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My partner has always struggled with anxiety and, since we’ve been together for a long time and are so close, that means that we have both struggled with his anxiety for a long time. I of course understand that he feels it much, much worse than I do. I cannot possibly understand what he experiences. But if you love and live with a partner who has anxiety, it does affect you. You can feel it. When he’s got it bad, it’s like a touchable tension in the home. It rubs off on you. My partner reached a point where he just didn’t want anxiety to rule his life anymore. He also felt bad that it affected me so much, too. So he started taking CBD. And, I’d be lying if I said it was just the perfect solution. It has some side effects that have affected our dynamic.
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Mornings are mundane
When my partner first takes his CBD in the morning, it totally numbs him out. He has almost no emotions. Or if he does, he doesn’t show them. He usually gets up about an hour before me each morning and, in the past, when I’d wake up, it’d be a little celebration that we were all up. He’d get up from his work to cuddle me and crack some jokes. Now he just looks up and says, “Oh. Hey” and goes back to work.
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He’s very focused
He is super focused on whatever he’s working on, which is good, but also not great for our dynamic since we both work from home. There used to be an understanding that, from time to time, we’d both make our playful comments and interrupt each other. It added fun to the day. Now he makes no comments, and doesn’t really react to mine.
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Problems don’t bump him
The good thing is that it does help his anxiety. Any sort of bad news—or even change in plans—used to send him spiraling. Now he takes that in stride.
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But victories don’t excite him
But the flip side of being less sensitive to problems is he’s also less sensitive to good news. You don’t get to pick and choose what you feel when you’re on CBD. You just feel a bit less of everything.
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I can feel alone in my good news
So when I share great news with him, I don’t really feel he gives it what it deserves. He smiles and congratulates me of course, but his whole body doesn’t come to life with excitement the way it does when he isn’t taking CBD.
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And in my bad news
He also doesn’t react as strongly to my bad news, so I can feel a bit lonely when I’m down about something. He has such a “It’s no big deal” mentality while on CBD that that extends to my problems.
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He barely reacts to my reaction
I have freaked out at him, while he was on CBD, and told him I felt like he was a million miles away and his personality was gone. I told him I couldn’t feel love coming off of him. But, he was on CBD at that time so, not even that evoked much of a reaction.
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I have a midday panic daily
About once a day, when he first started taking it, I would panic in the middle of the day. I would think is his personality just gone now? Have I lost my partner? Is this the new norm?!
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So I avoid him for a while
So I first tried just avoiding him for the first few hours after he took CBD. Its effects are the strongest then, so I figured it was better I just wasn’t around him then.
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But that can’t be the new norm
But staying in another room, trying not to see my partner, was not sustainable. It made me even sadder.
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I feel bad saying something
When my partner wasn’t taking CBD one day, I just had to tell him that I felt it was affecting our dynamic too much. I said that when he takes it, I feel very alone. I felt bad bringing it up because he’d finally found something that helped with his anxiety.
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I guess it was worse before
The truth is, right now I’m just focusing on the negatives, but when my partner didn’t have any way to treat his anxiety, our dynamic was sometimes worse. He’s spiral into anxiety, and I couldn’t really access his usual personality then, either.
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But in ways, it was better
I had the funny and selfish realization that, one of my favorite things about my partner is his least favorite thing about himself: he’s sensitive. It makes him very in tune with the needs of others. That makes a great partner! But it also makes his life a nightmare at other times.
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He’s working with the levels
My partner has started adjusting the levels he takes, and that’s been helping. It turns out the effects of CBD are often strongest in the beginning weeks of taking it. And he’s just aware of the fact that he can be a bit tuned out while on it, so he’s trying to combat that.
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It’s somewhat a secret
Not all of our family lives in California. In other words, they don’t all live where it is perfectly legal. There is a huge stigma around it with many of his and my family members, so we can’t really tell them why his anxiety appears to be much better.
