title: The "cruel radiance of what is": helping couples live with chronic illness.
abstract: The threat of no longer being the person one wants to be hovers over each ill person and plays out relationally. The dynamic interplay of this experience of self-loss and other-loss (Roos, 2002; Weingarten, 2012) has a significant impact on couples, both of whom may come to have both experiences. In this article, I focus on the couples' experience of self- and other-loss in the context of chronic illness, in which one person's experience flows into and informs the other's. In particular, I describe how asymmetric acknowledgment of self-loss and other-loss adds to the misery of couples who are already challenged by poor health. Physical pain also makes dealing with self- and other-loss harder. Therapists can serve couples better if they take a fully collaborative stance; appreciate the dilemmas of witnessing; help couples distinguish new trauma from retraumatization and fear; work with the weaver's dilemma and the boatman's plight (Weingarten, 2012); and are comfortable with discussion of end of life issues.
authors.affiliation: The Witnessing Project, Newton MA.
authors.forename: Kaethe
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Weingarten
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D019546:Couples Therapy; D004644:Emotions; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005239:Fear; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008393:Marriage / Q000523:psychology; D012649:Self Concept; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000523:psychology
keywords: Chronic physical illness; Couples; Other-loss; Relationship; Self-loss