I have been with my partner for nearly 40 years, and he has always seemed a very kind and tolerant man.
We have been through a lot together, and have always been best friends.
In the last few months, however, he could start an argument in an empty room.
He gets red in the face, his hands shake, and he is just so verbally aggressive and confrontational about everything.
My daughter also noticed that he had started to make slightly racist and sexist comments about things on the TV that she has been very surprised by.
If I try to ask him anything about why he is so angry, he just says: "Oh, it couldn't be YOU, could it?"
He is 70.
If he were younger, I would suspect an affair, as I can't say or do anything right, lately.
He is still working, and I do suspect that there may be an element of depression related to that, but this verbal aggression is a new thing.
He is behaving as if he hates me, without any rational reasoning.
He will then offer to make tea, help in the garden, etc., as if nothing was said.
I know that the knee-jerk answer is dementia, but I have lived through that with my mother.
This is different.
It's just a sudden huge well of aggression that I don't understand.
As I say, I would normally associate this with an affair, where suddenly, you just can't do anything right, but there is no evidence of this, at the moment.
Can anyone advise how to deal with this?