Well, I am in Week 2 of my new found knowledge which I acquired from this wonderful website. And I can see that this is going to be even harder than I anticipated. As I previously stated since our failed 3 month "reconciliation," we have been living apart. We've gotton together weekly, but it always seems to lead back to arguments. I have been trying to diffuse them, but yesterday I just broke down. He came to fix my computer and do some other jobs around the house, and gave me a chain that holds my eyeglasses around my neck because I am always misplacing them. I was quite shocked and appreciative of his thoughtfulness. Things were going well, then BABOOM!!!
He started with the money thing and I saw red. In the nicest voice I could muster, I tried to explain that if anyone was being cheated, it was me. Well, that did it. He stormed to his car to leave, and then realized he had locked his keys in the car. Never seen him do that before. He seemed bewildered as to what to do. I couldn't help myself, and just burst into tears watching what seemed to be a dam horror movie. He asked what the hell was I crying about, because it wasn't my keys locked in my car. Through my tears I said let's take my car to your home and get your spare set of keys. He acted like the thought never occurred to him. I silently cried all the way to his home and back. Needless to say, I was shaking and could barely walk from the dizziness that takes over. He then seemed to calm down, offered to take me shopping, and when I said I just wanted to go home. He insisted on going to the store for me. When he got back, he was calm again, acted as if he was dealing with someone with dementia better than I EVER COULD. i proceeded to thank him, he made a joke about how I should think of him everytime I use the eyeglass chain, and then left with a smile on his face as he rode off into the sunset. And get this, upon checking our credit card account, it seems he then went and spent money on new carpeting for his trailer home., which is something we previously had discussed and decided NOT to do. The entire argument today was over a couple of dollars and then he goes out and spends a lot more money on a totally unnecessary item for his trailer home. I could have strangled him.
At this point, I see I need to engage in NO CONTACT for now. I need to regroup and refortify. I know I did lose it today, but in defense, it is the first time I have broken down since discussing his illness with him and pleading for him to at least consider it being a problem. And we all know how that played out. So today is another day, and if his pattern of behavior holds up, he also will do NO CONTACT and wait for me to call and ask for his help with something. With a little good luck, nothing will break and I can get some peace until the next assault. When my son called to see how everything went, I couldn't bring myself to burden him. He is taking all this with great difficulty. So, I only wish to say thanx to all of you for listening and giving me an outlet to vent. I sure need it. Gina
Gina--the carpet purchase is a good example of what we all say about money mismanagement. I have heard of people whose spouses with early dementia have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of bad judgment brought on by the disease. I know it's hard, but you need to get control of the finances and limit your husband's involvement/ability to spend money.
As we have told you before, no one is an expert at this from day one. It is a bizarre situation we have found ourselves in and there is definitely a learning curve. Keep your son involved to the maximum extent possible and perhaps you can address the situation as a team. I know from experience, it's awfully hard to do by yourself.
this process only gets worse as time moves on gina. with you living apart due to marital issues this early on, its going to be one heck of a bumpy ride as he progresses. there are so many factors that we need to keep in mind when deciding if we are able and willing to care for a spouse with this particular disease. being unreasonable, aggressive,cunning, explosive, and plain ornery are special traits the AD spouse can exhibit from early on. unless you are able to get a firm diagnosis for him and on appropriate meds early on, so you can have some stability in his actions, and get the financials in order pretty soon its going to be very hard. as marilyn says, many here have been ruined and devastated financially by ill spouses before they knew it and could take preventitive action. i know its hard to make such important decisions but for our own well being and future stakes you have to take a firm decision to do whats going to be in your best interests at this point and get moving. keeping your son as an ally is a good idea but remember he will probably not want alot of involvement once he really sees the declining status of his dad. many of us have lost family /friends support along the way. calling your credit card companies and trying to put a limit on his card maybe a good idea if you see this type of spending. its very depressing to deal with all this but if we dont do it nobody will. divvi
I find that my DH forgets everything I tell in- withing minutes. If I say don't make the bed, he proceeds to make the bed. Even if I had told him I was going to change the sheets. So when they buy new carpeting or a new car, they forget what we we had had said. It is important to get control of the finances early on. That can be hard if your husband will not acknowledge his problems.
