Handling Health Challenges in a Marriage

Today we look at an analogy of hiking with an uncomfortable shoe and how it relates to being in a marriage while experiencing a health challenge. Watch the show here.

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Take Aways

•  A health challenge can throw a wrench in so many areas of a marriage that it can cause the marriage to want to collapse and decay. 
• Bad stuff is going to happen sometimes.
• Hiking analogy. 
• How does having an uncomfortable shoe affect the experience would have on a hike? 
• Just as an uncomfortable shoe lessens the overall good and amplifies any bad of a hiking experience, a health challenge can lessen the overall good and amplify the bad of your marriage experiences.
• Specific guidance on what to do: 

1. Recognize when this is happening...the NON-rose colored glasses of illness are shaping the view you have of your marriage.
2. Talk with your spouse. Share concerns about how this illness is affecting your thoughts about your marriage.
3. Apologize for actions you take that are not in-line with who you want to be. Actions taken from annoyance/discomfort/anger (even if it's because of your health challenge).
4. Listen to your spouse's concerns and ideas. Together, look for ideas to improve your marriage during this difficult time.
5. Do enjoyable things together!
6. Take pictures during good times. Print them and display them in your home where you will see them often.
7. Give and receive grace and compassion. 
8. Give compliments to your spouse.
9. Recognize the good they do and tell them verbally (out loud) that you appreciate it. Be specific when possible.
10. Hug and hold one another.
11. Bite your tongue when you want to say something mean or want to challenge a compliment they've given you.

• This is your challenge right now, but they may go through a health challenge later. Your child may go through one later. Gaining skills to handle this challenge will bless you and your family now and maybe later too. 

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Music 

• Music- Island Breeze by Surf House Productions |...

Transcript

Handling Health Challenges In a Marriage

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five and PMDD Survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered health advice.

 We're gonna be talking about our health and how it affects our relationships and how to handle health challenges in a marriage specifically. You can apply this to business relationships, the relationship you have with yourself, um, friendships. But I specifically wanna hit on helping in a marriage when we're having these health challenges.

If you are new to the podcast, I am Heidi and I help women feel better. We focus [00:01:00] on whole person healing . Really getting to a place of peace. If you wanna work with me please go to the podcast notes, and, you can schedule a call with me. 

 this topic of health challenges affecting our relationships has been on my heart to talk about since the beginning of the year, maybe even end of 2025. I think it's really on my heart because my heart breaks for women. Who are having health struggles that then lead to it making their marriage harder. Some of the time these women are in abusive marriage marriages, bad situations, and other times it's really a decent marriage. But then this health thing is just throwing a wrench in so many areas of the marriage that it's causing the marriage to want to collapse and decay.

I also have such a love for the institution of marriage. When it's done right, [00:02:00] it is incredible. We've got a man and a woman and they're coming together and they have different strengths and different weaknesses, and together they can conquer so much that's thrown at them. It would be harder to tackle alone. I feel like marriage gets a bad rap because of this person's situation and this experience that they had. But overall. I think it is a really good thing when there is understanding, when there is a basis of love and respect for one another. And then if you have a spiritual foundation, like a faith in God, and a creator. Any of foundational things, values or beliefs.

Can really make this marriage really strong. But not even just that, that in the journey and all of the stuff that comes at you, you can actually enjoy it. You can weather the storms, you can be [00:03:00] okay.

I'm so grateful for my husband and he has helped me through my personal struggles. And then together we've helped each other through the bad stuff that's happened to us. And bad stuff is gonna happen. That is part of our experience on the earth and this very short time that we get in mortality, bad things are going to happen.

It breaks my heart to see so many marriages end because of the extra stress and hard things that are added because of health struggles.

I want to share an analogy.

Let's imagine that you're gonna go for a hike. You're going with a group of people. Or let's say if you're thinking of your marriage, it's you and your husband going on this hike. You have prepared. [00:04:00] You have the right shoes. You know how many miles this hike is gonna be. You have the right clothing and maybe you have a guide. Maybe it's a, a paper guide that you're taking with you, or maybe it's an actual person that's this guide for you on this hike. And, you know, going into it, something's probably gonna go wrong.

And then on this hike, while you do encounter some difficulties. One other thing happens. One of your shoes gets really uncomfortable. It doesn't even matter what creates it, right?

Like we could say, uh, you get a rock in your shoe and so you have to keep stopping to get out the rock, and it just keeps happening over and over again. Or maybe it's that [00:05:00] there's just a, a part on your foot that it's rubbing and it's just bothering you again and again. Think about how this would affect your hike and the experience you have on this hike.

