Weird hangup - help me understand

[BarchesterTowels]

I love my wife dearly, we have been together over a decade and have one son. We are very happy together. But there's one quirk of hers that I struggle to understand or cope with and I hope somebody can help me see what it's about.

Basically she's really weird about illnesses - her own or mine. If she's feeling under the weather she won't tell me or even admit it unless I'm really persistent. She can (and in the past, has) been feeling really awful and in need of antibiotics and bed rest and she still won't say anything. Only if she realises she actually needs medical attention will she say anything. It's as if she's ashamed of being ill.

The same applies in reverse if I'm ill. She won't acknowledge that I have symptoms unless they appear alarming, acts without interest if I say I'm feeling unwell. I've come to learn that life is easiest if I say nothing and just get on with things. The exception is if it's our son who's unwell, then she's a model parent and sympathetic as they come.

I have asked her if she's aware of doing this and tried to discuss it with her (I am only interested in her welfare, after all) but she shuts down the conversation every time I try.

Possibly relevant background: she's a doctor and sees some of the sickest patients in a deprived area where serious disease is rife.

I have no idea how to deal with this or even understand it. Does anybody have experience of anything similar?

Maybe because she's a doctor seeing these terrible cases, her perspective on being ill is that unless severely unwell, just get on with it. It's all relative, isn't it? If you're seeing multiple people really suffering - and then you've got a headache or your partner does, it probably doesn't seem worth making a fuss over.

Maybe she suffers a bit of compassion fatigue from working with patients all day?

At least she's great with your child.

Until you said she was a doctor, I was going to ask if in her childhood she had people dismissing her needs.

However I suspect that she not only sees really ill people, but also people who she may consider are wasting resources because they go to the doctor over anything and everything.

She may feel that if she inwardly criticises these people, then she can’t be a hypocrite herself and go to bed with a cold. She probably feels the same about you.

Maybe she clams up because a) doctors should be ministering angels and should never resent their patients and if she said this, you may think her cold, and b) she doesn’t want to encourage it in you, but feels it may not go down well if she’s too blunt to you.

As a doctor she knows that children’s health can go down really quickly, and should always be taken seriously.

Why is this a problem? She's a grown woman, and a doctor no less, that can take care of herself so why should she tell you every time she's feels a bit ill? What would you be able to do anyway?

As for her being 'unsympathetic' to you... personally there is nothing more boring than listening to other people's mild health complaints, and I imagine being a doctor, she gets a bit of empathy fatigue from that day to day. Therefore doesn't want to listen to you, a grown adult, moan about his cold. You said she takes notice when your symptoms are concerning so is your problem she's not mumming you enough? Ick.

You child is a different situation as I assume they are young and can't necessarily advocate for themselves appropriately. Again you seem to want to be mummed like your son is. Gross. Call your own mother if you want that treatment for a tummy ache.

Ask yourself why you are so bothered by this. This is your problem not hers.

@Androideighteen Thank you for your unnecessarily aggressive and patronising reply. You seem intent on seeing bad intentions where none exist. As I hope the kinder commenters will realise, my post was motivated mainly by concern for my wife, and her reluctance to admit to me when she is isn't feeling great and could use some time off. Notoriously she once tried to push on through a nasty bout of mastitis as if there wasn't a problem, when what she needed was antibiotics, and fast. If she tells me she's under the weather before it becomes painfully obvious, it's much easier for me to make sure she can rest up and leave everything to me. SAHD here by the way, so enough of your lazy assumptions about me please.

You can have inflammatory mastitis and not infective mastitis. She probably knows a bit more about antibiotic resistance than you.

Can you explain then how you would have helped her with the mastitis? She's a doctor! Could you have got antibiotics for her? Could you have fed through it? How would you have 'made it easier' for her?

If she doesn't have a problem with how she is when she is ill why do you? I'm really struggling to see how it's weird. You seem determined make out her behaviour is wrong.

Also apart from wanting to be mothered by her (which I admit is a lazy, but not baseless, assumption about men) what other lazy assumption did I make? and why did you bring up the fact you're a SAHP? Was it to head off unbalanced division of labour allegations, of which there were none in my post? But it seems telling you needed to stress that without prompt...

Maybe I am being aggressive, but maybe I'm sick of men telling women that how they feel and behave is wrong.

I’ll come at this from a different perspective. I’m a therapist and if this presented in the session I would explore early life and what is what like when your wife was I’ll as a child.
hyper independence can show up after needs being ignored or dismissed when we are young.
obviously this is pure speculation as I don’t know your wife but this does happen with emotional neglect or parentification.

@AnotherVice It was infective mastitis, and because she didn't want to admit that anything was wrong she ended up having to call 111 over the weekend and spending several days in bed, which wouldn't have been necessary if she'd got the antibiotics a couple of days earlier when the first symptoms appeared.

@Androideighteen It's perfectly simple: I care about my wife and if she's feeling ropey I'd like her to have the opportunity to flop on the sofa with Netflix, go to bed, etc, or I can take the noisy child out of the house for a few hours to give her some peace and quiet. I've learnt to intuit to some extent when she's under the weather but I'm not infallible.

I don't need mothering, I just offer the example of my own health by way of illustration of how illness is almost a taboo subject with her in a way it notably isn't with anybody else I know. Also illustrated by the fact that she shuts down any discussion of the subject without engaging.

I mentioned the fact that I'm a SAHD because you appear so intent on casting me as the villain. I wanted to make clear that offering to do childcare, domestic chores etc is not some grand gesture I offer once in a blue moon. It's part of my daily life. And your lazy assumption about my wanting mothering lasted two paragraphs and included the words 'gross' and 'ick', both wholly unwarranted, so you can hardly be surprised at my taking umbrage.