I’m Afraid My Health Problems Will Ruin Our Marriage

What this episode is about

The main topic addresses the emotional and relational challenges faced by an individual dealing with serious health issues, including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, POTS, and endometriosis. Key points include the struggle to balance marital responsibilities while managing health complications and the fear of potential resentment from a spouse due to ongoing changes in lifestyle and mobility.

Key takeaways

• Life isn't static; it's a constantly rebooting operating system—grieve the loss, but embrace the updates.
• Navigating health struggles is a duet; sometimes one partner leads, but both must learn the choreography.
• When your body betrays you, reality becomes a rollercoaster—hold on tight and find joy in the dips.
• Optimism is overrated; pragmatic realism helps survive life's unpredictable plot twists with grace.
• Marriage in adversity is like group therapy—spiraling together can be comforting, but mutual grounding is key.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Dr. John Delony (Host) · 10 min speaking
• Madison (Guest) · 7 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Alex (Brett Cooper's husband), endometriosis, POTS, ballroom dancing
2. 3:00 – 6:00: grief, endometriosis, body, exploratory surgeries
3. 6:00 – 9:00: Alex (Brett Cooper's husband), adult romantic relationships, child brain, catastrophe
4. 9:00 – 12:00: Alex (Brett Cooper's husband), body
5. 12:00 – 15:00: Alex (Brett Cooper's husband), weekly meeting, medical complications

Notable quotes from "I’m Afraid My Health Problems Will Ruin Our Marriage"

• And then the second one is POTS. And then the third one is endometriosis.

  about endometriosis · at 1:32

• I find that I struggle. I'm struggling like with grieving the loss of my old life because I won't be able to get what I had back.

  about grief · at 3:13

• It's like your daily but being betrayed by the one thing you're supposed to count on which is your body, right?

  about body · at 4:29

• Health, he's had to take over like a lot of like cleaning the house. That used to be something that I did. and then he has to like work more hours because, we max out our health insurance. He never done that before.

  about Alex (Brett Cooper's husband) · at 7:04

• So, I would even transfer like it's not even little girl. it was a revelation to me that adult romantic relationships simply reuse the I'm trying to say this in a not dorky…

  about adult romantic relationships · at 8:28

• And I can tell you as a husband who's had to take care of a wife who's had medical complications over the years.

  about medical complications · at 14:19

• The thing you can do is keep both feet in your boat and set up a daily, if not weekly, especially weekly, especially monthly.

  about weekly meeting · at 15:14

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Alex (Brett Cooper's husband) — Person · Referenced key relationship (caregiver spouse) · 6 mentions · first at 0:27
  He is central to Madison's fear of future resentment and is described as realistic/present, taking on more work and household duties due to her illness.

Concepts & topics

• grief — Concept · Core emotional process / theme · 1 mention · first at 3:34
  Frames Madison's adjustment to losing her former abilities and identity; described as ongoing ('slow moving train') rather than a single event.
• endometriosis — Concept · Core medical condition discussed · 2 mentions · first at 1:34
  One of Madison's diagnoses; it drives pain, uncertainty, and fertility concerns, leading to planned exploratory surgery to assess internal damage.
• adult romantic relationships — Concept · Core relational framework · 1 mention · first at 8:33
  Used to explain how childhood family dynamics are replayed in marriage, shaping fear, guilt, withdrawal/overcompensation, and potential resentment cycles.
• body — Concept · Core framing device (illness as betrayal) · 2 mentions · first at 4:19
  The host frames the disorientation of chronic illness as being 'betrayed' by one's own body, intensifying grief and identity disruption.
• child brain — Concept · Explanatory model for fear response · 1 mention · first at 8:12
  Madison attributes her fear of abandonment to childhood experiences; the host reframes it as an adult nervous-system script reused in marriage.
  Yeah. And so, it's not that I think that he's going to leave. I feel like the little child brain in Madison from when she was a kid, that's what she's seeing. oh, all these warning signs are popping up and I don't know how to handle it.
• POTS — Concept · Core medical condition discussed · 1 mention · first at 1:32
  One of Madison's diagnoses; it contributes to disability and is explicitly tied to questions about pregnancy feasibility.
  And then the second one is POTS. And then the third one is endometriosis.
• exploratory surgeries — Concept · Near-term medical plan / uncertainty reducer · 1 mention · first at 4:59
  Planned procedures to assess endometriosis severity and internal damage; also highlights uncertainty and ongoing medical burden.
  We are actually going to be having some experiment, not experimental, but like exploratory surgeries to see in December.
• weekly meeting — Concept · Recommended relationship practice · 1 mention · first at 13:32
  The host recommends structured check-ins to prevent secrecy, surface frustration safely, and reduce fear-driven distancing in the marriage.
• ballroom dancing — Concept · Symbol of lost identity/ability · 1 mention · first at 1:52
  Represents Madison's former active life and shared marital activity now limited by illness, intensifying grief and relationship-role changes.
  Very active person. big into dancing and things like that. I've ended up not being able to do dancing anymore. Me and my husband did ballroom dancing for years.
• catastrophe — Concept · Cognitive/emotional pattern (catastrophizing) · 1 mention · first at 6:24
  Madison describes her mind going toward catastrophe; her husband helps keep her grounded, but both can spiral under stress.
  Yes. Yes. That's a very good way to describe him. But he also is, he's kind of like me where sometimes when things get to be too much, he can spiral. And so then we're kind of spiraling together.
• health insurance — Concept · Practical stressor affecting marriage/finances · 1 mention · first at 7:15
  Used to explain increased financial pressure: they 'max out' insurance, requiring the husband to work more hours and shifting household burdens.
  Be something that I did. and then he has to like work more hours because, we max out our health insurance. He never done that before.
• medical complications — Concept · Host credibility reference / shared experience · 1 mention · first at 14:22
  The host references caring for a wife with medical complications to validate the caregiving role as meaningful and honorable, countering Madison's fear of resentment.
• control alt delete — Concept · Metaphor for identity reset · 1 mention
  Captures the abrupt reorientation required when chronic illness changes capabilities and self-concept.
  Yeah. It's been hard. Yeah, it's it's not been hard. It's been like reorienting, right? It's it's like control altdelete on the person that you used to be.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:06 With all of my health stuff that I've been having going on over the years, I've had to take a more um lack approach to kind of just everything in my life, whether that's my job, my finances, um my my marriage, um my household duties that I took on when we first me and my husband first got together. Um, and one of the things that kind of just eats away at me is I like am trying to balance all of these new changes without my husband resenting me in the future. And I'm just wondering how do I prevent him from resenting me,

