I fell out of love with my partner until he almost died.

This article contains mentions of hospitals, mortality, and chronic illness, and may trigger emetophobia in some readers.

As of December 01, 2022, my partner and I had been together for three and a half years. I don't know, really, when I started feeling distant from him: when I started feeling disconnected and unattached. In the summer of 2020, we moved in together. Since then, we've moved once more, to a small town about twenty minutes from where I grew up. I guess it's true about moving in with someone you're dating. After a while, we started to get on each other's nerves over small things, and I found myself feeling grumpy almost constantly when he was home. My partner is an opinionated, often condescending cisgender, disabled man. I'm a passive, easily manipulated transgender person. In a lot of ways, we didn't understand one another.

It's hard to put a finger on when, exactly, I began feeling different. A day came in which I abruptly discovered I'd been feeling taken advantage of for months, and I suppose it all just spiralled from there. I'm a person who never learned how to communicate properly, and this has always taken a toll on my long-term relationships. As far as emotional maturity goes, I'm very far behind most people my age - and for the longest time, I made this the problem of other people. I spent a lot of time expecting my partner to realize how I was feeling without me saying anything at all [and we all know that's not how relationships work]. I dug myself into a hole that eventually seemed too deep to climb back out of.

As a person with mental and chronic illnesses, my partner isn't always the most affectionate or motivated. When we first began dating in 2019, he was touchy and complimentary: two things that make me feel most loved. But like every relationship, we became comfortable around each other, and eventually stopped putting in so much effort to make one another feel loved. I became fixated on all the ways we were different, and I became aggravated by them. They're a two-way street, relationships. When I finally worked up the nerve to admit that I was upset about my partner never initiating affection, he was quick to point out that I'd stopped initiating, too. I don't know how much time it took for me to check out of the relationship. By late 2022, I'd begun feeling that we weren't romantically involved at all, and had just become platonic roommates.

I'm not great at expressing myself. I'm not a person who's particularly skilled at putting effort into things - and I'm a coward, stifling my negative feelings under facades of appeasement until they make me bitter towards people I care about. This year's Big Sickness forced me to step back and make a decision I'd been ignoring for months. Sometimes, relationships are uncomfortable. Sometimes, feelings are uncomfortable too. I don't like discomfort, or tough decisions. But at some point, it's necessary. I need to go to therapy, probably: another thing I've been procrastinating for months. Opening up is uncomfortable and definitely not my idea of a fun activity. Plus, I have situational mutism, which makes speaking to therapists hard, and expressing feelings all but impossible.

At some point in October or November, 2022 of this year, I became convinced I wanted to end my relationship. I was emotionally investing into other people, and sharing explicit images with strangers on the internet. Like I said, I'm a coward, and I'd rather drag out comfortable things than make a decision that's even slightly challenging. But neither of this deserved this, and I knew that. It was a waste of time for both of us for me to invest my time into a relationship I was no longer emotionally connected to. I put words in my partner's mouth; I projected my own insecurities and assumptions onto him in a way that convinced me he was only still with me out of familiarity. Lack of communication is one of the biggest relationship killers, and I was positively convinced I'd killed mine. Still, I wasn't upset about the thought of our relationship ending. I was more bothered more, I suppose, by the thought of starting over somewhere new. Couples fall out of love all the time. Sometimes, it's just easier to stay with someone out of routine or familiarity, or because it's scary to be alone.

At some point, my partner and I stopped complimenting each other. Home was a familiar place with a familiar person, and change was daunting. In all the weeks I spent thinking he was taking me for granted, I didn't think to consider that maybe I was taking him for granted, too. It's often hard to look at yourself as part of the problem. But the fact of life is that sometimes we are the toxic ones. I don't know a lot of things. Sometime, in the midst of neglecting and frustrating one another, we stopped acting like partners and started acting more like roommates. It didn't help that we rarely slept in the same room - I'd fall asleep in the quiet bedroom, and he'd prefer the noise and bustle of the living room. One day, I looked at him and was hit abruptly with the fact that I wasn't attracted to him anymore. I cared about him, sure, but it felt more like the way I cared about my best friend or my brother, and nothing more.

