For Spouses and Significant Others
When your partner is handed a diabetes diagnosis, so are you. Get on board with diabetes care right off the bat. You can and should attend diabetes education classes to learn more about the disease and how to treat it. If you do the grocery shopping and/or cooking in your household, you should absolutely attend the meeting your partner has with a registered dietitian. And if your partner feels comfortable with it, go along on doctor's visits as well. Two sets of ears are always better than one.
Try (and it can be hard) not to become the diabetes police. Think of what it would be like to go through life listening to the following:
“Are you sure you can eat that?”
“Do you really think you should have that?”
“Don't you think you should do something about that blood glucose reading?”
Communicate openly and honestly with your partner about how you can help when things aren't going right, before they go astray. That way you know in advance the most effective way to assist.
Alert
Support your spouse or partner, but keep in mind that she, and not you, is in charge of taking care of her diabetes. This means being there for her if she asks for help, offering to go to the doctor's appointments with her, but not pushing the issue, and not eating things that she can't have right in front of her.
Helping Those Who Don't Help Themselves
Perhaps you're reading this book because you're more interested in diabetes control than your significant other — the one with the disease — is. Maybe your partner hasn't come to terms with his diagnosis yet, or maybe he's depressed or disheartened and has stopped trying. You can read and learn until you're blue in the face, and you may even be able to nag your partner into a few extra glucose checks or a more appropriate meal.
But you can't control his diabetes for him. Remember this if you remember nothing else. Your mental health and emotional well-being are just as important as your partner's, and you can save yourself countless hours of head-banging frustration if you detach enough to realize that he is the pilot of the diabetes ship.
My husband has had problems in the bedroom ever since he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Is this part of the disease?
If your husband is newly diagnosed, he may be struggling to come to terms with diabetes. Depression, anxiety, and anger are all common emotions following diagnosis of a chronic illness, and could temporarily affect his libido. However, diabetes-associated impotence is quite common.
At the same time, you don't want to go too far in the other direction and make it easier for your partner to get away with screwing up his control by going along with his program.
Accepting his excuses about why that extra piece of pie just had to be eaten or nodding your head when she says she's going to cut back her insulin to drop a few pounds is not being supportive. It's called “enabling,” and spouses and family members of alcoholics do it all the time. Don't let yourself become part of the problem or validate bad behaviors.
