The “Cruel Radiance of What Is”: Helping Couples Live With Chronic Illness

Abstract

The threat of no longer being the person one wants to be hovers over each ill person and plays out relationally. The dynamic interplay of this experience of self-loss and other-loss (Roos, 2002; Weingarten, 2012) has a significant impact on couples, both of whom may come to have both experiences. In this article, I focus on the couples' experience of self- and other-loss in the context of chronic illness, in which one person's experience flows into and informs the other's. In particular, I describe how asymmetric acknowledgment of self-loss and other-loss adds to the misery of couples who are already challenged by poor health. Physical pain also makes dealing with self- and other-loss harder. Therapists can serve couples better if they take a fully collaborative stance; appreciate the dilemmas of witnessing; help couples distinguish new trauma from retraumatization and fear; work with the weaver's dilemma and the boatman's plight (Weingarten, 2012); and are comfortable with discussion of end of life issues.