the holidays that I finally broke down and told him how bad things have gotten. That things I could do 6 months ago, I am having difficulty doing now. He knew that I was shielding him and while he adores the fact that I want to protect him, he was upset that I was worried/scared to share with him just how bad things had gotten.
He said to me, ” how can I help you, support you and be there for you, if you are always trying to protect me?” He then said the one thing I have known through out all of this but kept pushing aside, he said, “we have made it through this 27 year pain journey by working together, we made it through it by always communicating honestly with each other, we made it through it hand in hand. I have never, ever even had the thought of not wanting to continue to support you no matter how many potholes the pain put in the road and if the pain is going to start throwing boulders in the road it had better bring some back up, cause I am not going anywhere and we will make it through this together.”
Talk to him, I bet you hear pretty much the same things I heard.
Take care,
Noki4