Can you be too "strong"?

So, I just got off the phone with S and I'm trying to put together our converstaion. I was telling her about how having my dad here made me sentimental for connections to people. I was complaining about how I felt like he is the only one outside of S that is concerned about how I am feeling. I know I have support out there but, as S pointed out on the phone just now, I tend to try to be too “strong” too often and don't reach out for the support. I tend to focus on how S is feeling and so redirect others to be concerned about her feelings verses telling them about how I am doing. I guess it is not that I am too "strong" but that I try too hard to look “strong”.

This entire fertility issue is hard. It is not only hard on the one trying to get pregnant but hard on the (significant) other. OUr job is to be supportive, understanding and caring about all the poking, prodding, and our partner's frustration with their own body. However, I often feel as if I do not have much of a role so am not necessarily supposed to have my own emotions over all of this. But I do. Everyone asks how S is doing. The doctors only talk to her, the nurses ask her for information, and family and friends associate the complicantions with things happening to S not me. I know that it is not my reproductive parts that aren't working but I have just as much energy, love, and emotion involved in each try. This "other" position is really one that has no definition for me let alone those trying to support us. I grieve every cycle. I get my hopes up every cycle. And, I cry every cycle.

S tells me I need to be better at telling others that I feel things. Well, I spend 90% of my life worrying about how others feel (work and home) and try to fit in a bit of worrying about what I feel the rest of the time. This doesn't leave much energy or time to tell people about what I discover. It is lonely being "strong".