Anyone with Crohn’s disease knows it’s not easy to talk about—especially with a new partner.
“[It’s] not a glamourous topic; it’s not a glamorous disease,” Lori Plung, a Crohn’s patient, advocate, and support group leader at the UPMC Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, told Health.
“You’re talking about bowel habits, going to the bathroom, diarrhea, vomiting—these are not things that you really want to discuss on a date or as you’re cultivating a relationship,” Plung said. “However, these are things that will come up.”
An estimated 1 million people in the U.S. have Crohn’s disease, one type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that causes inflammation throughout the digestive tract.
The condition is also chronic. It can’t be cured, but it can be managed through medicines and surgery. “It’s going to be with [you] for a lifetime,” Plung said—even more reason to have open, honest conversations about it with partners.
Here, Crohn’s disease experts share tips on how to tell a new partner about your diagnosis in a way that feels right for you.
There’s no “right” time to tell a new connection about your Crohn’s disease, experts said. It really just depends on your comfort level.
Patrick Buckley, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist at the UPMC Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, told Health that some of his Crohn’s patients like to tell a new romantic interest about their condition right away. Others prefer to wait to see where things go.
“Trust your instincts,” Buckley advised. “When you’re feeling comfortable enough to have this conversation with somebody, do that, but I think the timelines will be different for everybody.”
You can also get creative if a serious conversation doesn’t feel right. When Plung met her husband at 18 years old, she shared her Crohn’s diagnosis by giving him a term paper she had written about IBD in high school.
“However a patient is comfortable disclosing, and when they’re comfortable disclosing, is what they should do,” she said.
Many people are unfamiliar with Crohn’s disease. So when you start the conversation with your partner, it’s best to simply describe the illness, experts said.
This might mean describing the science of the inflammatory condition or using an analogy. “Having an inflammatory bowel disease is like having a really bad virus or really bad flu that sometimes just doesn’t go away,” Plung suggested. “A lot of people resonate with that.”
Experts said it’s also important to describe how Crohn’s impacts you and your day-to-day life. After all, that’s what a new partner will really want to know.
“Probably the biggest source of information is going to be you, which can be hard sometimes to have to educate people,” Jessica Naftaly, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist and instructor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of Michigan, told Health. “But coming from the patient perspective can be helpful so they know how it’s impacting you and how they can best support you too.”
Buckley also recommended providing opportunities for your partner to ask questions. If they’d like more information, there are also resources on the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation website.
If you’re feeling anxious about telling your partner you have Crohn’s, experts said the best way to feel more comfortable is to practice talking about it.
That could mean rehearsing exactly what you’re going to say or talking to your friends and family about your condition in general. Either way, the more you discuss your Crohn’s, the easier it gets, experts said.
“My overall tip is just practice, practice, practice,” Buckley said. “This is something that often becomes easier with time as people build up confidence.”
For many people with Crohn’s, the biggest fear in telling a new partner about the condition is being rejected.
Buckley said many of his Crohn’s patients worry about the other person’s reaction, often expecting a negative response. But once they have the conversation, Buckley said his patients usually feel relieved.
“It’s important to prepare for a variety of outcomes, but I wouldn’t focus on just the most negative outcomes,” Buckley said, “because it’s also an opportunity to have open communication and grow closer with somebody if they’re receptive.”
To help process these worries, Naftaly recommended writing down all your concerns about how your partner will respond. Then, focus on what you can control.
“We don’t have a lot of control over how people respond, but we do have control over how much information we disclose, when we disclose, how we disclose, and that can be a little more empowering when we’re worried about what other people are going to think,” she said.
Instead of focusing on the fear that your partner will reject you after learning you have Crohn’s, experts recommended using your partner’s response to learn more about the relationship.
“Do you ultimately feel supported when you disclose? Are they asking for more information? Are they trying to understand?” Naftaly said. “If they don’t have a response that’s helpful to you, then maybe that’s not a relationship that you want to invest in.”
“As hard as it is to say, ‘Just let them go and move on,’ it’s ultimately what has to be done,” Plung agreed. “If you see right then and there that they’re not embracing it and not being supportive, then it’s just not going to work, because you’re going to have problems as the relationship progresses.”
On the flip side, a supportive response can signal a healthy relationship and make you feel closer to your partner. “There’s plenty of supportive people out there that will embrace you with your chronic illness,” Plung said.
Experts stressed that everyone with Crohn’s worries about how the disease will affect their relationships and has fears about disclosing their condition to a new romantic interest.
That’s why meeting other people with Crohn’s or joining a support group can help “with normalizing the fear that comes with talking about IBD generally,” Naftaly said.
Buckley added that it can be helpful to hear from people who have successfully navigated these conversations with their partners. “Seeing other people who have had meaningful connections and intimacy with their partner while living with IBD—I think that’s very important for people to see firsthand,” Buckley said.
One such example is Plung. The 61-year-old said she’s “very lucky to be married to a man who embraced my illness along with me.”
Her biggest advice? Tell your partner, “This is a chronic illness. It is a part of who I am,” she said. “I hope that you would be in it with me, together.”
