Too often, when someone suffers a traumatic brain injury, lines begin to be drawn, almost immediately.
In a couple where, before the injury, roles were set and power was given from each to the one, there is an imbalance now. A brown-out from one of the power sources.
Many couples find that their dynamic duo suddenly is divided in icky, unhealthy ways: the healthy one and the one who is injured, the one who is getting up and going to work every morning and the one staying home, the one making all the money and the one who cannot, the caretaker and the sick one, the one who can’t tolerate all the prior couple’s activities and routines and demands and the one who misses them…
Imbalance is easily survivable whenever life dumps new demands on one of the pair and the other is left “holding up the fort.” Couples do it all the time. Think of the couple where one is a football coach and s/he works ungodly hours during football season. Or the woman travels for work and her partner “holds down the fort” when she is away on business. There is the pregnant woman. There is the man with the knee replacement. Her Mother gets sick. His company lets him go.
Every couple suffers imbalance at some time or another.
While it is true that an astounding number of couples do not survive a significant brain injury happening to their coupledom, there are ways to blur the new divide and enjoy having both partners move in the same direction.
- Look for the signs-Is your partner getting irritable, impatient, tired of hearing about your brain injury? Is he/she telling you that you should be over it by now? Is he/she rolling eyes or tuning you out? Is he/she staying later at work, going out more without you?
- Has it been a year or more? Are the therapies done? Have your doctors basically run out of things to try to help you improve?
- Has your partner stopped asking about the injury? Has he/she stopped doing the things that helped in the beginning?
Countless couples suffer a destructive plateau when healing stalls and survivors are lost in some kind of la la land where you don’t know how long anything is going to last and you aren’t sure if you should try to work, pursue disability, keep trying other doctors, keep waiting….
If you and your partner are experiencing this very common phase of brain injury damage to your relationship, it’s important to jump on the opportunity to stop the losses and get busy with the saving.
Understand first that your partner has also suffered this injury and he/she is sad and scared and concerned and unsure about what to expect and what to hope for. That is a real component of this injury.
If you haven’t already, begin a dialogue about where you are at and initiate a plan that you can do together that will help alleviate stress and fear and imbalance. The two of you can work together to conserve cognitive fuel each day, giving your household more of your best you by really looking at your everyday routines and working to cut out any chaos or multiple stimuli or unnecessary plans changes and all the other things that steal your cognitive fuel each day. Discuss financial concerns and really figure, together, if you need to scale back your lifestyle, sell the house or new car, or what might reduce financial stress. Talk about how to plug the holes that you once handled in terms of running the kids here and there, taking care of elderly parents or handling the bills. After an injury, you cannot do everything yet and your partner might not be able, or willing, to pick up every slack.
Ask him/her what he/she is missing about your lives from before the injury and start figuring out, together, how to reclaim some of that. Even just hopeful glimpses, hints and bits of before. Go on a date. Stop always talking about the injury and, instead, dive into what he/she is interested in or doing at work. If you used to meet couples at the bar every Thursday, go for an hour. Drive separately so you can come home when need be. If you used to go on mega vacations with all sorts of side trips and extravagant plans, make a quiet weekend at a cabin instead. A tiny piece of gold is still gold.
As time goes by, it’s critical that we start knocking our brain injuries down a few pegs. From a solid number one at the top, we need to start replacing it with those things from our former lives that we don’t want to lose. What is it for you that you can put above brain injury? Your partner? Your kids? Your friends or your dog or cat? Your fun life and your work life?
Brain injury will always take the top spot at the start. It is a commanding, demanding bugger. But, as soon as you can, please start knocking it down the line and down the list. Write down what was most important to you before you were hurt and focus on that each day. How can you invest in each of those priorities, even just a little? How you can you show those people you care and are interested? How can you help them? It may not be as much as you gave before but give a little each day. Make that a priority to help outside of the injury.
Our loved ones will never need us to be perfect. In case you didn’t know, we weren’t perfect before we were hurt. Ha. They don’t even need us to carry everything we did before.
But they need us to be able to join them, enlist them, re-partner with them, teach them, love them and have fun with them. They need us to be part of what’s important to them.
If we lose everything we loved before we got hurt, then the injury wins. Don’t let that happen. Reclaim what you love. Rename what you love as part of your successful recovery. Part of your victory over this injury. Resolving every symptom might not happen but that doesn’t mean you can’t beat this bugger. You can! And a big part of that is by knocking it down a few pegs, giving it less and less time and attention each day, and looking outside to help heal your inside.
You know I am cheering for you. xo