When your partner wants to start and you are worried for them

Started 11 February 2026 · 15 replies · 132 hearts · read 1.7k times

TeganNewport, UK · 11 February 2026

5 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: When your partner wants to start and you are worried for them

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

I have read the guides here, which were more useful than anything else I have found, and I still have a question they do not cover.

What I keep tripping on is not the physical bit. It is the not knowing whether what I am experiencing is normal, and having nobody to ask who is not either selling something or frightened for me.

My prescriber has been fine, genuinely. The problem is that I get nine minutes twice a year and there is no version of nine minutes that covers this.

I will report back either way, because I have been helped by other people's follow-ups more than by their questions.

OmarAmman, JO

Yes to the burping. It is real, it is unbeautiful, and it does settle.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

Gently: you have apologised three times in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology.

10me too 1

NolwennRennes, FR

Reading the opening post, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

OzrenZagreb, HR

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?

RufusGuildford, UK

I keep a two-line diary and it is the only reason I could answer this question about myself. Worth starting even now.

10me too 5

RuaridhFort William, UK

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

No advice, just recognition. That sounds exhausting and I am sorry you are in it.

NikitaYerevan, AM

The phrase that unlocked my appointment was asking what specifically she wanted me to watch for. It moved us from reassurance to a plan in about thirty seconds.

OssieWolverhampton, UK

Different experience here, for balance. Mine did not improve and in the end I stopped, and that was the right call for me. Both outcomes exist.

CormacWaterford, IE

I would take that to a clinician rather than to us, and I would do it this week. Not because it is definitely serious — because it is the sort of thing that is much easier to rule out than to worry about.

BessLouth, UK

#10

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Two things that helped me, neither of them clever: small amounts more often, and drinking a lot more than felt necessary.

ObiLagos, NG

#11

It got worse before it got better for me, which I wish someone had said. About ten days of worse.

TeganNewport, UK

#12

For what it is worth, the trial data on this is thinner than the confidence of the internet would suggest. Worth knowing when you read the posts.

OmarAmman, JO

#13

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

I am about four months behind you and I have been dreading exactly this, so thank you for writing it down before I got there.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

#14

If any of this has landed close to home for you while reading, our support resources page lists the kinds of services worth finding. No obligation and no drama.

16me too 9

NolwennRennes, FR

#15

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I did exactly the same and felt terrible about it. You have not done anything wrong.

9me too 8