Relationships and advanced cancer

If you have a partner, you may find the uncertainty of the future, or side effects of treatment, can affect your relationship. Sometimes partners try to protect each other. They avoid talking about the illness as they do not want to upset the other person. But talking about what is happening and how you both feel can help you both feel less alone. You might also find that being open about the situation and your feelings strengthens your relationship.

It may help you and your partner to keep to a normal routine as much as possible. Having a routine can help when you are dealing with a difficult situation.

There may be times when you do not get on well. Some couples find that problems are harder to deal with because they feel they have less time.

For some couples, having a short break from each other can help relieve stress. Or you may find other ways to manage stress that work better for you. For example, doing some physical activity or listening to some relaxing music may help. Talking to someone outside of your situation may also help. This may be a family member, friend, health professional or counsellor.

We have more information about cancer and relationships.

Having advanced cancer can affect how you feel about sex and intimacy. This may depend on the type of cancer you have, or any treatment and side effects.

Sex can still be part of your life if you have advanced cancer. You may find that you need to make some changes. Getting used to this can take some time. You may not feel like having sex, or you may be unable to. But there are still ways of showing how much you care about your partner.

You may feel less attractive, or worry that a partner finds you less attractive. A partner may worry that having sex could harm you or make the cancer worse. This is not the case. Talking openly about your concerns can help sort out any confusion. This can also give you the chance to talk about what you can each do to enjoy sex.

It can be embarrassing to talk about. But many people find it helpful to get some support. Your GP, specialist nurse or hospital doctors may be able to help you have these types of conversations with your partner.

There are also organisations that can help people who are having problems with sex and relationships. These include:

• Relate
• the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists
• the LGBT Foundation.

Your GP, practice nurse, community nurse, or palliative care nurse may also be able to help you find support locally.

It is important that you do not get pregnant, or make someone pregnant, during and for a time after some treatments. This is because some treatments and tests can be harmful to a baby in the womb. Your cancer doctor or specialist nurse can give you advice if you need more information about this.

We have more information about cancer and sex.

Some people may feel unsure about how to talk to you. They may wait for you to talk about your situation before they say anything.

You can tell people as much or as little as you want to about your health. You can also tell them how you would like them to treat you and whether you want to talk about your situation or not. You might find it helpful to plan answers to any questions. This can help guide the conversation the way you would like.

Other people may find it helpful if you can tell them how they can help you. For example, you could suggest helping you with housework, or driving you to hospital appointments. Or you could ask them to organise something for you to do together, to help take your mind off your situation.

We want everyone affected by cancer to feel our information is written for them.

We want our information to be as clear as possible. To do this, we try to:

• use plain English
• explain medical words
• use short sentences
• use illustrations to explain text
• structure the information clearly
• make sure important points are clear.

We use gender-inclusive language and talk to our readers as ‘you’ so that everyone feels included. Where clinically necessary we use the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ or ‘male’ and ‘female’. For example, we do so when talking about parts of the body or mentioning statistics or research about who is affected.

You can read more about how we produce our information here.