When I first met my husband, Patrick, I already knew a bit about the pain he carried. The mutual friend who introduced us had told me about his experience with chronic pain. In 2014, Patrick underwent spinal cord surgery to remove a tumor between C1 and C5. A month later, he began living with what was eventually diagnosed as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). From the moment we met, I was immediately curious about this kind man who lived with such intense pain yet moved through life with incredible patience and presence.

I asked a lot of questions as our early relationship unfolded. I wanted to understand what his pain felt like and how he learned to embrace an experience in which his nervous system was constantly signaling physical pain. And if I’m being truthful, part of me wanted to understand because I hoped there was something I could do to make it better.

But what I didn’t anticipate at the time is that loving someone in pain would teach me something very different. It would require me to stop trying to change his experience and instead learn how to meet him inside of it.

Understanding a Pain I Couldn’t See

In much of the work I do with clients, there’s a clear sense that emotions and sensations naturally ebb and flow in waves. They arrive, intensify, and eventually change. It took me time to understand that Patrick’s pain is a constant companion that never eases up or disappears. What changes is his capacity to be with it. There are days when he sits in silent meditation for long stretches. And every night, his central nervous system plunges him into an abrupt and disruptive sleep pattern that rarely lasts more than five to six hours a night.

At first, I saw those changes as indications that the pain was becoming worse. But Patrick helped me understand that what I was witnessing was a change in how much inner reserve he had available to be in relationship with his pain, while also meeting the demands of daily life.

It took me time to accept that no matter how many questions I ask or how deeply I want to understand, I’ll never fully know what it’s like to be in Patrick’s body. But I eventually realized that I didn’t need to. With every conversation we have, and each time Patrick explains what’s happening in his inner world, I can walk alongside him on his journey with deeper empathy than the day before.

When Love Wants to Fix What Hurts

One of the hardest things for me to confront was my own desire to ease Patrick’s pain.

I used to tell him that if I could ask the Divine for one wish, and removing his physical pain wasn’t an option, I would wish for him to have a full night of peaceful sleep.

It was heartbreaking to watch him go night after night with so little rest and repair. In the first few years of our relationship, I longed for Patrick to have a different experience than the one he was having.

Even physical affection required me to reconsider what loving him looked like. Patrick and I are naturally affectionate, but the condition of CRPS causes Patrick’s body to engage in what is often a circuitous and uncertain process for interpreting and integrating physical touch. Together, we learned to shift our pace to allow his body to manage the waves of sensory input such that pleasure outpaces discomfort.

I also turned my attention toward other love languages and expressions of care. More importantly, I had to recognize how easily our desire to help someone we love can become a singularly self-guided endeavor to solve a problem that doesn’t necessarily exist in their reality.

Patrick remembers that adjustment, too. But over time, he helped find acceptance and peace with the knowledge that his physical pain is ever present without the need or expectation for me to offer a fix or remedy.

That was difficult for me. I wanted love to include sacrificial acts of service, but Patrick was teaching me that sometimes love simply means staying present.

Learning to Be Present Alongside Pain

Patrick has been a patient guide and teacher. He’s invited me to lean into discomfort, sit in moments of heartbreak, and remain curious with an open heart about the unexpected transformation that can come when we surrender to physical and emotional pain without adding a story that generates unnecessary suffering.

I still have days of resistance. But I’ve also learned to become a compassionate witness to Patrick’s day-to-day experience and remain open to what we might discover when we’re willing to turn toward what is unfolding rather than away from it.

Patrick and I have learned to flow through the frequencies and currents of pain together, which has shattered my early and off-target perception that he is suffering and I am a helpless witness.

That distinction changed our relationship. I may not be able to change Patrick’s physical experience, but we’ve created a threshold that invites me to come alongside him and enter his experience.

In this way, we created the conditions for me to help carry his pain, hold and comfort him, and experience a co-integration of our mutual discomfort with love and empathy. And perhaps most importantly, I can remind him that he’s not alone.

Staying Curious About Each Other’s Experience

There wasn’t one breakthrough conversation that suddenly taught me how to understand Patrick’s pain. We’ve been in a constant dialogue of vulnerability and curiosity from the moment we met.

As we enter our second year of marriage, and sixth year of relationship, I continue to ask Patrick questions about what he’s experiencing. I’ve learned to honor the way he sits with my questions for a while. Eventually, sometimes a day or two later, he’ll write me a poem or an essay that brings me into a deeper state of appreciation and understanding.

While I can never fully know what it’s like to live in Patrick’s body, I can relate to the spiritual journey he is on. My own experiences with trauma have taught me what can happen when we stop turning away from difficult sensations and emotions.

In my mid-twenties, while navigating significant PTSD, I participated in a group play therapy session with non-speaking children with autism. At that point in my life, I was fairly dissociated much of the time. I couldn’t seem to access my anger. Instead, I was fine. Just fine.

That day, a six-year-old boy gave me a master class in embracing rage and pain. Something unexpected happened when I opened my heart to feeling with him. Time seemed to slow, and we entered a different state of awareness in which what we carried in our hearts for one another felt remarkably clear.

That experience has stayed with me. It taught me that when we surrender and turn toward pain, instead of trying to escape it, we can sometimes move beyond what the mind thinks it needs to grasp onto for control and enter a different kind of relationship with ourselves and one another.

We’re Not Looking to Be Fixed

Among the most profound lessons I’ve learned so far in my relationship with Patrick is simple: stay curious. Don’t make assumptions about what you think another person is experiencing.

Instead, ask questions. Create enough space to explore what’s happening together.

This is especially important when both people in a relationship are carrying pain. Pain can come from our past, from something happening in the present, or from fear about what might happen in the future. It may be physical, emotional, or something we don’t yet have words for.

When both people are hurting, it can be tempting to draw comparisons. Whose pain is greater? Whose need is more urgent? Whose understanding of what happened is correct?

Connection rarely grows from deciding whose experience deserves more space. It grows when both people are allowed to have an experience without requiring the other person’s experience to disappear.

I often teach active reflective listening to my clients for this reason. Listening carefully and asking open questions creates room for genuine understanding instead of pulling us into the familiar loop of who is right, who is wrong, or whose perspective matters more.

It’s easier said than done, but I return again and again to this reminder: We’re not looking to be fixed. We’re looking to be seen and understood. We want to know that we’re not alone with the ebb and flow of pain and joy.

Building Resilience Together

Patrick’s relationship with pain has evolved tremendously over the last 13 years. He describes his earliest years with CRPS as a season of fear and fighting, followed by years of recovery and repair. Today, he describes himself as being in a season of freedom and discovery, even though the pain itself is still an inconvenient truth.

As Patrick puts it, “Pain is no longer an adversary to confront. Pain is simply part of my story.”

I think relationships ask us to practice something similar. We can’t promise the people we love a life without pain. We can’t undo what happened before we met them or protect them from what’s happening now.

But what we can do is become more curious about what each of us carries. We can resist the urge to fix, minimize, compare, or assume. We can ask questions and listen to the answers. We can learn when to reach out to one another and when the most loving thing is simply to sit alongside an experience we cannot change.

Slowly, conversation by conversation, we can remind one another of something Patrick has taught me better than anyone: We never achieve the best version of ourselves in isolation.

Sometimes resilience isn’t about becoming strong enough to carry everything alone. Sometimes it begins when we realize we don’t have to.