Periodically, I’ll interview a person with pain, a family member, or someone working with patients with pain. Below is a short interview of a husband of a patient with pain. You might relate to 1) different coping styles between family members, 2) changes in your personality because of pain or medication, 3) a “silver lining” of the pain experience (more to come in future posts about this), and 4) what the experience is like for family members.

1. What is your relationship to someone in pain?
My wife has a pain disorder.

2. What has the experience been like for you?
It’s difficult to see your loved one in pain. When my wife clearly expresses suffering, I feel helpless and empathetic. In general and lately, my wife is rather stoic when it comes to her pain, hardly ever complaining, so I don’t think too much about her pain. She’s been experiencing pain for so long that it’s become something of a way of life for our family, not something that I focus on or think about too much anymore. However, when she can’t do something because of her pain, I’m reminded of what she’s going through and it makes me appreciate how lucky I am with my relatively pain-free body. When my wife treats me in a way that I don’t understand, for example, if I think she’s been too angry or not loving enough with me or my daughter, I always wonder whether this is because of her pain, or perhaps even because of medication that she’s taking for the pain.

3. What’s the hardest part of the experience?

Being unable to really help.

4. How did you cope with that?
I try not to think about it.

5. Is there any “silver lining” to this experience for you or your family?
Initially with my wife’s pain, there was a “silver lining”, namely that I thought that she needed me more and appreciated me more. I’ve also published a paper on pain, and I don’t think I would have done this had it not been for my wife’s pain.

6. I understand you have a different style of coping with pain than your wife. How does this affect the experience?
I’m much more vocal about pain when I’m experiencing it. I think it’s important to let others know how I feel, so that they can understand why I behave the way I do. As I mentioned above, my wife doesn’t like talking about her pain, and this makes me uncertain about how she’s feeling.

7. Any other comments you’d care to make?
If I should ever experience pain like my wife has, I hope that I’ll be able to be as strong as she is.

Thank you so much for sharing some of your experience.