How to Protect Your Relationship.
Caring for aging parents can test even the strongest marriages. Whether the parents live with you or 2000 miles away, there can be resentment, jealousy or just not being on the same page.
In this interview, Kim and Mike Barnes of Parenting Aging Parents discuss the challenges that couples face when elder care becomes part of their lives. They are joined by Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S, a licensed clinical social worker supervisor from Just Mind Counseling. She shares her professional expertise and personal experience.
🌟 Topics Covered:
- Handling resentment when a spouse feels sidelined by caregiving duties
- The importance of open communication and setting healthy boundaries
- Strategies for self-care and keeping the marital relationship a priority
- Navigating the complexities when a parent with dementia lives with you
- Preparing for the emotional impact of losing a parent and how it affects the marriage
- When and how to seek professional counseling to support your relationship
Whether your parent is living with you, in assisted living, or miles away, balancing marriage and caregiving is no easy task. Learn practical advice on how to negotiate with your spouse, prioritize your relationship, and ensure both you and your partner feel supported during this challenging time.
If you’re feeling the strain of caring for an aging parent on your marriage, this interview offers valuable insights and actionable steps to help you navigate this journey together.
00:00 Introduction: The Impact of Aging Parents on Marriage
01:05 Communication and Support in Marriage
01:47 Dealing with Resentment and Seeking Professional Help
03:36 Balancing Caregiving and Marriage
07:11 Planning and Preparing for the Future
09:32 Navigating Grief and Loss Together
11:36 Setting Boundaries and Seeking Help
14:34 Conclusion: The Importance of Communication
Read the full transcript
Transcript of Interview: “Is Caregiving Hurting Your Marriage?”
Mike Barnes: I don’t care how strong your marriage is. We have a really strong marriage, I think, but no matter who you are, it can be tested because of aging parents.
Kim Barnes: And how do you handle it? How do you treat each other? How do you—if you don’t like the decisions that your spouse is making—there are so many issues that come up. We’re going to bring in a licensed clinical social worker supervisor, Diana Schaefer, to talk with us today. She’s with JustMind Counseling. Thanks so much for being with us.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Thank you for having me.
Kim Barnes: I think a lot of times that we think just about the care that we’re providing to our parent, and we don’t always think about the impact that it has on those around us, and especially our spouses who are closest around us. So many topics to talk about. Let’s start with, though, what do we do when our spouse is potentially resentful of the time that we’re spending caring for our parents?
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Well, I think first of all—I want you to know that my mother-in-law lives with us. So I’m living with this and dealing with this in my own marriage. So it’s something very poignant for me and very real. I think first and foremost, having open communication is so important. Really talking about what the expectations are and sharing your feelings I think is super important. You have to feel like your spouse is supporting you, because this is not easy. You know, there’s a lot of challenges when you’ve brought in a third person into your relationship.
Kim Barnes: What do you do, though, if they’re not very nice about it, or if they really are very much about, you know, creating drama?
Mike Barnes: And resentful.
Kim Barnes: Right, and resentful.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Right. Well, I think a few things are really important. One is that I think both parties need to really focus on self-care, focus on the marriage—that you have to put the priority, just as you do when you have a child, that the marital relationship has to be the priority. Now, when there’s a lot of resentment built up, probably professional counseling wouldn’t be a bad idea. That would be a safe place to share some of those feelings that might be difficult to share just with your spouse.
Mike Barnes: Yeah, I think the hard thing for a lot of us is that comparing it to having a child—when you have a child, hopefully you both love the child immensely. When you have a mother-in-law or a father-in-law, you know, you may like them, but you haven’t grown up with them. You don’t have that family bond like, “Yeah, I really need to take care of them.” Well, they’re just an outsider. Do I really have to put up with this? And that makes it, I think, hard for some of us to go through that.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think one of the things that we try to do, and I think is so important, is respite—is either to bring in other caregivers or—we’re fortunate enough to have my husband’s sister in Dallas, so we can travel and my mother-in-law goes to Dallas with her daughter. So at least we have that. Not everybody has that. So I think it is important, though, to figure out how you can get that respite so that that resentment doesn’t build up and destroy your relationship.
