How do you keep a marriage strong despite chronic illness?
This post will be super long, so if you don't have time to read it, please share your marriage suggestions anyway.

The hardest thing for me about my husbands fibromyalgia is how most of the time he's physically right beside me but emotionally/mentally he's not there. The kids and I have spent the last week at my parents house, and my husband stayed home for this trip so he could rest and sleep. When we were younger, it was like torture to be apart from him for a week. Now...the way I miss him when we're apart is nothing compared to the way I miss him when we're sitting right beside each other and he's "not there".

I miss simple things...like him asking how my day was. Or him saying romantic things. Or just sitting there and talking about life and having a meaningful conversation. I miss him truly communicating with me, without me having to guess or prod him for information about how he's doing. I miss doing things with him other than watching movies. I miss going swimming as a family.

I miss feeling loved and appreciated. I know in my mind I am. But it's hard to feel it when he's busy dealing with fibro and I'm busy dealing with everything else.

It's hard for me to always be the supportive spouse when I feel my emotional needs aren't being met. I've tried to tell him what I need but he hasn't really responded...I don't know if it's hard, or of he forgets what I said....so tonight I sent him an email. I tried to explain briefly how I feel (in a much more gentle way than I've said it here). I shared an Idea with him - I thought it would help our marriage if we could each write down one thing every day that we love about the other person. We could do it for a month or whatever time frame we agree to. I also told him what I need - I need to connect with him emotionally every day, whether that means touching base about how we're each doing or having a conversation or simply looking into each other's eyes and saying "this is hard but I'm still here and I still love you". And I told him I really do need him to hold my hand when I go to sleep. He goes to bed much later than I do, and he used to cuddle with me when I went to sleep, but he stopped because it's hard for him to get in and out of the bed, so it's easier for him to just to downstairs and play video games when I go to bed.

I don't think my email was unreasonable, but now I can't sleep worrying about how he took it. He didn't respond at all so now in my head I'm imagining all the ways he could respond....from "I'm sorry you're hurting, those are great ideas to help our marriage, I love you for being by my side through this" to "how dare you be so selfish, can't you see I'm dealing with an awful condition, and it's worse than what you're feeling" or "you made me feel like absolute garbage when you told me how you're hurting".....I wish I could not be so crazy and just wait patiently for him to respond....

I feel like if something doesn't change soon, I really want to go to counselling. I asked him before but he didn't want to go because he thought we were coping ok without it. But it's getting harder and harder for me to live this way.

Thanks for listening.