JOAN’S BLOG – FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2008 – TO BE AN AD SPOUSE IS A CONSTANT LEARNING PROCESS

I received an e-mail recently that made me realize how far I have come in this involuntary Alzheimer journey, and how far I still have to go.

The woman who wrote was complaining about her AD husband’s behavior – he was causing incidents in stores; he was forgetting what she told him; he was difficult to reason with; he was acting normally in front of others – everything and more that you and I have discussed and complained about at one time or another. She felt he was doing it on purpose to annoy her; she tried to REASON with him, and talk to him as they always had – wife to husband. 

What jumped out at me was not her reaction to her husband, but my reaction to her. I understood how wrong her attitude was, and I felt as if I was looking into a mirror image of myself a year ago. Ever helpful me offered the advice – “But you can’t do that anymore. You cannot relate as wife to husband; you must relate to the disease.”  After writing those pearls of wisdom , I thought to myself- “You’re a great one to talk. It took you over 3 years to learn that, and you’re still resentful and complaining about it!”

But that exchange did open my eyes to how much I have learned about relating to my husband differently – We can no longer discuss and compromise – his reasoning ability will not allow it, and even if it did, he would forget what we agreed upon. That is why marriage counseling does not work when one spouse has AD. They cannot reason rationally, and cannot remember any of the relationship improvement strategies.

Therefore it falls to the caregiver spouse to do all of the work – all of the compromising, changing, adjusting, distracting, appeasing. That is not a marriage; it is a ………………what? I don’t know what to call it, but it is not a marriage partnership as I have known it.

So where am I on this learning curve? I KNOW AND UNDERSTAND that our old ways of relating are gone – I am ahead of that woman in that area. But I am so far behind another woman who e-mailed me. She completely stopped fighting the relationship loss. She laid it aside, started to relate to her husband as his loving caregiver, and has gained peace from it. I know I am far away from that acceptance. I am not ready for it, and I don’t want it. Not yet.

I suspect my reluctance to totally give up the husband/wife relationship comes from my husband’s level of functioning. The message board posts tell me that my husband, regardless of the abilities and comprehension he has lost, retains much more than many. 

No matter how much I have learned, and how far I have come, I want what I had, know I can’t have it, and it is making me very grumpy today.

Feedback to joan@thealzheimerspouse.com

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