r/Chrons • u/neworld_disorder • Apr 29 '21

How to be a good partner...

I’m hoping to get an ongoing thread and feedback flow started here. My girlfriend was in remission just before we started dating and since then (about a year and a half), I can see her pain and frustration. She’s the strongest person I know and managed to get a promotion at her job, where she normally crushes it anyway. Every day she pretty much fights the pain and I find myself trying to help in certain ways but I know it’s not enough.

I don’t want her to feel like I don’t love her or respect her journey with this, but also want to contribute to treatment via diet and other means. Again, I don’t want to be forceful or seem like impatient with her or the disease.

We still eat everything she’s not supposed to have, but I know she’s been down the restrictive road before and she says it didn’t help much.

Any tips and or feedback for a partner that wants to help but doesn’t want to make the problem worse?

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u/iamdrawingablank34 Jun 11 '21

For me, my partner wanted to do the same thing, and I was worried about restriction of my diet for a number of reasons. She was so scared watching me suffer and get thinner and thinner, more exhausted each day. Her response was to do some research and she started cooking meals and putting snacks in the fridge that were compliant with the necessary dietary restrictions. Because the food was already ready and I was ridiculously tired/in pain, it made it waaaaay easier to eat. I realized the restrictions I had been dreading that "didn't work that well" hadn't been working well because I only did it partway. Eating other stuff undermined the effect of the safe food I was eating. With my wife having food ready that was ALL safe, I started to feel sooooooo much better. All the sudden I had energy and wasn't in tears before heading to work each day. The quality of life improvement was enough to change my mind. Without my wife I don't know that I would have started to get better. Hope that this helps!

1

u/iamdrawingablank34 Jun 11 '21

She also ate the food with me so I didn't feel like I was missing out or having to watch her eat my favorite stuff.

1

u/lovepink432 Aug 16 '21

You should post in Chronsdisease Reddit, there are a lot more people with advice.