Hi, I've signed up to the forum because I have a pressing worry that has my life stuck and stagnant. I've been with the same man for all my life until I left him 4 months ago. I left him chiefly because of neglect and a sense of being abandoned which had been getting worse for years. I didn't want to leave him, but felt I had no other option as he kept wounding me over and over.
When I left he was completely unperturbed and neither expressed nor showed any emotion. The same day I left I discovered (by accident) that he had gone out to buy KY jelly because he intended to have sex with a woman he knew. It didn't happen - he told me he threw it away and he definitely did break off contact with this woman - so I put it down to a grief reaction, but this incident is symptomatic of his behaviour generally, which I have found unfathomable. He is completely different from the man I knew, or thought I did, up until his forties, when he started to behave 'oddly' and with an increasing callousness.
People think he is a very kind, sympathetic and helpful man, and he was, but his behaviour has become so very odd. At least to me. The trouble with this is I don't know if what I'm looking at is simply someone who has fallen out of love or if there is a genuine personality change.
The things that are really noticeably different about him is that he no longer seems to feel anything very much at all, and he can be stunningly insensitive about what he says and does. I had barely left before he started telling me about dating sites he was using and the women who he was sharing time with; he maintains he is not dating anyone. I have twisted my brain into knots wondering if this is just some way to make me feel jealous, and that would make sense, except for the fact that he doesn't actually seem to care whether I'm there or not.
Not long after I left he was over at my new house, helping me with redecorating (we have stayed 'amicable' but it's been hard for me) and I broke down, simply from sadness and loss, and while he hugged me and said he missed me too and loved me too he was really just parroting what I said. I got no impression that he meant any of it, or indeed really registered any deep feeling at all.
He has systematically become very engaged in his career (as a performer) and fills his time with it entirely - in fact he jumped into it with both feet when I left, another hurt that I felt acutely but don't really understand. He will let nothing come between 'gigs' and his life and will cheerfully stand you up for something unpaid and of no particular importance.
In short he's become very callous and insensitive and really just doesn't seem to be functioning like a human being at all. I privately call him the Golem, because he's like a stone man.
He exhibits very little classic dementia traits except for some problems with memory, but they are very minor and could easily be senior moments. (He's 61). The only traits he shows like that is he can't remember what he's told to who, doesn't retain a lot of what you tell him and sometimes looks very blank when you say something to him or point something out, like he can't quite work out what it is, or what he's supposed to say or do. He has a kind of mask-like face and I did actually worry a few years ago that he was developing Parkinson's like his sister (that and the fact that he suffers form frozen shoulder and has lost his sense of smell).
I realise this is all terribly vague but I know that the behavioural variant of Frontotemporal Dementia has showing a lack of empathy and appearing selfish as primary traits and he definitely has this in spades. But is his 'selfishness' just because he no longer loves me and has a great new exciting life, or is it because actually something is wrong with him and he can't help himself?
There's only one or two other oddities I'll mention. He's taken up being an artist's life model and is thinking of doing 'Boylesque' (male burlesque), both of which are a little uninhibited, for want of a better word, but again, this could simply be his equivalent of buying a red Porsche or dyeing his hair and buying a Harley Davidson.
I'd be very grateful for anyone who cares for someone with bvFTD or who knows the condition well in some other way who could give me advice on whether any of this has any medical significance whatsoever, or is just normal signs of me being dumped! I know the condition is a rare form of dementia, which doesn't help because it makes it all the more unlikely, but his behaviour is just so strange that I can't help feeling there's something amiss. Many thanks!
When I left he was completely unperturbed and neither expressed nor showed any emotion. The same day I left I discovered (by accident) that he had gone out to buy KY jelly because he intended to have sex with a woman he knew. It didn't happen - he told me he threw it away and he definitely did break off contact with this woman - so I put it down to a grief reaction, but this incident is symptomatic of his behaviour generally, which I have found unfathomable. He is completely different from the man I knew, or thought I did, up until his forties, when he started to behave 'oddly' and with an increasing callousness.
People think he is a very kind, sympathetic and helpful man, and he was, but his behaviour has become so very odd. At least to me. The trouble with this is I don't know if what I'm looking at is simply someone who has fallen out of love or if there is a genuine personality change.
The things that are really noticeably different about him is that he no longer seems to feel anything very much at all, and he can be stunningly insensitive about what he says and does. I had barely left before he started telling me about dating sites he was using and the women who he was sharing time with; he maintains he is not dating anyone. I have twisted my brain into knots wondering if this is just some way to make me feel jealous, and that would make sense, except for the fact that he doesn't actually seem to care whether I'm there or not.
Not long after I left he was over at my new house, helping me with redecorating (we have stayed 'amicable' but it's been hard for me) and I broke down, simply from sadness and loss, and while he hugged me and said he missed me too and loved me too he was really just parroting what I said. I got no impression that he meant any of it, or indeed really registered any deep feeling at all.
He has systematically become very engaged in his career (as a performer) and fills his time with it entirely - in fact he jumped into it with both feet when I left, another hurt that I felt acutely but don't really understand. He will let nothing come between 'gigs' and his life and will cheerfully stand you up for something unpaid and of no particular importance.
In short he's become very callous and insensitive and really just doesn't seem to be functioning like a human being at all. I privately call him the Golem, because he's like a stone man.
He exhibits very little classic dementia traits except for some problems with memory, but they are very minor and could easily be senior moments. (He's 61). The only traits he shows like that is he can't remember what he's told to who, doesn't retain a lot of what you tell him and sometimes looks very blank when you say something to him or point something out, like he can't quite work out what it is, or what he's supposed to say or do. He has a kind of mask-like face and I did actually worry a few years ago that he was developing Parkinson's like his sister (that and the fact that he suffers form frozen shoulder and has lost his sense of smell).
I realise this is all terribly vague but I know that the behavioural variant of Frontotemporal Dementia has showing a lack of empathy and appearing selfish as primary traits and he definitely has this in spades. But is his 'selfishness' just because he no longer loves me and has a great new exciting life, or is it because actually something is wrong with him and he can't help himself?
There's only one or two other oddities I'll mention. He's taken up being an artist's life model and is thinking of doing 'Boylesque' (male burlesque), both of which are a little uninhibited, for want of a better word, but again, this could simply be his equivalent of buying a red Porsche or dyeing his hair and buying a Harley Davidson.
I'd be very grateful for anyone who cares for someone with bvFTD or who knows the condition well in some other way who could give me advice on whether any of this has any medical significance whatsoever, or is just normal signs of me being dumped! I know the condition is a rare form of dementia, which doesn't help because it makes it all the more unlikely, but his behaviour is just so strange that I can't help feeling there's something amiss. Many thanks!