Maybe even what you tell people after the hike about the height. You adjust it, right? If it was a rock, you dump it out. And you keep on going. But think about that for a minute. How does that uncomfortable shoe affect this hike and this experience? Excuse me.

Now, maybe you can already see it, but I wanna parallel this with your marriage. You prepared for marrying this person that you've chosen to walk beside you in this life, and maybe even for forever.

[00:06:00] Whether you think you were ill prepared or well prepared, okay? Whatever it was you prepared in some ways. You also had somewhat of a plan. Maybe that plan was based on the love I have for this person. I'm willing to go through whatever obstacles come. Or maybe it was a very, uh, specific plan. Maybe financial details. That in three years we're gonna buy a house. We're saving up. We're doing these years of school, and then dot, dot, dot. Maybe it was really detailed.

Either way, you're in this marriage and things happen that you expected. You expected to have some things not go how you wanted them to go. But then you have this thing that happens. It's like that shoe just being [00:07:00] uncomfortable. You're going along, you're going along, and then ah, just this discomfort. That can be a health challenge.

And that health challenge, whatever it is, maybe you are living with a premenstrual disorder. Maybe you found out you can't have kids. Maybe you're extremely tired all of the time and it's affecting a lot of areas of your life. But while it's affecting all of these areas of your life it also may just seem like this discomfort, this rock in your shoe. If it does, we are likely to kind of put it off that it matters. At other times we might get really dedicated and desperate to solve it.

There may be times that that rock has just created a really bad blister and you're like, I'm doing nothing but taking care of this blister. And there may be [00:08:00] times with your health challenge that you are like, "I'm doing nothing except figuring this out. I'm gonna take two months, three months, whatever it takes. I'm gonna go to every doctor, every specialist. Um, I'll follow their protocols with vitamins and supplements or medicine." We may do that and yet the bigger picture is we have this marriage that needs protecting. This marriage that needs to be able to still exist and be okay. It doesn't have to thrive and have fireworks all of the time, but it needs to be okay even while we experience a health challenge.

I'm not telling you that it's easy, but I wanna just give you this example so that when you recognize those actions you're taking from the [00:09:00] discomfort of your bad health that you can recognize that's what's going on, not that the marriage is bad necessarily. Or that you need to change something in your marriage.

Oh, I just noticed you can see my, um, little curtain holder thingy. That's what it is. If you're wondering.

Anyway, so thinking back to that hiking experience while you're on the hike, some things that might happen are that you just won't enjoy the hike as much with that uncomfortable shoe. You might want it to end sooner. " This is just getting so annoying." You might wanna take more stops. It might be harder to see the beauty. To enjoy the fresh air. To take in this gorgeous panorama that's in front of you.

I've distilled this down to two [00:10:00] things that might happen. One is that all of the good that's happening on this hike is lessened. It's dampened. And all of the bad is amplified or made worse.

So if you have this uncomfortable shoe, and then, um. You go to get your sandwiches and you forgot to put the jam on the peanut butter sandwiches, that's gonna be a little worse, or potentially could be affected because of the discomfort you're already having with the shoe. This can happen with your marriage too.

You might have an amazing and an incredible marriage, a great relationship with your spouse, and this. Illness, this health hardship that you're going through is putting on a, a different set of glasses that's telling you, "our marriage is awful. We need to [00:11:00] end this thing. There's nothing good here anymore.

All of the good that's happening in your marriage. Your husband buying you flowers. That trip you took and you had an amazing time. Now in the rear view mirror, it's just like, "oh yeah, we did that thing." And you're forgetting you're not basking in the good that was there, that the memory of it. Let me turn my page of notes.

I really wanna give you kind of that feeling. I know maybe that's not, um, some direct counsel, but I, I really want you to feel what that feels like on that pike, and hopefully you can transfer that into what maybe you're feeling in your marriage sometime so that you can chalk it up to [00:12:00] this darn stupid, annoying health challenge.

Your marriage might be just fine. That guy that you married, he might still be pretty amazing.

My takeaways for you are that you can recognize when this is coming up for you. That your health challenge is creating discomfort and it's having an effect on how you're viewing other things, including your marriage and your relationship with your spouse.

I encourage you to talk about it with your spouse. Put it out there in the open. "Hey, I think this struggle is having an effect on our marriage. What do you think?" Keeping a dialogue open with this person that you've joined together to have a lot of fun in your life to experience joy, not just to go through hard things. So talk about [00:13:00] it.

