I would love this honestly. I know it’s possible, but lately it sure hasn’t felt that way.
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Takes time. Can you remember what it was like 4 weeks ago? You’re making real good progress. The effort needed to get good results does fade over time.
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I’m like @ClaudnDaye, I wanted to approach this from many different directions, I also think he chose the best direction. The rules of engagement, the wedding vows are the guiding principles of a marriage or soon to be marriage.
Although it has been 42 years I remember our preacher saying “Now you are one” as he pronounced us man and wife. At the time I did not fully understand the meaning of that as I do now. I came to realize that it meant much more than financial or legal matters, it meant in all aspects of our lives, in our joys and triumphs as well as our burdens and failures.
Now, in your engagement and in the future as you are joined the burden of diabetes must be shared willingly, if he chooses to remain joined with you and make it official he must do this. While diabetes will always be a burden, it is a burden the union must shoulder as one. I do suggest that you have a conversation with him and find out if he is willing to accept diabetes as part of your union.
I do wish to defend his apparent lack of understanding. First a little about me. I am type two but my life very much resembles that of a type 1. I am fully insulin dependent and I use an insulin pump. I understand much of what a T1 goes through, I go through the same. I can have highs and I can have lows just like any T1. On the exterior you cannot tell me from a T1. I tell you this because as much as I live a T1 style life I am not confident in saying I understand what it is like to be T1.
I have spent the last 10 years as part of a forum that is very similar to FuDiabetes I have volunteered for that site for the last eight years. I think I know as much about T1 as any non-T1 outside or the medical community. The more I understand about T1 the more I realize that I can never fully understand what it is to be T1. Your Fiancé is just beginning to learn, maybe he deserves some time. While he can never fully understand he must learn to empathize, he cannot learn what its like to be you but he must learn that it is difficult for you.
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You’re right, and thanks. I’ll keep making strides and try to be more patient in the process.
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Absolutely. I don’t think it’s the diabetes that’s an issue for him. It’s the new diagnosis coupled with a brand new Dexcom, and as others said above - understandably I am all about my diabetes knowledge right now. It’s overwhelming for me and it’s happening to me, I can only imagine what it’s like for him - where he’s on the outside looking in, wants to help me but has no idea how, and then is constantly bombarded with “my sugar” this, “my sugar” that and there’s nothing he can do or say to make it better.
On the other hand, it is nice to have it reinforced on here that how I’m acting/what I’m doing is completely normal. After hearing you’ve essentially become a basket case about your illness can be very upsetting and, after awhile, you start to believe it to be true. I know that time will ease this. It’s just been happening quite a bit since I was diagnosed and if I want him to refrain from commenting, its probably best to not share my diabetic stuff with him for now either.
This is so true, but there’s a grey area involved, which means loving that person enough to give them the space to deal with the burdens and the failure… in their time, not yours. I am a very “hit the ground running” type of thinker. He’s the “mull everything over until I have a headache and I’m sick to my stomach and then take action” type. Having a discussion about taking a breather from discussing it may be what’s best for both of us, and until then I’m always safe on here to discuss anything without judgment.
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LOL, you sound like my wife and I, I am the thinker, she hits the ground running. While you may be joined you are not joined at the hip, you are two that makes one, it is a symbiotic relationship. you must feed off of each others strengths and not hold each other back unless necessary. If I took off in a dead run with my wife every time I would crash and burn sometimes, yet at times I would be left behind if not for her. If I did not sometimes ask her to slow down she might go to fast and be unable to maneuver around thus crashing into the brick wall in her path.
Its not a grey area, its learning to manage differences in personality. You can’t change your personality any more than he can his. You seem to be doing a good job at managing the differences.
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That is officially the best graph ever!!!
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You broke it. 
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As I have already said. Understanding is the impossible part for a non-T1. Understanding the difference between T1 and T2 is hard to grasp even for someone whose T2 is advanced as mine. Most people cannot understand the obsession a T1 feels because because they are not faced with the reality that the grim reaper is never far away from a T1. It can happen within days or even hours if circumstances are allowed to get out of control. T1 must be an obsession because things can go to hell in a handbasket very quickly. This is what has changed with your T1 diagnosis, now you know how quickly things can go bad.
Tell you fiancé that you must be obsessed. ask him how obsessed he would be if he knew that he could be dead in a matter days or hours or that his life could be shortened significantly by years if he doesn’t get things right.
Also for you I want you to remember that diabetes is a marathon, not a sprint.
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@Eric, Could you make that into a circular chart, I think we could all understand it better if you did.
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Nah, I think the graph he gave speaks for itself.
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I might actually like pie graphs just sayin. 
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Trying. I’m getting there, I just need to take it day by day so I don’t lose my 
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Thank you Gary for your nice contributions to the thread. It is appreciated. I also think that a circular projection of the chart taken to the second integral would be best for visualization.
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Everything’s better with pie in front of it
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Finally someone who understands my logic. 
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My wife of 27 years has been supportive (enough). The thing that irks her are alarms going off in the middle of the night.
With the Dexcom, you can show folks who may be interested what is happening with your BG and how certain foods and activities affect it. Then again, they may not want to know. It is scary for someone who doesn’t have diabetes to think about what might happen to their loved one (and their shared kids). So that might be part of the issue as well. When I show particularly dramatic rises in BG to my wife, she is not really interested.
One quick comment on your diabetes management, acknowledging that everyone approaches this differently.
My endo, who works at the Joslin Clinic in Boston, has me managing to err on the side of going high rather than going low. So I run my BG at around 120 and that doesn’t concern me. If you over-manage your diabetes, you will generally have more lows and according to my practitioners, lows are a lot more dangerous than highs.
