Spouses/caregiver of a sci person and relationships

i am a incomplete c5,6,7 and a very active dating life and i am also a peer support specialist and do community rehabilitation and part of my job is to help families through the hard times. I always suggest that a care giver is brought into the house as i find is the spouse is doing the care in most cases it takes away from the intimacy of the relationship. i have clients who have made arrangements with their spouses that they can go out and date and get sexual needs they cannot get at home and both parties are find with this arrangement. Some people are not cut out to be in a relationship with a person who has SCI period and in those cases its best IMO for a separation as it will only makes things worst in most cases. in my experience 90% of the time a person cannot be a care giver and also a lover as at some point someone gets a bit frustrated and bitter.

I have been primary caregiver for my husband (C5-6 incomplete) after his accident 8 yrs ago. For the first 4 yrs, I did everything myself but then our grown children convinced me to get help. For the last4 yrs I have had someone come in to help get him up and around in the morning which usually takes 2.5-3 hrs. I started with 2-3 days a week and now have someone 5 days a week. It has helped a lot just to have that morning time especially when we have company. I still have to help him at night but it's only for 30 min. It was actually good for me to do things at first so I became aware of any problems and worked on solving them. evangeletabowens,