Abusive for 30+ years and now dementia

McK

Does anyone have experience with a spouse who has been emotionally abusive and somewhat physically abusive for 30 years and now has dementia?

M1

Welcome to the forum. Sounds like a very difficult combination. I don't personally have that experience, but there are plenty of folks here who do, or whose marriages have been less than ideal in any number of ways before dementia set in. Im sorry, none of it is fair.

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toolbeltexpert

Mc K I haven't got any advise, but I have followed several folks who have a similar situation as yours. It is possible to go the whole course of this disease taking care of your lo. Your love is the only thing that will carry you thru the times when you just want to quit. Placement is a choice as well and not that your love has changed but that it is the best for everyone. You might try a search for the word abusive it will most likely be quite extensive, use the keywords that are matching your situation. You might even be able to send a private message to someone you has gone down the same path your on, click on the user name and if it shows message you can.

Stewart

harshedbuzz

@McK

Hi and welcome to this site. I am sorry for your need to be here, but glad you found us.

My parents had a marriage with extreme highs and lows. When it was good, it was great. When it wasn't, it was awful. Mostly, this was the result of dad's challenging personality-- I suspect he had some mental health issues. His geripsych agreed but it was too late to diagnose; doc suggested bipolar based on strong family history but a friend who is a clinical psychologist who knew dad pre-dementia saw features of psychopathy. I was never dad's favorite and when my sister-- his mini-me-- died 30 years ago the marriage settled into a bad phase from which it never recovered. There was a lot of emotional abuse and some minor physical abuse which he would try to pass off as play while accusing his victim of being a humorless b@stard. She should have ended the marriage then. When we talked about it, she agreed but never took steps to make it happen either because things were better temporarily or because he'd lose her health insurance. Once dementia took hold, with the loss of his social filters and empathy, he could be physical in the form of slapping and hard pinching similar to your incident with the thumb.

My parents avoided having dad diagnosed until he had a psychotic episode related to his alcohol-related dementia; he had WKS and Alzheimer's. Once mom was no longer in denial, I got her to a CELA to get the necessary paperwork done. At that time, we talked about divorce with the CELA. It was a possibility, but at 79 mom was worried about 3 things as far as I can tell.

Firstly, she was overly concerned with optics. How would it look for an 80-year-old woman to divorce a man to whom she'd been married for 60 years? What would people say? My mom's sister divorced her husband for crazy behavior when he was almost 80 and mom kind of disapproved. (It turns out my uncle had a brain tumor he knew about but didn't share because he didn't want the risks of surgery. His behavior was similar to a FTD-bv dementia and he was destroying their life together with bad decision making. She didn't find out about the tumor until weeks before he died despite looking after him post-divorce) My uncle of the 30-minute drive-by visit every 6 weeks might clutch his pearls.

Secondly, if she divorced him, I would become his decision-maker either through a POA or the courts. I'm an ethical individual and had done some therapy around this relationship, but she did not trust me to not extract some sort of cosmic revenge in the situation. This is ironic given that 1) she couldn't make decisions which left me to do it and 2) I turned out to be more empathetic and compassionate one of us in terms of seeing to his needs because I wasn't desperately hoping "tough love" would improve his functioning.

As an aside-- Your description of not feeling like "being sweet" to cajole him into taking his meds could be a quote from my mom. I was able to act as though dad's needs were raison d'etre which manipulated him into compliance once he was properly medicated and the disease progressed to stage 6. It's easier for you if you can do this. If you can't, delegating his hands on care to a MCF might be best for both of you.

And thirdly, divorce is expensive. She didn't want to lose at least half their assets. Earlier in dad's dementia, he'd lost $350K day-trading, so a divorce would have reduced her standard of living greatly and would left me as dad's heir should he have died before burning through his half. Given that dad was in stage 5 at this point, she gambled that she'd be in better shape financially to ride it out. I am happy to say her gamble paid off for her financially although her health took a hit. As his care needs escalated, she neglected her own self-care with the result that she was hospitalized twice in the months after he died. The long-story-short here is that her self-neglect resulted in the loss of vision in one eye and the ability to drive because of some untreated BP issues.

Just know that divorce exists as an option and it is solely your decision to do what is best for you. Until then, I would look into a geripsych and psychoactive medications to take the edges off his behavior and make him easier to care for. I'd also start touring MCFs after working with a CELA on Medicaid planning as needed.

I wish you the best in this difficult place.

HB