Intimacy & Illness

When you enter into a relationship with someone that you know has an illness, you take on the fact that you may not be able to have a fully intimate relationship. Since I met my husband online, this did not become a reality until after I was already in love with him. It was only after we had our first intimate encounter, a long kiss, did I realize that some things may not be so easy for us. In all honesty, long kisses with someone who had a 60% lung function was literally taking his breath away. Pauses were necessary and coughing fits were frequent. As I respect our privacy in this area, I will not divulge more personal details but I am sure you can figure out that if a kiss made him have a coughing fit to where he was red in the face and trying to catch his breath, other things had similar if not worse end results.

We learned ways around the monkey wrench that his illness threw into our intimate relationship. As his lung functions started to fall, kisses faded. Luckily for us, our love endured this and sex was not the glue in our relationship. We respected each other for what we brought to the relationship and not for what it took away. It was the illness, Cystic Fibrosis, that was like a flat third wheel - but again, we leaned on our faith in God and our love for each other. Sure, instances like this can pull two people apart but we only grew stronger. What was our secret? Plain and simple - respect. We respected each other and as long as we gave it our all in life, our limitations would never be held against us. Yes, I admit that it was frustrating. Me, a normal and healthy woman in the prime of her life - yes, I wanted more intimacy but I realized that so did my husband. It was not for lack of wanting, it was for lack of physically being able.

He is now over a year post lung transplant and we have been blessed enough to bounce back from these moments where the illness had us jailed. The ironic part is that I now wait for his coughing fit to occur during those moments and then enjoy the moments even more when I realize that it is just him and I - no flat third wheel. Oh how two wheels are better than 3!

~Shan
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