UPDATE: Life is becoming more difficult for both of us.
The periods of confusion and anger are more frequent. My darling wife inhabits a different world, fleetingly connecting with my world but frequently on a different planet, genuine memory being supplanted by false memory and bizarre imagination.
A recurring theme I’ve mentioned before concerns money: at her request I took over the finances about three years ago. But now she has lost track of how we managed our finances. Throughout our marriage we’ve been happy with a joint account, receiving our income and paying our bills with neither of us interested in or concerned about how much each of us spent. But now, because I'm managing the money, she exclaims on a daily basis that she has no money: “Show me where the money is, I have absolutely no money. You have all my money. I worked hard all my life and now I have no money. It’s appalling!” On a good day, when I get the tone and content of the response right she is reassured and grateful that I’m looking after the finances. But about half the time I get it wrong: frustrated by her zero retention of what I’ve explained many times previously, I reiterate that I’m managing OUR money, that we had a joint account since we were married more than four decades ago, that our mortgage was paid from this account, that she has cash in her purse (“how do you know there’s cash in my purse, how dare you look in my purse?”) and that she has access to money through her credit cards and her debit card. In an attempt to reinforce her connection to our house (in the face of her recent determination to move back to her childhood region to experience again the happiness of long ago) I remind her that she is a home-owner and that she and I have enjoyed living here for decades. But she has no grasp of any of this, believing that she must move back to her home area where she can reconnect with sisters, cousins, and school friends from the 1950s. She expects me to facilitate this but is unconcerned about the practicalities and my wish to remain where we’ve lived happily for nearly half a century.
She can become seriously unsettled: often she vehemently maintains, despite all the ‘evidence', that we are not married and that we don’t have a joint account. She maintains that she bought the house, an idea perhaps prompted by me reassuring her that she’s a home-owner.
When unsettled, she can become bad-tempered and verbally challenging, raising her voice, clenching her fists and finger-stabbing. Sometimes I react to this with annoyance, stubbornly disagreeing with her and ultimately leaving the room. Two minutes later, she will seek me out, sometimes to continue to express her unhappiness, and sometimes to apologise for her ‘bad behaviour’. I rightfully apologise for my bad behaviour, stressing that it’s all my fault and that she is blameless. I feel ashamed that I cannot be sufficiently supportive in the stress of the moment – but that is most definitely easier said than done. I have to fight hard to resist the strong feeling of being absolutely taken for granted.
Being supportive is a real challenge to me in the face of constant negativity and angry illogicality. The natural thing for me to do when she agitatedly and vehemently claims that people have been in our house stealing her things is to say that I have no evidence of this, that I have never witnessed anyone being in our house uninvited and that I have never had anything stolen. She interprets this as disloyalty, that I think more of others, that I don’t believe her when it’s obvious and unchallengeable that people have been getting into our house. If I say nothing, it is perceived as scepticism on my part which she finds infuriating. She would be happiest if I agree with her but I can't bring myself to, in effect, reinforce her paranoia. And if I try to divert, to change the subject, she usually cottons on and gets more agitated.
I have been in touch with the GP who is sympathetic but puts the ball back in my court with the offer face-to-face time if I bring my wife to the surgery. My wife is in complete denial and gets extremely angry if I mention a visit to the GP – I interpret this as evidence that she has some awareness of her predicament but that she determinedly doesn’t want her suspicions confirmed.