Another takeaway is to apologize for the actions that you take from this place of annoyance. From this place of lack of sleep. From this place of maybe a lack of faith and trust and confidence. Maybe you just don't feel very confident right now. Apologize for the actions that are not in line with the person you want to be or the marriage you wanna have. If you were one of those couples that set up really clear agreements in your marriage, apologize when you fall short. There's nothing, um, bad about apologizing. You do not need to apologize for things that are untrue. But those actions that you take from a place of annoyance or desperation or just not feeling well, apologize for those actions.

[00:14:00] Listen to their concerns and to their ideas. Together look for possible improvements. Look for ways to strengthen your love and your companionship. Um, also ways to strengthen the compassion you have for each other. Do things together that are fun that you enjoy, or you might have to kind of take turns like. "Hey, I really wanna do this thing and I really want you to come. Let's do it." And sometimes you get to be the one that's like, "I don't really want to, but okay." It turns out good, I'd say 90% of the time, if you're honest about it, like, "I don't really want to, but I will do this for you."

And if you're not in a place, like you're really not in a place that you can do that thing with them, then communicate that. " I just really [00:15:00] can't right now. I really don't feel well enough." That's okay to do too. When you do things together that are fun or that are good or that make you laugh, I think it's good to have pictures and then to transfer having the pictures to actually printing some. Put them up on a wall. Make a photo book. Whether you're getting the photos just printed at Walgreens and buying a photo album and putting them in. And then you can put that on your, somewhere in your house, your bookshelf, your mantle, maybe right on the kitchen counter so that you look at it.

You need the memories of the good things and the good times. When you have the hard times and when you're having a health challenge, um, it's nice to be able to remember the good and have tangible evidence that life was good and that it will be again. Or [00:16:00] the hope that it will be again. Maybe you can't get that exact memory again because of a health challenge. But remember the good then. That's good for our soul.

With each other. Another thing I would encourage is to give and receive grace and compassion from each other. If you have a relationship where you're sarcastic. There needs to be some good communication. Sarcasm, I know people claim that they can have a good marriage and they do these little digs on each other and it's okay. It's how we are. I'm not gonna say that's not true. I don't know every marriage that exists in the world and I don't know the quality of that marriage. There's no thermometer I can take and like, measure your marriage.

But I believe that there has to be some [00:17:00] good. There needs to be some grace, some compassion, some love, some kind words, some compliments. I don't think a marriage can be healthy without those. So if you do some of the sarcasm, okay, maybe it's fine, but you need to compliment your spouse.

You need to recognize the good that they do and tell them verbally out loud. You need to hug them and say, "wow, I noticed that you unloaded the dishwasher." That needs to be part of this whole thing. And then when you have the health challenge, you're already doing those things, hopefully, and you can remind yourself to continue doing those even though you don't feel as good right now.

Hugs and holding one another is something that can be really good. I've realized that sometimes when we want it, the least, we wanna shut ourself out from the world is [00:18:00] when we need it the most. I think, your father in heaven gave us physical bodies and physical relationships. This person who's here physically, and they can touch us. They can scratch our back, they can massage our feet, they can hold us in their arms. I think that it's a gift and it can combat some of the sadness, the despair, the hopelessness. Keep that going. And when you don't wanna receive... if this is someone that loves you and you have a loving relationship, I challenge you to receive their hug. To receive their holding. To receive their words of kindness.

Bite your tongue when you wanna make some retort that challenges their compliment. Just don't say it. Receive. If it only is received even on [00:19:00] just your outer shell. Okay in time and when you're feeling a bit better, it can sink in. Or at least you didn't offer the retort that forced that off of you. Um, and put up a wall.

Just one more thought I had is that right now it's you going through this health challenge. But later it might be them. So figuring out good ways to keep your marriage healthy, keep it vibrant, or keep it okay, like in a kinda a good place is worth your time. It's worth your energy. It's worth biting your tongue. It's worth looking for the good. It's worth doing things together.

I wanna add also, it might be your child later. So the things you learn from [00:20:00] your health challenge and how to keep this relationship. Right now, maybe it's a marriage. How to keep this okay even when you're having a hard health challenge. Those skills, those mindsets that you develop. Maybe you look back on this hiking analogy. That can move into these other relationships you have. And when your spouse encounters a health challenge that throws a wrench into their plans and their life, maybe their career. Hopefully you can draw on your experience and hopefully together you've talk through some of these things and you've come up with ways that the two of you can handle them, ways that you can be together and enjoy time together, even during a health challenge. Thank you for being here and listening, and we'll talk to you next [00:21:00] week.

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website Heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradford coaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.