Catch 22, Man’s Role as Breast Cancer Caregiver

I was divorced and dating during July of 2006. I was thirty-six and surfing the Internet dating game. Internet surfing was fraught with large waves and wipeouts. In May of 2006 that all changed. I met a wonderful man who was handsome, charismatic and made me laugh. It was like revisiting college. We had giddy dates, greeting cards hidden in special places and romantic dinners at romantic places.

Three months later my alien invasion (cancer) entered the equation.  I weighed all of the pros and cons of dating someone while going through treatment.  As the con column grew, the pro column looked like a winter swimming pool, empty and full of debris.

I decided to let him back out gracefully and with dignity in tact. I took him to lunch and told him that I thought it would be best if we called it quits. When I was finished with treatment, if we both wanted to we could resume dating. He said, “okay”. I said, “okay”. Then he looked at me and said, “No, I’m just testing you. I wanted to see how you really felt by reading your eyes.” He proceeded to tell me that he wanted to go through treatment with me and support me during the treatment.

Here is where the Catch-22 part comes in to play. When you as a woman start to go through the debilitating process of going to war with your cancer, you grow weak. Man’s role goes from the “hunter” in which he was courting you and showing you how much he is interested in you, to “caregiver”. During this process the woman chemo patient is losing her hair, gaining weight, getting pale and lets not even broach the topic of hormones. We feel so bad about ourselves that all we really want is a man to be attracted to us and reassure us that we are still desired.  Man’s instinct is to take care of us and protect the woman going through the treatment.

The solution? There is not an easy one wrapped with a pretty bow. It is messy like finger painting. For me, I couldn’t pin point what was bugging me without many nights of self-reflection. When I figured out that the lack of being desired was hurting our relationship, I decided that we would need to raise our quantity and level of communication. Through many conversations we were able to air our sides of the story and reach level ground.

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