Such inspiring replies!

Just recently got diagnosed with AS as well and i ask those questions to myself everyday. My gf has fibro and with my situation sometimes marriage can be questioning but i guess the idea here is to not let AS control your life.

Like someone mentioned above, health is such a fragile thing. People with no health problems can turn out to have very bad problems within a matter for few months. So you never know what life brings.

Put AS out of the equation and make that decision based on your heart just like everyone else. Do sit down and lay it all out with the Ms. tho.

In my case it's a little easier since she has fibromyelgia and she is very supportive of my situation and she even says we will do everything we can to live our life without these disorders stopping us from it.

Alright...
When my partner and me did a civil union at the happiest time of our lives, we have to repeat the words about being together in happiness and sickness until we die..(at that time there was no sickness at all...)
At that moment saying these words I felt weird but i thought with the power of love everything is possible, even in the hard times we will still keep going on, together.
So we met, we love each other and you are expecting from me to say that we live happily ever after like a fairy tale...
I have to refer about the dark times in our relationship which probably is a common thing...
There are been times that I imagine of killing him or fill my suitcase and disappear forever far away from him...He must felt that or know about this...
Sometimes I felt he was responsible for the misery or the bad hard periods in our lives...
Now, with the clear mind , i can say i am not perfect, Sometimes i told him (as a joke) he can replace me with somebody else more clever, capable and healthy... like a new car...
There are responsibilities in a marriage , isn't it?
I will tell you when it hurts me and make feel guilty...
When I am lying at the sofa or bed , unable to move because of the pain and watch him COMING TIRED FROM WORK, CLEANING , COOKING , TRYING TO PAY ALL THE BILLS WITH HIS MONEY BECAUSE I AM NOT ABLE TO WORK ALL THE TIME AND PAID SO MUCH MONEY LIKE HE IS, watching him GETTING exhausted AND AT THE SAME TIME HE HAS TO TAKE CARE OF ME...
he is a human being ,,, he has his limits ,,, he is not a machine...
after we had our dinner , he left the dirty dishes at the sink.
I wished to have the power to get up and wash the dishes... but i couldn't . Who is supposed to do that?...
other times it was the opposite ...When he was very sick at times and i was healthy , my time was full and i was waiting the time to finish everything, take care of him and go to bed to have a rest. I would mind doing that , but sometimes i dint have the time or the strength to keep going, i reach my limits too.
Life is not fair, sucks...
But anyway...
In dark times we are thinking only the negative things. Sometimes way say nasty words to each other which is hard to forget...
But there always will be happy times or the big clouds will go away, then we realize how lucky we are having each other and how much we love each other... But life seems like a constant fight..
Do you think winning the lotto will solve everything?
What is life about?
being healthy and rich, having the perfect partner and family, living in the best country, having the best job, house and car?
Sounds unreal?
I am telling myself ... SHUT UP AND KEEP GOING!!!
Its just i don't want somebody else to suffer because of me..
But we both we prove that we love each other in our hard times, take care each other, and stick together...
I am wishing our life to be more simple and easier for us in the future,,,

what each person brings to a relationship is largely intangible and really can't be quantitated, you certainly can't compare and keep score. we each do what we can. i think if you do what you can, show kindness and thoughtfulness to one another, make the other feel good about himself or herself, those are the things that matter. little random acts of kindness when we can. just showing one another that we care, that we want the other to be happy.

the chores will get done, they always do, we don't worry about them.

yes, life is tiring at times, but less so with someone by our side who cares about us, that we care about too. someone we can laugh with and just enjoy the company of.

i was reading the other day that one thing that may be important is in how we celebrate our successes, that its important to cheer on our spouse when they achieve something. i had to laugh at that, as we pretty much "celebrate" everything, big and small. nothing too small of an excuse to celebrate!

Hi Manju;
I'm still a newlywed (3 years) but we have a pretty special situation here - my husband was very healthy, worked physical jobs long hours, went to school, fixed everything, cooked, etc and took wonderful care of me (the cripple) until, 2 months before our daughter was born, HE became very, very sick.

2.5 years later, he has no diagnosis and now I'M the strong one. That part sucks. And since then, we have literally had one thing after another go wrong, (just ask anyone here, I'm not kidding) from our ever-decreasing health (I'm now half-paralyzed and fighting the C word) to finances to family deaths (several) and estrangements to stupid appliances breaking, it has just been nonstop. And every single day I wish HE could be the strong one again, let me tell you. But I wouldn't trade him in for a triathlete's body, a thousand acre ranch and a million dollars.

I think, honestly, the ONLY thing that should affect your decision whether or not to marry is your love for that person. Period. If you and she are a Good Match (I don't mean just hot in bed, I don't mean Passionate, I mean you love each other with a stronger-than-steel, comfortable, every day kind of love) then you will still have a good marriage, despite illness, poverty, fire, flood, anything. You just have to make sure that you never let resentment build between you. Any time one of you feels a little tiny seed of resentment toward the other, (which happens a lot when one spouse is ill and can't bring home a big paycheck, or fix the roof, or get out of bed, and the other is required to take up the slack) then talk it out IMMEDIATELY. My poor niece almost got divorced her first year of marriage for exactly that reason, she's handicapped and her hubby is healthy and he resented her because all he saw was a pampered girl sitting at home all day while he busted his butt to bring home a paycheck.

1 Do you think that one with AS should get married?
ABSOLUTELY! If you find the right person. My dad (divorced 6 times) says "Marriage makes a good relationship better and a bad relationship worse." And so far I'd say he's right. And having a partner in life is just fabulous. EVEN if you're both sick.

2 What will be the quality of life?
Who freakin knows? When we got married, we THOUGHT it'd be pretty easy, that he'd continue working full time and i'd work part time and we'd live just fine in our cheap little house. We were living below our means at the time. Stuff changes. But I'm confident that hard work and faith and perseverance and clean living will SOMEDAY pay off for us and we will eventually be able to be self-sufficient. Our house is messy, we're broke as heck, and I'm half-paralyzed but somehow we are still happy. And our daughter is FANTASTIC.

3 What will be the quality of life if i follow NSD ?
It's worth a try! Maybe it'll work for you. It could improve things greatly.

4 What is the quality of life with Anit-TNF?
See #3. ALL treatments are worth looking into.

5 Can we provide everything to our better half?
Nope. But then, nobody can, really. What happens to healthy people when they get old? They get sick like us. And everybody has their own cross to bear. Some people are mentally ill, some are unemployable, some are ugly. The IMPORTANT thing is that you provide love and friendship and constant support. The other stuff is just stuff. But backrubs are very important.

6 Will AS (just AS in mind) cause any problem in consecption of children?
Not on the man's side, I don't think. It can sure make pregnancy less fun, but I really don't think it'd affect things from your angle.

There are lots of couples (I know several personally) with HORRIBLE health, on one or both sides, who have wonderful marriages and make each other happy every day. And then there are a ton (TON) of perfectly healthy couples who make each other miserable every day. Your illness cannot ruin a marriage unless you let it. I think maybe KAers seem to have a higher ratio of good marriages because people don't usually rush into a marriage with someone on a cane. I think maybe it takes a stronger person to marry one of us, but then we end up blessed with better marriages in the long run. I'm 26 and MOST of my healthy friends are already divorced, and they ALL envy me. Even though we're nearly homeless and i can't use my legs and my husband spends 20 hours in bed each day. lol.

Bottom line - don't let AS stop you from falling in love and building a life. We may be crippled, but we're not dead!

-Bridget

Bridget, I loved reading your response!
xo

bridget,

i second what jan said!

Me3

Great post and perspectives, Bridget!