Relationship with somone who's wife has dementia

[Peachykeenclean]

Does anyone have any experiences of this? I started a relationship with a guy who has a wife who is now in a care home with early-onset dementia. He has now said he has no capacity for love just yet. I was happy with the restrictions on the relationship regarding not getting to know his family or friends, but now that he says he cannot love anyone else, I have walked away even though we are a fabulous fit.

No not a troll. Misread the post, held my hands up and apologised. So Mumsnet did the right thing here.

Wasn't disingenuous. I admitted it, held my hand up and apologised. That's all I could do. You can choose to not believe it and that's fine.

It's amazing that when even when people admit they are wrong, admit it and apologise they still get abuse. There is a reason Mumsnet didn't delete it.

Your post has been reported. It crosses the line to call someone a troll, incredibly thick and vile after they apologised.

Oh, and @Itsbeenalongtimeincoming I asked Mumsnet why they deleted my post. Their reasoning was that I was ‘troll hunting’ which is apparently not allowed. So, actually, they didn’t disagree that your comments were rather nasty. My response to them was that I wasn’t troll hunting, I was calling out a bully. I don’t like bullies.

Please can we stop with the personal attacks here? This is a thread on the Relationships board where OP has requested support. Please bear that in mind and keep on topic - these personal attacks are at the risk of derailing the entire thread.

You're fundamentally not understanding, are you? In advanced dementia, this person is not there in any meaningful sense. They may forget who they are, who you are, and where they're living. They will forget whether they have children. In more advanced cases, they forget about bodily functions. They can forget how to read, write, and even speak.

From this, you think this is okay: that a loving partner can wait for many years to form any meaningful human connection outside of this while still maintaining being a partner to that person that's ill?

I think it's inhumane.

@KimMumsnet You keep deleting things. But please explain what in any of what I said that was factually incorrect or even rude in either of the two posts you just deleted?

Your guidelines are supporting and protecting bullies, and deleting my posts, because I highlighted that is wrong.

Presumably because they want you to stop trying to derail the thread.

I haven’t read all your rambly posts, including this one, but you are clearly derailing OPs threads with your rants.

I’ve read the thread, just not your whole repetitive posts. This isn’t your thread, you can’t decide who stays anymore than you can decide what mumsnet delete

I'm sorry your thread has gone this way, @Peachykeenclean. 💐Good luck to you. It's a hard situation.

OP this is clearly an emotive topic, which might underline why your decision to walk away is the best one for you, although sad. I think the fact that your date felt he couldn't be completely open is a great shame. However I get why, given the judgement he's likely to get. I had a date with a man who was in exactly this position. He didn't state the situation in his dating profile but was honest when we met up in person. I felt extremely sorry for him but it was too complicated to get involved as he didn't want his children to know.
I am myself widowed, and the opinions from other people about when/ whether it was appropriate for me to date were very unhelpful (thankfully not from close family, who wanted me to be happy) - and this when my husband was dead! So I can only imagine the difficulties when a spouse is still alive, although of course it's no longer a meaningful marriage.
I hope you can stay friends with this man if you want to. It's so tough for everyone 💐

I was actually grateful you were calling out such horrible posts. Thank you because I really didn't want to get in a heated debate like that myself but would have if nobody else was going too.

Agree personal attacks should not happen but maybe you need to look into other poster's posts too. She clearly apologised which I thinked her for them next post basicly unapologised. She has shown basic disrespect for the people on this thread like myself and in real life that have a spouse suffering dementia. To jump on a thread about such a delicate subject and continue post after post to derail it and minimise people's experience for what appears to be kicks is horrendous. The other op probably didn't always call this out in tbe best manner but at heart was trying to stop what was happening here.

I think some people just choose not to understand

It isn't clever or kind but that is unfortunately seen in so many different threads

I totally agree with you but probably and have written so in a post to mod

However probably best just to leave it for now honey because they are very unlikely to admit the real issue here

Lets just carry on with the thread and hope for it to at least make some people more informed about dementia and life is like for tbe spouses of people with dementia

https://www.dementiauk.org/information-and-support/about-dementia/what-is-it-like-to-care-for-someone-with-dementia/

If anyone wants to learn more about dementia

That. Dementia is awful. Sometimes people can live for a very long time, way after they've stopped recognising any of the people who they once loved, and who love them.
We lost my MIL many years before she died. We continued to visit for ourselves, not for her.

I've already lost my late DH, but had I not, I would tell him that once I no longer knew who he was, he would be free to live his life and find happiness with someone else. I'd also ask that he still visited to check that I was being cared for well and with the same kind of familial love that I showed my MIL. But I would want him to find happiness with someone else, if he wanted to.

Hypothetically would you keep your new partner a secret or tell your friends and family?

There was a very interesting instance of this on a Louis Theroux documentary years ago. A woman in the US used to visit her husband with dementia, but considered herself separated as they were no longer able to be partners in a relationship. In fact, it was not her that had left him, he struck up a romance with another lady in the dementia care facility and they walked around holding hands all the time and he was quite confused when his wife turned up! She said emotionally she had detached from him a while ago.

In an ideal world, people would live 'til death us do part', I've done it and had no regrets, but living with someone in a prolonged state of incapacity, five or six years and it would have been severe for her to have gone into care, it can feel like you are giving the best years of your life, to what? Plus often men need emotional companionship to get through life, just as some women do.

This has solved itself as this man isn't ready and can't offer a relationship, I am not sure he's wrong to try though, I guess he's going to end up giving more than a decade of his life in later middle-age to this and just wants something, or someone, to make it all a little better.