Life as a couple after Breast cancer.

Hi Rugbyguy,

Welcome to the forum and I’m really glad you posted looking for help, although I am really sorry to read about what you are going through.

I am speaking as the patient here so my input might not what you are looking for but it is a topic I have some experience of so I thought I would reply. What I can say is that when I went through treatment, my libido completely disappeared. I still had the same love for my wife, but my interest in a love life (and I am assuming by that you mean physical intimacy?) completely disappeared. And as you will know as a man that makes certain things physically impossible! Thankfully, my libido returned with time, but it made me much more aware of how chemical interactions can really affect the body. It is not that you don’t love the person, it is just that your body just does not want/need a physical love life. Maybe that is where your wife is at? I think you can get support for chemical imbalances if you want to go down that route?

Also, I know the cancer thing can cause a huge loss of trust, confidence and love for one’s own body. Again, I don’t think this means your wife doesn’t love you, it’s just perhaps she doesn’t love herself? Maybe she would benefit from some counseling for that herself?

You could try all the things around hugs, showing love, not putting pressure on, time for just the two of you, etc, but something tells me that you may have tried all of those. So the last thing I would say and it is probably not what you want to hear, is that you may need to properly think about what it means to you if you don’t have a love life with your wife going forward. How important is it to you? Could you live without it? Those might be very difficult questions for you to answer, but they may be worth preparing yourself for as to what that would practically mean for you. Would you still stay or would you need to go elsewhere? That might inform how hard you push to resolve the situation.

This is such an important topic for raising and so I thank you for raising it. Please don’t feel that your problem is trivial, or that you are an idiot/failure - it most certainly isn’t and you most certainly are not. All thoughts/emotions/feelings are valid and important. I hope what I have written is helpful to you and please stick around as I have found this site to be a great support when I have needed it most.

All the best

Greg

Greg

Thank you for the reply, appreciated and thankfully not just condemned for being a man and thinking what men do honestly think about.  Nothing has changed for me yet so carrying on and trying to get my wife to talk about it all.  So many things on her mind that are blocking her progression.

I will try and take some/most of those away from her if I can but she keeps adding to her stresses and seems a shame to stop her. Just got 3 new ducklings to deal with now that's added to home hassles.  Maybe her way of avoiding the us question and using other things to hide away from it.

Thanks anyway

Regards

Mark