Marriage and caregiving — protecting your relationship

This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. Every family situation is different, and you should consult with appropriate professionals about your specific circumstances.

Your marriage is supposed to be your safe place, the place you come home to when everything else is overwhelming. Instead, it's become another place that's strained and difficult. You and your spouse are exhausted. You're not having sex. You're not having real conversations. You're passing each other in the hallway, coordinating logistics, and collapsing into bed. The person who's supposed to be your partner in this feels more like a roommate, and sometimes an annoying one at that.

Adding caregiving to a marriage is like adding a third person to the relationship, except that third person is demanding and doesn't offer anything in return. Your marriage has to compete for your energy and attention. And very often, the marriage loses.

The statistics on this are grim. Marriages are more likely to struggle when caregiving is involved. Couples report less satisfaction, less intimacy, more conflict. Some marriages don't survive it. Not because the couples didn't love each other, but because the weight of caregiving plus marriage is sometimes just too much for two people to carry.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Many couples manage to protect their marriage while caregiving, and understanding how might help.

Why Your Marriage Matters

First, you have to acknowledge that your marriage matters. This might sound obvious, but in the context of caregiving, your marriage often gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list. Your parent comes first. Your kids come second. Your job comes third. Your marriage comes last. But if your marriage fails, then you lose the one person who was supposed to be in this with you. Your marriage matters not because it's selfish, but because it's foundational to your capacity to keep caregiving without completely falling apart.

This means protecting time for your marriage. This is not selfish. This is essential maintenance. You need time with your spouse where you're not managing your parent's care. You need time where you're not exhausted. You need time where you're not thinking about medications and appointments and finances. This time doesn't have to be elaborate. It doesn't have to be expensive. But it has to be real and protected.

Some couples find that a weekly date night helps. Even thirty minutes where you sit down together and talk about something other than caregiving. Other couples find that a weekend away, even once a year, gives them the space to reconnect. Other couples find that protection of bedtime helps, where you're in bed together without thinking about anything else for even a little while.

But protecting time only works if you actually use it to reconnect. You can have a date night and spend the whole time talking about your parent's care. You can have a weekend away and be on your phone coordinating with the hospital. You have to actually put the caregiving down for a while and remember who you are together without that burden.

The Harder Conversations

This also means having harder conversations. You and your spouse need to talk about how caregiving is affecting your marriage. Not in a blaming way, but in a real way. "I feel like we've become just logistics coordinators. I miss us." Or "I'm so exhausted that I don't have anything left for you, and I'm sorry." Or "I'm angry that I'm doing most of the caregiving while you work, and I'm resentful toward you." These conversations are uncomfortable, but they're also necessary.

You need to divide caregiving responsibilities in a way that feels fair to both of you, even if it's not perfectly equal. This looks different in every marriage, but the important part is that you both feel like you're contributing and that neither of you feels completely overwhelmed. If one spouse is doing all the caregiving and the other is working full-time, you need to talk about what's happening. Both people are burned out. The balance needs to shift somehow.

You also need to be honest about what you need from each other. Maybe you need your spouse to take over some of the caregiving tasks so you have a break. Maybe you need your spouse to just listen to you complain without trying to fix it. Maybe you need physical affection, even if you're not up for sex. Maybe you need to feel like you still matter to this person, that you're not just your role as a caregiver.

Sex and Intimacy

Sex and intimacy often become casualties of caregiving. You're exhausted. You're touched out from helping your parent with personal care. You don't have privacy. You don't have energy. You don't feel attractive or sexy. Your spouse is probably in a similar place. And suddenly a part of your marriage that used to connect you has stopped happening.

Sometimes this just has to be okay for a while. You might not have the capacity for regular sex right now, and that's real. But completely abandoning physical affection can make the distance between you grow. Even if sex isn't happening, other forms of touch might be. Holding hands. Cuddling. Kissing. These things keep the connection alive even when you don't have energy for anything more.

It also helps to talk about this. Don't just avoid it. Say, "I'm so exhausted right now that I don't have energy for sex, and I'm sorry. But I still love you, and I still want to be close to you." This removes the rejection that might otherwise fester.

Managing Resentment

You also need to protect yourself from becoming resentful toward your spouse for not doing enough or for having a life that feels less constrained than yours. If your spouse is working and you're doing most of the caregiving, you might resent that they get to leave the house and have adult conversations while you're stuck at home. If your spouse isn't experiencing caregiving burnout the way you are, you might resent that they don't understand how hard it is. These resentments are real, but they're also poison to your marriage. You need to talk about them and work toward solutions that feel more fair.

Sometimes that solution involves your spouse stepping up to do more caregiving. Sometimes it involves hiring help so neither of you is doing too much. Sometimes it involves acknowledging that your spouse is doing what they can, even if it's not everything you wish they could do.

You might also need professional help. A marriage counselor can help you work through the specific stresses that caregiving brings. They can help you communicate about hard things. They can help you figure out how to stay connected while you're both drowning in caregiving demands. This is not a failure of your marriage. This is smart maintenance.

What This Season Means

Finally, you need to remember that this season won't last forever. Your parent won't be here forever. The intensive caregiving phase won't last forever. And when it ends, you want your marriage to still be standing. You want to know your spouse again. You want to rediscover each other. This requires protecting your marriage now, even when it feels impossible.

Your marriage matters. You and your spouse deserve to still have a relationship that feels like partnership, not just logistics. Protecting that relationship while caregiving is one of the hardest things you'll do, but it's also one of the most important.

Protect your marriage. Keep showing up for each other. And trust that if you prioritize this, you can make it through caregiving and come out the other side still connected.

How To Help Your Elders is an educational resource. We do not provide medical, legal, or financial advice. The information in this article is general in nature and may not apply to your specific situation.