Feelings are strange and confusing. Our minds play tricks on us all the time, and I still can't wrap my head around how things can change so quickly. On the third of December, we both fell ill with a stomach bug my son had brought home from school, and (while I was sick for only a couple of days) my partner became unable to get around anywhere without falling over, and absolutely able to keep anything in his stomach. He has a plethora of health issues: type one diabetes, gastroparesis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, to name a few. I admit, I've been bitter about this in the past, on the days I felt more like a carer than a partner. I know this isn't fair. Maybe this bitterness made me a bad partner, or a selfish person. During the six days my partner spent in the hospital, I spent my time alone in introspection.

On the morning of December ninth, my mother-in-law arrived to take him to the emergency room, after he'd spent two days and nights straight vomiting and crying from fibro flairs. The night before, after I helped him undress and get into the bathtub, he'd said three words I hadn't heard in months, sending me into an emotional spiral.

I appreciate you.

Like always, the skeptical part of me wanted to doubt the complimentary things I'm told. Maybe he appreciated me because he had to, because he couldn't have gotten along in that moment without me. Maybe he appreciated me because he was sick and vulnerable, and this brought out emotions that wouldn't have been expressed otherwise. It's easy to be skeptical. Being told I'm appreciated takes a very short amount of time, but it changes my whole perspective on a relationship.

For a night a half a day, he was kept in emergency: attached to IV's and hopped up on painkillers and anti-nausea medications. Each time I visited him, once he had finally gotten a room, there was a new bag of IV fluid, and another heart monitor to gauge the pain in his chest, and an endless pile of vomit bags on the table beside his bed. Each time I visited, he checked in with me, asking how I was doing while he was in endless pain in a hospital bed. Maybe it was something about seeing him vulnerable and in pain that changed things. Each time he thanked me for coming, or rubbed my thigh while he was throwing up into a thin hospital bag, or asked me to rub his back, I loved him a little bit more. It's strange how that happens. I'd spent months avoiding contact, feeling miserable, wanting to break up (and then suddenly, I wanted to hold onto him and never let go).

After the second night he spent in the hospital, I returned home feeling sad. I don't remember the last time I'd actually cried, despite feeling sad quite often. There was a night, after I'd spent the afternoon visiting the hospital, that I began crying and couldn't stop. I can't really understand all the emotions that I was feeling at that time. Worry, of course. Sadness, sure. I hated myself: for my distance, for my lack of communication, for my brief encounters with random internet strangers. I don't know how to express these things out loud. I don't know how much time I wasted acting irritated and bitter, blaming him for my own issues, refusing to communicate my basic feelings to someone I was supposed to communicate everything to.

It sounds awful to admit out loud. We'd spent so much time living in comfort, forgetting to appreciate each other, content with the knowledge that we'd always both just be there. He'd spent nights away from the apartment many times before, and I'd never missed him until he was sick. Maybe I became fixated on mortality while he was away; maybe it was the reminder that people can die at any time, and you might not even see it coming. I know my partner never cared about dying. I know, during the times he's in the hospital, he could fall unconscious, and he wouldn't give a shit if he was revived or not. He's affectionate and emotionally open when he's sick. In a sick, morbid, twisted kind of way, I was eager for the love that oozed from him during health crises. Maybe this is super fucked up to admit. Maybe I'm a fucked up human. Either way, he never made me feel appreciated the way he did when he was sick.

On Wednesday, December 07, he was discharged from the hospital with a bag full of new medications, feeling much better than he had in a while. And while I'm glad to have him home, part of me is afraid our relationship will revert back to the way it was before: impersonal and distant. After all, relationships are a two-way-street. As twisted as it sounds, I'm almost thankful for this ordeal - because we both needed to be reminded that we love and appreciate each other, and I don't know how long it would have taken if he hadn't gotten sick. His first night home, we watched a movie and cuddled - something we hadn't done in months.

I feel refreshed, in a way. I feel determined and hopeful (but, at the same time, I need to remember to put in the effort I haven't really been putting in). It's not all him, after all. I feel understood and appreciated in a way I haven't for a very long time. It seems strange that my feelings could go from that to this over something so small. It feels suspicious, like my mind isn't something I should trust; it's finnicky and indecisive. I'd spent a lot of time pitying myself for feeling unloved and probably made my partner feel unloved in the process. Life works in mysterious ways. In the end, it always has a way of reminding me that the people surrounding me are (probably) here to stay.