My A1C is 5.7, so I’m in pretty good control, but i don’t worry too much about high readings.
The control-iq technology in the Tandem pump gives much better control automatically. It is a significant advance in diabetes treatment.
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I’m a list person to keep myself organized and thorough. These are not in priority order…just the order in which I think about them.
- Thank you for being honest with yourself and honest here. Please never change that. Discussing this relationship challenge is in no way disloyalty to your partner. It is actually super-brave loyalty to your relationship bc you are trying to figure out how to make it better…which shows love and dedication.
- Boundaries. Boundaries are so important and so hard to maintain within a relationship, within a disease management lifestyle, within ourselves. Figuring out what your boundaries are for yourself as a diabetic will take a lot of trial and error. (And they will likely evolve over time.) And figuring out what your boundaries are with your partner regarding your diabetes will also take a lot of trial and error. And that’s okay so long as everyone is pulling on the rope in the right direction and not directing their angst at each other instead of the challenge.
- Clear communication. If you can get past the initial gut reaction to crappy things that inevitably get said in the heat of the moment and drill down to what really bothers you, and if you can clearly communicate that, that may help. Hopefully he can do the same. Otherwise if people are sharing gut reactions without thinking, it’s hard to tell what the real issue is. I.E. Does he ACTUALLY think you wanted to have this? Or does he really mean that he’s scared that you were right and what it means for you? Is it his worry for you disguised as an accusatory outburst? Bc the accusatory outbursts are not okay and cannot continue. But if it was a one-off reaction that he later owns and clarifies and apologizes for, okay. There is a difference between the two. We all say crappy stuff sometimes. But it’s what we do with it after the fact, including changing our behavior, that really matters.
- My now-husband was my boyfriend before I became diabetic. He was my long distance boyfriend through all of it…misdiagnosis…lingering pancreatic function…starting insulin. When I got the initial C-peptide test results and “diabetic of some kind” diagnosis, I remember telling him that night on the phone, “I know this changes a lot of things. Living with a chronic illness was not on the table when we started dating and I won’t blame you at all if you decide this is not the life you want going forward.” He told me that I was crazy, it didn’t change anything, and he was in for the long haul. He did propose a few months later…HOWEVER, I did have to have a Come to Jesus talk with him a few nights later after that initial diagnosis conversation. Because my diagnosis ended my flying career. And he’s also a pilot. All pilots fear developing a disease that ends their ability to fly. So for the next three nights on the phone…he did unfortunately keep grieving “What if this happens to me?”…and finally I had to say, “Look. You don’t have this disease. I do. I’m the one living in Wichita to fly and now I can’t fly. And I’m the one who has student loans to pay off for flying which I can no longer do…not you. I’m going to need you to buck up and stop worrying about how this affects you right now bc I’m the one actually dealing with it.” Maybe your partner has not yet identified accurately what fears he has and it’s playing into him downplaying your right to be interested in your own volatile health situation.
- My husband and I have been having our own boundary issues lately regarding diabetes. I haven’t shared this part yet on here (and I don’t mind doing so now), but I’ve been really, really struggling with fears of lows for a long time now. I did not realize that I was actually having panic attacks anticipating lows. And the crap thing about my panic attacks is that their symptoms MATCH my low symptoms. And let me tell you, THAT DOES NOT HELP YOU NOT TO PANIC. So my husband could see from the outside that I was not on the verge of dangerous lows…but to my panicking mind I could not tell that…and there were a lot of moments of bad communication between us. I guess I bring this up mostly to let you know that you are not alone with this struggle. I’ve been on this path for 15+ years now, all with my husband, and it does come up sometimes. But we did work through it and are on the other side of it. [What I have found is that I really need to ignore my Dexcom bc mine lies to me A LOT. I’m not saying people should not use them, but I get all of my useful information from my Contour meter. My Dexcom and my Freestyle just give such erratic information that I really just need to manage myself with my Contour. I’m way better at my diabetes than the fancier tools are. And that has solved my panic attacks bc I’m staying in the driver’s seat. Which has lead to my ability to take my kids swimming, hiking, playing tennis, etc all summer solo without freaking out about the What Ifs that my Dexcom inspires.]
I have no question in my mind based on how you present yourself that you will take care of you just fine. I am not worried about that at all. Moments will be hard and scary and suck some, but you will be fine. I hope that things with your partner smooth out and functionally improve so that when you hit rough patches with your diabetes off and on that you guys can work together during those times in a healthy way, whatever that looks like for you two.
There is no right answer for everyone. But it needs to be collaborative in some way…and it cannot require you to minimize your feelings about your disease…and it cannot require you to excuse him repeatedly if he chooses not to be conventionally supportive. He will have to pick a door and so will you. But you will be fine.
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Thank you very much, Allison. I needed to read all of that and just having you share with me made me feel a lot better about where I’m at, where he’s at, wherever the hell we are together right now.
I need to put my Dexcom reads down, too. I’m trying to understand that it’s reasonable I keep looking at it, but it seems you and I are both similar in that regard. I do hope that him and I can continue to grow through this both together and apart, like we have been for the past 3 years. I know that communication will help over time, and in turn boundaries will form from those conversations.
It’s just really nice to know that I’m not alone and I thank God that I found this place, all of you are just so wonderful. I appreciate all of you so much.
I hope your anxiety subsides a bit, I too get painfully fearful I’m going to have a low - and you’re right - panic attacks mimic lows to a T!
Look at us all, growing and helping each other. It’s so beautiful I could cry.
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