Aging Partners Managing Chronic Illness Together: Introducing the Content Collection

Abstract

Prior literature on illness management within intimate relationships demonstrates a variety of benefits from supportive partnership. Indeed, much of the earliest research in this field engaged older adults with and without chronic conditions. However, this pioneering literature gave little consideration to relationships in which multiple partners were coping with chronic illness. By contrast, the majority of published manuscripts presented a “sick partner/well partner” model in which caregiving flowed only in one direction. Yet this idea makes little sense in the context of contemporaneous data on population aging and health as a majority of older adults now live with at least one chronic condition. Scholars still have not delved explicitly into the experiences of the vast population of older relationship partners who are managing chronic conditions simultaneously. We thus welcome Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine readers to this special content collection on Aging Partners Managing Chronic Illness Together .