0:46 you know, like 5 years down the road. There's a lot in that question right there.

0:53 Yeah, there is. Um, so tell me about your health. What's been going on? Um, so about three years ago, I had some major health issues come up where there was no and insight. It was just doctor appointment after doctor appointment after doctor appointment and nobody knew what was going on. Um, fast forward about a year and a half, we fig finally figured out what was going on, but they were like, "We don't know why you have this." Like, it doesn't make sense.

1:23 What's the diagnosis? Um there's actually three. So the first diagnosis is Eller Damlo syndrome.

1:31 Okay. And then the second one is POTS. And then the third one is endometriosis.

1:37 You're in a lot of pain pretty regularly. Huh. Yeah. I I kind of over the years I was a very active person. Um big into dancing and things like that. I've ended up not being able to do dancing anymore. Me and my husband did ballroom dancing for years.

1:55 Mhm. And now I can't do that. I can't really go on hikes. In fact, like my doctor's ordering me a walker and I've had to use like wheelchairs and stuff. So, I've completely lost a lot of my mobility.

2:07 What is What is the prognosis look like? Is this degenerative or is there a treatment plan that you can be a part of?

2:14 It it's genetic. So, it's progressive. Okay. So, um, basically my connective tissues in my joints are just super lax. Um, the collagen is not formed correctly in the joints and pretty much anywhere in my body. So, it causes a bunch of health problems, but the big issue is my joints are just not stabilized. So, I have a lot of falls.

2:36 Yeah. And with age dislocation, the it just gets worse. Sure. Yeah. I hate this for you.

2:45 Yeah. It's been hard. Yeah, it's it's not been hard. It's been like reorienting, right? It's it's like control altdelete on the person that you used to be.

2:56 Yeah. Um, sorry. Uh, no, you're okay. It's It's one of those things that I, you know, I listen to your show pretty frequently and you always talk about like how you have to kind of like grieve

3:08 the loss of things. Like whenever you have a baby, you have to grieve your old marriage. You have to grieve everything. I I find that I struggle. I'm struggling like with grieving the loss of my old life because I won't be able to get what I had back.

3:22 I can do physical therapy and try like experimental surgeries and stuff, but that's not going to fix the problem.

3:30 Yeah. Yeah. It's tough when grief is like a slowm moving train, right? There's not a period at the end of the of the loss. It's like a like a slow drip loss, right? Mhm.

3:49 And I guess it's it's almost I I I don't know because I've never been in your shoes from the outside. Um if if somebody had done this to you, at least you have somewhere external to point at. And it's got to be even further disorienting dealing with the reality of the loss of the things you used to be able to do and in many ways the person quote unquote that you were when the enemy is your own body, right?

4:25 My goodness. It it's very disorienting to say the least. It's like your daily but being betrayed by the one thing you're supposed to count on which is your body, right? Do you have kids?

4:38 Um, we want to have kids, but with everything going on, we've had to put kids on the back burner for the last three or four years.

