When your partner wants to start and you are worried for them

Started 11 February 2026 · 15 replies · 132 hearts · read 1.7k times

TeganNewport, UK · 11 February 2026

5 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: When your partner wants to start and you are worried for them

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

I would like to know what other people say when asked, because my current answer is too long and invites more questions.

I nearly did not ask because it sounds trivial written down, and it has been the most persistent difficulty of the last six months.

My household has adjusted to about half of this and the other half is causing small daily friction that I have not known how to raise.

Thanks in advance. Practical detail welcome, however dull — the duller the better, honestly.

OmarAmman, JO

My partner came to a family event with a prepared subject change and deployed it three times, and it was the kindest thing.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

Speaking as a facilitator: nobody owes anybody at their own table an explanation, and this circle will keep saying so as often as it needs to.

10me too 1

NolwennRennes, FR

Wren said something I want to sit with for a second.

I would say pick one person to be honest with completely. Mine was my brother and having one person who knows everything has been enough.

OzrenZagreb, HR

The friction in our house was almost entirely about the changed evening routine rather than about anything medical.

RufusGuildford, UK

My body changed how it works and the household did not get a memo. Working that out took about a year of small friction.

10me too 5

RuaridhFort William, UK

Gently disagreeing with Ozren, or rather adding the other half of it.

Coming back to say we are fine, that it took about eighteen months, and that the conversation I dreaded most was the one that fixed it.

NikitaYerevan, AM

What helped was one honest conversation where I said what I actually needed rather than expecting him to notice.

OssieWolverhampton, UK

We used to eat together in a particular way and that changed, and neither of us said anything about it for months.

CormacWaterford, IE

I asked him to stop commenting, once, clearly, and he did, and I had spent four months building up to a two-minute conversation.

BessLouth, UK

#10

Grateful you posted rather than kept it to yourself.

ObiLagos, NG

#11

My partner was frightened for me, which came out as disapproval, and it took a long time to hear it as the first thing.

TeganNewport, UK

#12

Something I did not expect was how much of our relationship had been organised around food, and how much we had to rebuild.

OmarAmman, JO

#13

Building on what Tegan wrote rather than answering the original question.

He does the injection, which was his idea, and it turned out to be a way for him to be part of something he had felt excluded from.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

#14

Facilitator note: this is a logistics thread rather than a clinical one, which is a relief, and I would still rather nobody offered instructions.

16me too 9

NolwennRennes, FR

#15

Picking up Tegan’s point rather than starting a new one.

My family's reaction was the hardest part and I have had to accept that some of them are not going to come round.

9me too 8