The Unexpected Threesome: Me, You & Your Cancer
The Unexpected Threesome:
Me, You & Your Cancer
For so long, humans have othered individuals we deem as sick. What happens when society “others” our sexy-ass partner/s because of cancer?
Simple: We see them as too frail and vulnerable to be worthy of pleasure.
Imagine getting diagnosed with a life-threatening disease and having to deal with pity from coworkers, friends, and even strangers at the grocery store. Would you want to hear and see those same things from your partner/s? No. You would want – among other things – your partner/s to make your toes curl in all the ways they had before the diagnosis, not to be met with a look of sorrow instead of lust.
Sexual wellness is essential for overall health, but society has taught us that individuals with cancer do not yearn and crave pleasure. This is socially constructed and enforced asexuality, an issue that disabled individuals of all kinds have experienced throughout time. You have the agency to challenge this issue by encouraging forms of intimacy that bring forth feelings of lust, love, and pleasure between you and your partner with cancer.
Intimacy might change.
Your partner may or may not want to have sex for many reasons when they have cancer. This might be an obvious change in intimacy within the relationship. Touch between the two of you may also change, and could become unsexy if/when you clean them up after they get sick from their chemotherapy treatment. This does not mean that intimacy and pleasure need to stop existing in your relationship.
Intentional touch is a mindful practice of contact, which encourages the maintenance of intimacy and pleasure-based behaviors. How might you be able to create intentional touches that evoke intimacy when touch has become part of caretaking? These practices may look like stroking your partner/s knee, hand-holding, or a sensual spa day, but can also be so much more. One option to consider is that a somatic sex educator and bodyworker can help guide you through intentional touch and coax intimacy between you and your partner/s.
Being the support system is a heavyweight.
Providing care is a vital task in every relationship, but cancer will have you doing more than just role-playing a sexy nurse. Being a caregiver for a partner can be a challenge, even for those who include the “in sickness and in health” line in their vows. Besides the physical demands mentioned earlier, you may also feel the pressure of being the mental and emotional support system for your partner. These things may make it difficult to find arousal amongst the stress, causing you to distance yourself from intimacy with your partner.
So what can you do? Having a support system of your own, whether that's other partners of cancer patients, a therapist, or support groups, can help ease the burden it places on your health. Some mindful changes may help, such as recognizing how empowering it can be to care for another who previously or typically does caregiving in various ways. Combining this with that intentional touch can help with the intimacy of your relationship as well as feeling supported by your partner.
No one expects cancer to be easy, but it certainly does not have to be the separating force between you and your partner/s. Nor should you or them give up pleasure because of cancer's presence.
-Brooklynn “Bk” Rhodes-Tumlin