4:46 Yeah. Are you even able to have kids at this point with with POTS and indometriosis?

4:53 Um, we are actually going to be having some experiment, not experimental, but like exploratory surgeries to see in December.

5:02 Just how just how tough stuff is. I'm sorry. What? Just to see how what the damage is internally right?

5:12 Um, yeah, pretty much. The endometriosis, we don't really know how like how bad it is. Like my MRI Yeah, they know like the MRI is showing that I most likely have endometriosis in quite a bit of different locations, but until they do that exploratory surgery, they don't really know for certain. But it's like, yeah, you you have all the symptoms, you have the whole little criteria list and your MRI showing it.

5:38 So, tell me about this guy you married. He is He's fantastic. I'm [clears throat] honestly I'm so lucky because he always puts me in front of everything that he does and he's very goal oriented which is nice because during this time like it was really hard to kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel and he he's not really like I wouldn't say that he's optimistic but he's like very like okay well you know we don't know yet if this is going to be causing infertility we don't know yet if you're going to end up having to have this replaced or that replaced or if you're going to have to have this joint surgery. So, he kind of keeps me sane when my head just goes towards like catastrophe, which is very lovely.

6:28 Yeah. Kind of almost sometimes even better than optimistic is realistic. Yes. Yes. He's very realistic. That's a good word. [snorts] And he

6:38 maybe even different than realistic. He's very present. like this is what we know today

6:44 and we might have things to be sad about tomorrow but let's be here today. Yes. Yes. That's a very good uh way to describe him. But he also is, you know, he's kind of like me where sometimes when things get to be too much, he can spiral. And so then we're kind of spiraling together.

7:02 Yeah. And he unfortunately because of my health, he's had to take over like a lot of like cleaning the house. That used to be something that I did. Um, and then he has to like work more hours because, you know, we we max out our health insurance. He never done that before. So, he has to make up like the money that, you know, I'm losing by not being at work because I have to take a lot of work off with my health.

7:26 Yeah. And everything like it I think everything just piles up and I don't want him to resent marrying me.

7:32 Yeah. If that makes sense. Like I know that sounds silly. Not not at all. It doesn't doesn't sound Doesn't sound silly at all. In honor of your husband, let me ask you this question. Like what evidence do you have that he's heading towards resentment?

7:47 I don't have any, okay, for him, but I grew up in a very tumultuous household and like if like all the all the men that I had in my life when I was growing up, like my my dad especially, if something went wrong, he would just leave.

8:05 Yeah. And so, like, it's not that I think that he's going to leave. I feel like the little child brain in Madison from when she was a kid, that's what she's seeing. Like, oh, all these warning signs are popping up and I don't know how to handle it. And I feel guilty because I feel like I'm going to be pushing him away from me when I need him with me.

8:28 So, I would even transfer like it's not even little girl. Um, it was a revelation to me that adult romantic relationships simply reuse the the I'm trying to say this in a not dorky way. It they it uses the same road map that was established when you were a kid. And so if you have a like with your with your parents, your mom and your dad, however that relationship was formed, the the highways that were developed in your head that was that relationship, your brain doesn't make new ones with your husband. It just reuses those roads.

9:07 And so if you have exits built into that highway system, cuz dad would just bail on you, then it's not just an inner child. It's in a It's a grown-up with real fears baked into your nervous system right?

9:22 And I'm telling you that just so you know, you're not crazy. And that doesn't make him bad. And it doesn't make him like your dad, but it just

9:33 I know he's not my dad. Well, I Well, I know. But but but I don't want you cuz here's where it happens. You start to feel a certain way in your body. Oh, this guy's going to do it too. And then you feel guilty that you had that thought about this guy and so you pull away a little bit or you overcompensate a little bit,

9:54 right? And then weirdly you create an environment that makes it hard for him to get to you. And then it it it's how it's how patterns recreate themselves. And then he begins to feel not that I don't have the honor of a lifetime to take care of a hurting wife, but that I can't get to her. She keeps she keeps bailing on me or when I get close, she's electric. She comes at me. You get what I'm saying?

10:25 I did. And so some of this is dropping your shoulders and saying the way I feel is exactly right because my body's run this script before. I feel that and then I'm going to consciously go through on a minute by minute sometimes hour by hour sometimes day by day is this true now and for you it's not and so I think the scariest part the scariest thing you for me you can do in this relationship at this moment is to have any sort of secrets between the two of you is when you're feeling that you don't have an opportunity that that the closeness y'all are going to have is you putting stuff on the table and honoring him enough to let him respond to it.