Kim Barnes: And respite, for those people who might not know, are just giving yourself some time, whether it’s them being able to go to potentially an assisted living for a respite stay or having another family member who can carry—
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Step in.
Kim Barnes: Step in and help. And don’t you think—I think it can be different for couples depending on if the parent is living with you 24/7, or they are in the next room all the time versus are in their own home or in independent living or assisted living.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Right.
Kim Barnes: Although, in that situation, you may—if they’re not in the same town, you may be spending a lot of time away from home as the spouse who’s caring for your parents. So I think there’s so many different layers to that.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Right. Yeah, I agree. And I think in those situations that, you know, you have to—it’s very important—the communication is so important to talk about the challenges and to try to negotiate with your spouse and set some boundaries, I think, on both sides, right? This is how much time I need to spend with my parent versus, you know, this is how much time we need to spend together, and to really work that out.
Mike Barnes: You mentioned negotiate with your spouse. I’m of the belief that the main two things you have to be is not be selfish and you have to think about what the other person is going through because it’s not you, it’s not your personality, but when you don’t agree with the way they do it, if Kim is treating her mom in a certain way—which you don’t—but if she’s treating her mom in a certain way, or if she’s doing something with her mom, then I’m like, “I can’t believe you’re doing this. This is driving me crazy.” You’ve got to talk about it, but how can you get through those barriers just so that you can agree on things, even though you’re two different people?
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Well, as I said, sometimes it does require some professional counseling. But you know, you’re right. I think negotiation though is one of those very, very important things in a relationship. I mean, everybody has a right to have non-negotiables, but in managing something like this, there’s a lot of stress involved. And it’s so important to, first of all, try to be empathic to what your spouse is going through, and flexibility. And I think those are things that help in any marriage, no matter what your situation is, but certainly in a situation like this where you have—where someone is taking care of an elderly parent.
Kim Barnes: So tensions are often high anyway because there are potentially sick people that you’re working with. And so that in and of itself creates a little bit of stress. What about when they just, you know, don’t necessarily agree with the way you’re treating your—the parent? And we had—we asked in our community for questions, and somebody said, “I don’t necessarily love the way I see my husband treating his mom, and how do I not project that I’m worried now that that might be the way he treats me?”
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Well, I think it’s important to not look at things in the future and predict this is how it’s going to be. I think, again, that’s some—those kinds of feelings need to get expressed in a very non-blaming or judging way. But if that person can express it in a way of, “This is how it is impacting me when I see you do this,” hopefully can have an impact—a different impact.
Mike Barnes: Is there ever—Kim and I always talk about having to not only communicate, but to plan early. Is there a limit to that? Back in 1988 when we had our first date, should I have said, “Hey Kim, I’m Mike. Is your mom going to live with you someday?” That type of thing. How do you treat that?
Kim Barnes: Right, because I had a woman that I talked with who said that she was dating in her forties, and that was absolutely a conversation that was brought up. And in one relationship, when the guy she was dating said, “Just so you know, that absolutely my mom will live with us until the very end—non-negotiable,” and the woman said, “I realized that that wasn’t what I predicted for this future of mine,” and so that ended the relationship. That is a big consideration.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Right, and I guess that’s like one of those non-negotiables I talked about—that for her, that she just wasn’t going to be able to do that. And I think that’s important. It’s important to know what your own boundaries are, you know, what you can and cannot accept in that kind of a situation. Obviously, it’s different if you’ve been married for many years and then, you know, the—
Kim & Mike Barnes: Hadn’t thought to have those conversations ahead of time.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Right, exactly. But it may not be—it should be ahead of time of a parent coming to live with you, certainly. And, you know, to try to support each other mutually, I think is so important, and figure out how can we relieve the stress, right? What can we do together? I mean, certainly date nights are super important. We need also to figure out how each person can get their own time to take care of themselves, exercise and, you know, what they need to do.
Mike Barnes: In some ways, don’t you need to go back to, okay, what attracted you to each other and rely on that? You know, whether it’s having a fun date night or spending time together at a park, reading a book, reading the Bible, going to church, whatever it may be, watching a movie. What’s that common denominator that got you together in the first place? Let’s make sure we bring that back.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kim Barnes: What about the situations where we are in the thick of it? Our parents are declining, and we can see that all the parents are kind of declining at a similar rate, and so we’re sort of already anticipating the grief that is going to become both—become both of us potentially close together. Is there a way to start sort of preparing for that ahead of time?
