So what exactly is the meaning of lovesickness, and what should you do if you’re going through it now? We spoke to the experts to get some answers. Yep, lovesickness is a real thing, and it’s no fun at all when you’re the one going through it.

You’re experiencing “withdrawal from the pleasure hormones like dopamine that the brain releases during love,” Cook-McKay explains. It can come with feelings of real anxiety and distress, because your brain chemistry itself is altered in this state. Lovesickness is a real psychological state characterized by “intense longing” for someone, often after a breakup or unrequited love, says therapist Lauren Cook-McKay, LMFT, vice president of marketing at Divorce Answers. So if you’re someone who is currently put off by dating someone with a chronic illness, reevaluate your idea of a relationship.But lovesickness is more than just that dreamy feeling of thinking about your crush. These are all things that require a person to be emotionally and physically supportive. But other things could happen too, that equally need support - you could lose your job, become pregnant, be kicked out of your house. If you’ve put off dating someone because they are chronically ill, you’re not ready for a real relationship.Ī person can fall ill at any point, whether they were ‘healthy’ at the start of your relationship or not. Because that person might just be the perfect person for you. It’s not something that should put you off of getting to know someone.

And you need to care for them when things are bad for them, too - regardless of whether it’s health-related or not.ĭating someone with a chronic illness isn’t something you should see as a chore. You are someone they love and want to care for when times are bad. To the right person, you are not a burden. I wish I had left my last relationship sooner, because I now know what it feels like to be with someone who doesn’t make me feel like there’s a ‘catch’ to dating me.Īnd I wish other people with chronic illnesses get to experience that feeling, too. He accepts me as I am and never makes me feel like I am letting him down or whether he would be better off without me. He has been there through every hospital appointment, every hospital stay, and he looks after me and our baby when I’m not feeling good. We’ve been together for 18 months now, and not once has he made me feel like a burden. To him, it was just part of the package that he was interested in. It was just something I lived with, that I couldn’t change. He didn’t even make a big deal out of it. My partner was incredibly supportive as soon as I told him. I wish it wasn’t that way, but for most of us, it is. You set yourself up for rejection so you don’t have to reveal yourself by getting sick later, and risking going through the heartbreak of a breakup later on down the line. You feel like you have to disclose it early on because you feel obligated to give them the option to leave before you’ve even started dating. When I met my current partner, and the father of my baby, I remember waiting a couple of weeks to tell him about my health condition.

I spent ages thinking if I wasn’t chronically sick, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.īut I realized that if someone couldn’t be with me because I have a chronic health condition, it wasn’t a relationship I needed.īut despite realizing this, I was still scared to date again. I went through all of the usual emotions: blaming myself, wondering how I could’ve stopped the inevitable breakup, and how I could have fixed the relationship.

People who love to be sick