h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This posting really helped me not feel like an evil person. I have only been married to my husband for a little over a year and I am already thinking about getting a divorce. My husband had been diagnosed with RA right before we got married and has since be diagnosed with Fibro. It seems like we do not do anything together anymore unless it involves sitting or laying down. I am and have always been an active person and it is hard to be married to someone that just wants to lay down. I feel like I have no outlet to say anything about this because he just gets angry when I talk to him about this. He likes to point out everything that I do that is wrong now and I feel resents me because he can no longer work and I go to work every day.

I love my husband and constantly try to remind myself why I fell in love with him. I know he is going through a tough time, but I feel like I am going through his tough time and my own. If I complain about our issues I feel like I am evil, but not saying anything is just killing me. My friends think he is just lazy and mean and my children love him. The hardest part for me is failing at another relationship. I am trying to be a supportive spouse, but it is getting to be too much for me to handle.

I read this post with interest because I also have a spouse with fibromyalgia. My wife has had some symptoms all along, I think, but in the past 3-4 years the symptoms have considerably worsened to the point where she is now disabled. This has been a tragedy in our lives considering that she had a very successful career and was working on a doctorate degree, all of which has been derailed by the fibromyalgia.

Living with a spouse who has fibromyalgia is very difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing that I have ever done. It has a definite impact on the quality of my own life and certainly the quality of our marriage. At one point, we were even separated, because it was almost more than I could deal with, and I am not even the one with the disease! Since then, I have resolved to keep our marriage together, be supportive, and also to make a point of taking care of myself better. It is so easy to neglect yourself when you have a spouse with a chronic illness.

I don't know if there are any real support groups for spouses of people with fibromyalgia. What I've seen on the Internet is very scattered and sparse, both chronologically and geographically. Considering that there must be many people who have spouses with fibro, this suggests to me that most of us live isolated lives. I would be interested in hearing from other people who are also dealing with this major life challenge.