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Well, I think just having—you know, talking about that and really thinking about, well, how are we going to deal with that and giving each other the space that each person needs to do their grieving? Because no two people grieve alike. Well, you know, that can be very different. And that’s—you know, that is a really, really hard thing, right? To lose a parent. And for, you know—
Kim Barnes: Yeah.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Yeah, for you both losing parents—even harder, right? Oh, I was just going to say because the spouse obviously has a relationship with your parent as well.
Kim Barnes: Sure.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: So—
Kim Barnes: How do you start—or should you start—kind of thinking about what is that new normal going to look like? Similar, I think, I guess, when you have kids going off to college and you become an empty nester. It is sort of odd where so much focus is on raising your children, and then all of a sudden you look at each other and think, “Oh, it’s just us now.” You know, and I guess that could also be a, you know, obviously a different stage, but kind of similar.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Yeah, for sure. And I think that’s why it’s so important that while you’re caring for the elderly parent, that you focus on the marriage and put that relationship first, because just like when a kid goes or the kids go to college and you’re an empty nester, you’re left with the relationship, right? And you want that to be strong.
Mike Barnes: I think you’re definitely emphasizing the fact that you need to communicate with each other and maybe get a counselor/therapist involved, but also you need to talk to the parents. Do you need to talk to, whether it’s the aging parent living with you or the aging parent who’s 200 miles or 2,000 miles away, do you need to talk to them and say, “Look, we need our time alone. We need our time together. Please let us escape every once in a while,” and make sure that that’s on the table.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Absolutely. I think that’s really important. And it’s not—it’s not something that’s easy to do. I know for us, we like to travel. And so we, like I said, we fortunately have my sister-in-law who can take my mother-in-law when we travel, but it would be very hard for me to say to her, “Hey, you know, we just need that time apart from you.” But I mean, that has something to do with, you know, her sensitivity and my sensitivity to her feelings, etc. But if you can, I think that that’s really important.
Kim Barnes: Yeah, I think the hardest part is that we hear so many stories when there’s dementia involved where you can’t really reason with them, and they can become demanding and not necessarily realize they’re doing that. And so I guess it’s trying to create boundaries even though they’re not able necessarily to allow for that, which I think obviously throws a whole other kind of dimension to the dynamic.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Absolutely. And that’s what we’re struggling with also.
Mike Barnes: It’s a tough process, but Diana, thank you for people like you who are able to help marriages stay strong and stay together.
Kim Barnes: I do have one question, which is if you have a spouse who you are—it is really becoming a struggle, and like you mentioned, maybe it is time to bring in some professional help. How do you get that spouse to be on board if that’s not something that they’re necessarily thinking is needed? They just think, “Oh, you just need to quit spending so much time with them,” or “You need to quit dropping everything and going to them,” and maybe they’re thinking it’s your behavior. And maybe there’s part to—maybe there’s a part of that, but how do you get the other spouse to be open to having those discussions with help?
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Well, at the risk of repeating myself again, it’s about communicating, you know, communicating your feelings that this is something that you feel you really need a professional to help—to help your spouse understand what you’re going through. They may not see it as a problem, but if you see it as a problem, it’s a problem. I mean, I think that can happen with marital therapy in general. You know, sometimes one person is interested in it and the other one feels like there isn’t a problem, but if someone’s unhappy, there’s a problem.
Kim Barnes: Yeah. Okay. So gotta ask for help sometimes.
Mike Barnes: Hopefully we can get things fixed. Diana, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate all your tips and advice.
Diana Schaefer, LCSW-S: Well, thank you for having me.
Mike Barnes: I think what we’ve definitely learned, if we didn’t already know, is you have to communicate. You have to talk. You have to get on the same page and try to work things out.
Kim Barnes: Not always easy. And very, very important because, as she said, that relationship—you want that relationship to last, you know, through the process and afterward.
Mike Barnes: Hey, if you have any other topics you’d like us to discuss, please let us know. Parenting Aging Parents.
*This transcript is auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or mistakes.