My husband and I have been married for ten years. Three and a half of those years were spent inside a pediatric cancer diagnosis.

Marriage during pediatric cancer is one of the hardest assignments a couple can take on. Statistics suggest that families with a child in long-term medical treatment experience significant strain. We have felt all of it.

We have also come out of treatment with a marriage that is, in some ways, deeper than it was before. Not because cancer is good for marriages. It is not. But because we paid attention. We talked about it. We built small rhythms that held us when nothing else could.

This post is about those rhythms. It is also a love letter to my husband.

What we noticed early

In the first three months of treatment, our marriage almost disappeared into the medical schedule. We were two parents trying to keep a family running, a job running, a household running, and a child alive. We did not talk to each other about anything that was not logistics.

We checked in on the labs. We checked in on the calendar. We did not check in on each other.

By month four, I noticed that I did not know how my husband was doing. I had not asked in weeks. He had not asked me. We were operating side by side as logistics partners, not as a couple.

We had a conversation about it on a Saturday morning at the kitchen table. Both of us cried. We decided to build some rhythms back in.

The rhythms that held us

Sunday morning coffee

Every Sunday morning, before the kids woke up, we sat at the kitchen table with coffee. Twenty minutes. No phones. No agenda. Just a check-in. "How are you?" "How was your week?" "What was hard?" "What was good?"

This is the most important thing we did. Twenty minutes a week is not a lot. It was enough to keep our marriage in our line of sight.

A two-line text in the middle of every day

Around lunchtime most days, one of us would text the other. Not about the kids. Not about the schedule. A small thing. "Saw a dog that looked like our old neighbor's dog. Made me think of you." "Listening to that song you like." "How are you holding up?"

These texts were tiny. They kept the friendship part of our marriage alive in a season that was mostly running the marriage as a workplace.

One date a month, even if it was 90 minutes

We did not go out for elaborate dinners. We did not get away for weekends. What we did was carve out one small block a month that was just us. A walk after the kids went to bed. A coffee at the diner near our house. A movie on the couch with no phones.

Some months we missed it. Most months we made it. It mattered.

An agreement that we could not both be falling apart at the same time

We made a deal early on that if one of us was having a hard day, the other one would try to hold steady. We did not always succeed. We sometimes both fell apart on the same Thursday. But the agreement gave us a frame.

It also gave us permission to take turns. I had my hard days. He had his. We tried to give each other a soft place to land on those days.

A weekly call with a therapist

We started seeing a marriage counselor in month six. It was one of the best decisions we made. Having a third person to help us name the things we did not have words for was enormous. Cancer parenting is full of feelings that do not have a clean place to live. A counselor's office is one of the few places they can.

If your insurance does not cover it, ask your hospital social worker. Many pediatric oncology programs have partnerships with mental health providers who work with cancer families on a sliding scale.

Sex, gently

We are not going to write a sex column. We will say this. Long-term medical stress is hard on intimacy. We had to be patient with each other. We had to be honest about what we needed. We had to remind ourselves, sometimes out loud, that the marriage was bigger than the season we were in.

Forgiveness as a daily practice

We snapped at each other in clinic waiting rooms. We took out our exhaustion on each other. We said things we did not mean. We learned to forgive each other quickly, without making it a whole production. "I am sorry. I love you. Let's start again."

What we know now

Marriage during pediatric cancer requires being on the same team in a much more deliberate way than marriage outside of medical crisis does. The default of regular life lets you coast a little. Cancer does not let you coast.

We are coming out the other side of treatment with a marriage that has been tested in ways we would not have wished for. We are also coming out with a marriage that is more honest. More small-conversation-on-Sundays. More text-in-the-middle-of-the-day. More forgiveness-without-the-production.

A note for the cancer couple reading this

If your marriage feels strained right now, that is a normal response to a hard situation. You are not failing at marriage. You are doing marriage in one of the hardest classrooms there is.

Build small rhythms back in. Coffee on Sundays. A short text in the middle of the day. One date a month, even if it is 90 minutes. A counselor if you can swing it.

Be patient. Be honest. Forgive quickly. Hold each other's hand a little more than you did before.

Dina
Mom of Max | Founder, Maxwell’s Toy Shoppe
Childhood Cancer Advocate 💛

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