11:18 Mhm. And giving him permission to be super frustrated. That's okay, too. That's right. Also,

11:27 you get what I'm saying? Yeah, I get what you're saying. And I know you don't want him to be frustrated and you don't want him to be sad. that his crazy, fun, super sexy, dancing, hiking wife is here. He gets to be frustrated there. I I would think something's wrong with him if he wasn't like h and does he get up and feel that and then go do the next right thing, which is to lean back in towards loving you recklessly. And that in and of itself is amazing. It's when either of you get hung up on the I shouldn't have felt this way.

12:00 No, you should. and are we going to go do the next right thing? And so the the scary thing for you is and I'll put this in the ether and here's my hope for saying this out loud is it frees you. Okay? It could immobilize you. No pun intended. My best my best oldest friend on the planet is in a wheelchair. So I'm just trying to have some fun here. Um is is is this right? Um, you can do nothing to prevent him from deciding he's going to resent you, which stinks.

12:42 And so that's heavy. I know. My hope is that frees you because if you start right now trying to quote unquote prove that you're still worthy of being his wife and worthy of having his love, then that fundamentally alters your your marriage way deeper than I don't dance anymore or I don't hike anymore. You get what I'm saying? The challenge for you is to show up and say, "I'm still got I still have both feet in this boat. Until you show me behaviors of language, until you show me that you're not all in too, I'm all in."

13:23 Okay? And on those days I get scared like I'm too much. I'm afraid you're just going to walk out and leave. I'm not going to hold that inside. We're going to have a weekly meeting just to see like how we doing. We still love each other, right? Do we still even deeper than that, do we still like each other? And then that becomes you. Okay, these things are off the table now. I can't do these things. I physically can't do these things. And you hear me on my show a lot. I'm always telling people like, "No, you can. You can go not be angry or not scream and yell. You can't do those.

13:54 You can't." Right. You can't go hiking. Yeah. And so that's off the table. Then you look across the table at this guy and say, "How can I love you right now?" And in this new bounded context we have what does love look like

14:15 and let him speak to it. And I can tell you as a husband who's had to take care of a wife who's had medical complications over the years. It's my single greatest honor in my life. More so than having kids. Be honest honest with me. Do you think he's going to leave?

14:34 No. Okay. Are you almost more worried that resent him? Yeah. Do you almost Are you almost more worried he's going to stay?

14:43 No, I want him to stay. I know you want him to stay, but are you almost more worried that he's going to stay and just resign himself to sadness and resentment?

14:53 I think he would. If he was sad and resented, he would stay anyway. But that's cuz I know that he loves me more than anything.

15:02 Yeah. But I don't want him to get to that point either. Okay. The challenge for you is you can't stop him from feeling how he's going to feel.

15:13 Mhm. The thing you can do is keep both feet in your boat and set up a a daily, if not weekly, especially weekly, especially monthly. Do we have a practice where we put everything on the table? This week was a good week. Let's celebrate that together. This week was a good week for me. Not a good week for me. Let's celebrate that together.

15:40 Okay. He's going to maybe need to go hiking with his buddies cuz that's who he is. He's an outdoors goofball, right? Just like me. And that means you're going to have to say, "The best way I can love you today is to tell you, go get your friends and y'all go hiking." And when he walks out that door, you get to be sad and weep. Not at him, but for you, because that stinks, man.

16:11 And when he comes back in, you can choose to take that frustration and angst, I've been stuck inside all day, and dump it on him. Oh, it must be nice. Or you can say, dude, I'm so happy you got to get out of here. That's the that's the part of this you get to manage. I definitely need to work on that,

16:35 right? And I don't want you to ever feel sad. Uh I I told a guy recently, we were walking through a parking lot after a show late at night, and I looked at him and I said, "Hey," he's a friend of mine. I said, "Hey, there are no bad feelings here." He was going through a tough time with his spouse. I said, "There's no bad feelings. You're allowed to have them. You're allowed to feel helpless. You're allowed to feel frustrated. You're allowed to feel angry. You're allowed to be pissed off. All those things are right and good.

17:08 What matters in those moments is what's your next right move? What's your next right action? Thank you for the call. I'll be here all the way through. If he wants to call me, tell him. Call me. I'd love to talk to him. You both are pretty special.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "I’m Afraid My Health Problems Will Ruin Our Marriage"?

Dr. John Delony (Host), Madison (Guest).

What is "I’m Afraid My Health Problems Will Ruin Our Marriage" about?

The main topic addresses the emotional and relational challenges faced by an individual dealing with serious health issues, including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, POTS, and endometriosis. Key points include the struggle to balance marital responsibilities while managing health complications and the fear of potential resentment from a spouse due to ongoing changes in lifestyle and mobility.

What is mentioned in this The Dr. John Delony Show episode?

14 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Alex (Brett Cooper's husband), grief, endometriosis, adult romantic relationships, body, child brain. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "I’m Afraid My Health Problems Will Ruin Our Marriage"?

The episode runs 17 min; the transcript is about 2,940 words in 53 timestamped sections.

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