Sex & Chronic Pain

Living with chronic pain has effect every aspect of my life and my sex life is no exception. You likely know exactly what I mean. It is more difficult to find times that work for both of us. Being "in the mood" is hard to even think about sometimes, let alone actually work up to.

I'm lucky to have married a man who knows that marriage is about many things and sex is just one of them. At the same time, it is important enough to both of us that we found a way to make it work.

One important thing I learned along the way is that it wasn't just my problem. Of course, I have the most to deal with and overcome as the person living with chronic pain. But when we sat and talked I learned that my husband was dealing with stuff too. He didn't want to hurt me, or push me if he thought I was having anything other than a good day (and those are very infrequent). The stress of being a one income household, and my husband working long hours and dealing with traffic every day also put stress on him.

We've had to do what most married couples have to do when life starts to edge out sex and intimacy, we made a plan to find more time and work it into our specific challenges.

For me that includes stuff like, redefining being in the mood, planning ahead to be physically prepared before and after just like I do when planning a day out, and finding ways to still be intimate even when regular sex isn't something my body will allow for.

The biggest and best step in the right direction for us was just figuring out how to communicate effectively about all the pain, stress and such that surrounds us. Once that happened it was easy to figure out how to meet our needs within the reality of our life.