Group Therapy is a relationship advice column that asks readers to contribute their wisdom. Each week, we offer up a problem for you to weigh in on, then publish the most lively responses, with a final word on the matter delivered by our columnist, Claudia Dey.
A reader writes: For six years I have loved a man whose wife suffered a surgical accident 13 years ago and was left completely dependent, physically handicapped and with profound dementia. He has looked after her at home since then. For the past three years I have lived with him and shared the task of her care. In the past few months we have had a few hours a week of in-home care for her.
Our attachment has been well accepted by our families and friends. However, I find it increasingly difficult to be her caregiver. I don't know if my resentment of her neediness and the prominent place she has in our daily lives is reasonable. I take frequent breaks to visit my children, but he rarely gets away, although occasionally we have put his wife in respite care to take brief holidays together.
He is understanding of my difficulties. Should I count my blessings that I have a wonderful man and work harder to deal with my emotional fatigue and resentment? Is it reasonable or moral to consider putting her in a nursing home and living a more conventional life? I am in my early 50s and my companion is a decade older.
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Morally out of bounds
Any decision about putting his wife in a nursing home belongs entirely to the husband. He is the one who, many years ago, vowed to love and to cherish her in sickness and in health until death. You have no legal or moral say in the matter.
He may be sympathetic to your feelings, but he is not uncomfortable enough to make any changes in arrangements. If you can't accept the reality of the situation, you'd better leave, and get on with your own life.
- Carolyn Tytler
St. Catharines, Ont.
Quality of life for all
I've learned from watching my mother be my father's primary caregiver that there has to be a time when the survivor has a life too. Your partner's wife did not ask for her circumstances; he didn't either. He shouldn't have to live his life like he was part of that surgical accident, too. Quality of life is important for both of you.
Take time to find the right home for her, one where you can be assured she will get the high level of care you have both been committed to giving her. Rely on the support the family has already shown to help you through a difficult time.
- Catherine Gapp
Markham, Ont.
Don't rock the boat
If you start advocating now that the wife go into a nursing home, the husband and children will demonize you.
The level of care a person like this needs can be well met in a nursing home or care facility designed for them. My mother is in such a facility and all of my family is grateful that she is getting the care she needs.
The man sounds like a knight in shining armour and, unless your long talks into the night can gently persuade him to make the nursing home move, you don't have a hope
of making it happen. If you are feeling resentment, you need to distance yourself from the situation.
- Vi Sandford, Canmore, Alta.
The Final Word
Dear Nursemaid,
Your situation is as tender as the woman you are caring for. As such, it requires a gentle yet deft approach.
Love never arrives unencumbered. Your lot is particularly demanding. The man you love is clearly a committed sort - if not a saint worthy of a halo and a national holiday.
Despite the intimacy and, six years in, the endurance of your relationship, the decision to change the conditions of his wife's care is solely his to make.
Though I do not draw as hard a line as Moral and Ethical Tytler, and do not wish to echo her pulpit-like tone, I do agree that at this graduated point in his marriage, he must know that if he finds himself wheeling his wife up a ramp, through automatic doors and into a nursing home, he was never pressed or prodded into that choice.
The decision is entirely his own to make, with his wife's interests at heart.
This does not mean that you must remain closed-mouthed. Every relationship demands transparency or it risks being buckled by what is left unspoken. Resentment is particularly insidious and too threatening an emotion to bury. In clear and grounded language, tell him your thoughts; after three years of living together, you would like to discuss and consider the possibility of moving his wife's care out of the home.
As High Level of Care Gapp reinforces, you already have the crucial support of friends and family to help you through a transition - should he agree that one is fitting. If he does not, and you are determined to stay with him, compromise. Continue to enlist in-home care, take holidays and visit your children. That said, take your own temperature regularly, and should your resentment persist, treat appropriately.
I disagree with Demonize You Sandford. This is not a time for creating distance. It is a time for the opposite: conscious closeness and delicate attention. Your fatigue is understandable and you may be surprised, when presented with the question of options, how your paramour responds. Nursemaid, you may simply be the first to articulate a difficult truth.
Share your advice, or ask for someone else's
Click here to read next week's question and contribute your widsom - or to submit your own dilemma. (We will not publish your name if you submit a personal dilemma for the print column.)
Claudia Dey's plays, Beaver,
The Gwendolyn Poems and Trout Stanley, have been staged across Canada. Coach House Books just published her first novel, Stunt. Her website is ClaudiaDey.com
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