Waving to angels
C and I both have some complicated mental health issues, and C also has chronic pain and fatigue and some minor-but-real problems with mobility. As a result, our relationship is pretty balanced when it comes to things like "How much emotional support do you give?" and "How much input do you get into decisions?", but it's often way out of balance on things like "How many hours of labor do you put in a day?" For a long time C was carrying my ass: she was the one with a real job, and I was in school but so depressed that I couldn't do much more than tread water. And then things evened out, and over the past few years the pendulum's been swinging in the other direction, and right now I'm working and doing a good chunk of the housework and C is unemployed.
This is hopefully temporary, but there's some reasons why it might end up having to last for a while. Because of health stuff there's a lot of constraints on what kind of job C can take. We hope her health will get better, but I want to be prepared in case it gets worse. So I'm kind of taking the attitude that this is how it's going to be for the next however long, and if things even out again it will be a pleasant surprise.
Anyway, I've felt a bunch of ways about all this. Over the spring and summer I was honestly pretty angry and frustrated about the situation, and it's only recently that I've started to feel like "Well, okay, this is what it is, let's figure out how to make it work." It's possible for two people to live on what I earn, but it's not the easiest thing in Boston, especially since we also can't really do roommates. We'll likely end up moving to $WESTERN_SUBURB (Framingham?), and we may eventually pack up for another city entirely, which is kind of tough because I have a lot of friends and community in Boston proper and points north.
I've been trying to push myself to talk more about the situation with friends and family. For a long time C and I were in the habit of covering for each other when it came to mental health stuff, and my gut reaction is still to hide what's going on. We're actually very fortunate to have a community here where lots of people have health constraints of all sorts of different kinds, and people have ended up being super understanding - including people like my dad who I would have expected to be weird and shitty about it. It's nice not feeling like I have to shoulder the whole burden myself.
Something that I've realized is bugging me really quite a lot about the whole thing, though, is how few cultural models there are for the kind of relationship we have right now. I was raised in a situation where the One True Relationship Ideal was high-functioning able-bodied egalitarianism: everyone has a career, and everyone does an equal share of the housework. Well, we're not doing that. But we're also not doing That Other Relationship Ideal where some people are breadwinners and some people are fancy-pants high-end homemakers. And there's a lot of cultural messaging that says that if you're not doing one of those things, Something Is Wrong: someone's getting taken advantage of, or getting away with something, or not pulling their weight, or whatever.
For a while I've occasionally talked about myself as "supporting a disabled partner," because that's a way of describing the situation (and the real, important constraints and stresses it puts us under) without making it sound abusive or dysfunctional. It's not really accurate, is the thing. Like, to start with, C doesn't consider herself disabled. But also, describing it that way obscures all the ways that C is a caretaker for me rather than vice versa: her mental health stuff may make it harder for her to work, but mine is scarier and more dangerous and more likely to kill me, and she puts a lot of emotional labor into keeping me on an even keel and helping me stay safe, even if I'm doing more of the sort of work you can measure on a clock. And so like obviously disability isn't binary but we still both feel a little weird about that way of framing things.
I don't think there's a conclusion here. It's just super frustrating having to improvise on this stuff, and having no role models and no good way of explaining the situation to acquaintances. I know I've got some friends out there who've been on one end or the other of this sort of situation before, and I'd love to hear any advice you might have.
This is hopefully temporary, but there's some reasons why it might end up having to last for a while. Because of health stuff there's a lot of constraints on what kind of job C can take. We hope her health will get better, but I want to be prepared in case it gets worse. So I'm kind of taking the attitude that this is how it's going to be for the next however long, and if things even out again it will be a pleasant surprise.
Anyway, I've felt a bunch of ways about all this. Over the spring and summer I was honestly pretty angry and frustrated about the situation, and it's only recently that I've started to feel like "Well, okay, this is what it is, let's figure out how to make it work." It's possible for two people to live on what I earn, but it's not the easiest thing in Boston, especially since we also can't really do roommates. We'll likely end up moving to $WESTERN_SUBURB (Framingham?), and we may eventually pack up for another city entirely, which is kind of tough because I have a lot of friends and community in Boston proper and points north.
I've been trying to push myself to talk more about the situation with friends and family. For a long time C and I were in the habit of covering for each other when it came to mental health stuff, and my gut reaction is still to hide what's going on. We're actually very fortunate to have a community here where lots of people have health constraints of all sorts of different kinds, and people have ended up being super understanding - including people like my dad who I would have expected to be weird and shitty about it. It's nice not feeling like I have to shoulder the whole burden myself.
Something that I've realized is bugging me really quite a lot about the whole thing, though, is how few cultural models there are for the kind of relationship we have right now. I was raised in a situation where the One True Relationship Ideal was high-functioning able-bodied egalitarianism: everyone has a career, and everyone does an equal share of the housework. Well, we're not doing that. But we're also not doing That Other Relationship Ideal where some people are breadwinners and some people are fancy-pants high-end homemakers. And there's a lot of cultural messaging that says that if you're not doing one of those things, Something Is Wrong: someone's getting taken advantage of, or getting away with something, or not pulling their weight, or whatever.
For a while I've occasionally talked about myself as "supporting a disabled partner," because that's a way of describing the situation (and the real, important constraints and stresses it puts us under) without making it sound abusive or dysfunctional. It's not really accurate, is the thing. Like, to start with, C doesn't consider herself disabled. But also, describing it that way obscures all the ways that C is a caretaker for me rather than vice versa: her mental health stuff may make it harder for her to work, but mine is scarier and more dangerous and more likely to kill me, and she puts a lot of emotional labor into keeping me on an even keel and helping me stay safe, even if I'm doing more of the sort of work you can measure on a clock. And so like obviously disability isn't binary but we still both feel a little weird about that way of framing things.
I don't think there's a conclusion here. It's just super frustrating having to improvise on this stuff, and having no role models and no good way of explaining the situation to acquaintances. I know I've got some friends out there who've been on one end or the other of this sort of situation before, and I'd love to hear any advice you might have.