My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and has had chemo treatment, with surgery and more drug treatment to come. All of this has been emotionally tough on us and I've been trying my best to support her (whilst managing the rest of life with kids, work, etc). In many ways she has been absolutely amazing through the whole process, she has been so strong. But... she vents her frustrations at me in a way that I become the enemy somehow. I get told I don't support her emotionally. It seems whatever I do or say is wrong and I end up walking on eggshells. I ask her to explain how she's feeling and open up to me, but I get shut down by being told I won't listen or understand. Perhaps I am not that good at listening and being empathetic, but I think it is more a case of her being scared and frustrated and this being her way of dealing with it. On occasion this has escalated to verbal abuse and I have had to challenge her on it; one time she did actually apologise profusely and tell me she knows she isn't coping with it well. But then it starts again. It's not always like this, it goes through waves of her loving me and hating me.
It's so hard to be pushed away by the person you love. I just want to support her and want her to feel she can turn to me for support. It is making the process so much harder on our relationship. I imagined I would be her shoulder to cry on, but instead I am mostly her emotional punch bag.
She is going in for surgery soon and has asked that I simply drop her at the hospital and leave. She doesn't want me around. This really hurts.
I'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience as a family member or carer and can share any advice. How can I support her better? How can I help our relationship?
Hi Mattt
Welcome to our community, I hope you find it both informative and supportive.
Perhaps a key element I needed to learn in my cancer journey with my wife was that if I wanted to be the best for her that first I needed to sort out my own emotions. Something I found quite helpful was looking at Your feelings when someone has cancer as being able to recognize those emotions and accept them as valid helped me to e a little bit less overwelmed.
I did a living with less stress course with Maggies that really helped me, mainly the issue with appreciating what we have rather than worrying about a future I could not control but could imagine worse that actually happened.
Listening is a really powerful skill but one that can be hard to master, one of the favourite quotes from the welfare officer at work was that listen and silent are anagrams.
<<hugs>>
Steve