Fortunately, Gals, about a year ago, I had us split our savinga into our 2 separate named acounts. He has already spent $40,000 ====on hotels and such when I kept kicking him out, including a purchase of a $17,000 single wide manufactured trailer. The insane part of this is that he now blames me for his spending all that money. He was allowed back home a million times and all he had to do was cooperate and none of the hotels and trailer home would have been necessary.I guess that should have been my first clue that his decision-making ability was flawed. I just thought he wanted his freedom. But then I also couldn't understand why he would keep coming back to me. Now it all adds up, doesn't it???
A while back when all of this insanity took its toll, I had him sign our beautiful home over to me. However, the bulk of our retirement savings are in his IRA, which I am legally entitled to half if we get a divorce. But I can't go for a legal separation nor divorce because his company will drop me from his medical insurance. And I won't qualify for medicare for 2 more years. I just hope his progression with this illness stays fairly stable until then. I keep watch on the IRA accounts, which he did split into 2 separate accounts, but they both have to be in his name. His thinking at that time was that he will not touch my half of the IRA. As for the credit cards, he pays his from his Social Security check, and I pay mine from his pension check. But so far this has all been on the honor system. HAH!!!!! So I watch like a hawk. This man goes to the supermarkets almost every day and spends more in a week than I do in a month. It's almost like an obsession with him. But it is his Social Security Check, so what can I say when I get his pension check for my use??? I realize I do need to consult with an attorney, but as I stated before, my brain is like mush right now. My son has 2 weeks off in October, and I'm thinking he can come with me for a consultation with a lawyer at that time. In the interim, can anyone add to the financial things I have tried to safeguard thus far???? Thank you all.
gina - you need to be looking for the attorney right now cause it can take a while to get an appointment. I don't know which state you live in but even though things are separated you could be legally responsible for his spending debt. That is why you need to get a handle on it soon.
Living apart is not the end. There is someone else here whose spouse kicked him out he still took care of her. I also know healthy couples who have separate households - usually side by side cause they prefer to live alone. Sounds like at the moment separate households might be the best and safest for you.
I know you have had to take in a lot - I remember the first 6 months were the worst - so much new information, often scary stories. Take deep breathes, walks, etc. - whatever you need to relax. Do not panic, take it one day at a time.
Gina--if you have your husband's POA, I would order a credit report and see if he has opened other credit cards you don't know about. You can also put a freeze on his credit record, but I think that's mainly for identity theft--don't know if that would prevent HIM from opening new accounts.
You say you watch his IRA, but suppose he makes a big withdrawal and spends it! That could happen in one day. Not only will the money be gone, but there will be a big tax hit.
I know you say you don't want a legal separation or divorce due to the health insurance, but I believe that others here have posted that once a person is no longer competent, you cannot divorce them. So if you are seriously thinking of divorce, you need to discuss that with the attorney, as well.
Gina, in the early stages they do very srange things particularly with money. Keeping an eye on things will not protect you-you need to see an attorney. As Marilyn says - do you have a durable power of attorney? You really do need that. All of us have been through diffiult financial situations created by our spouses in the early stages. I feel like your journey is very similar to the one I had 3 years ago and I feel for you and am trying to share my experiences to help you through this. DH and I always had separate bank accounts, brokerage accounts, IRA, savings accounts and only 1 joint credi card. I thought I would be protected should he some day decide to get out of control. Well he charged good/services on his credit cards and the 1 joint credit card. I was held liable for the charges on the joint card because he didn't pay the bill for 3 months and kept charging and guess what??? He had given me charging priviledges on 2 cards in his name but I never had a card nor ever charged anything. When he didn't pay he bills for several months, they called me and advised I was responsible for he bills because he had given me priviledges on the card. If I didn't pay it would ruin my credit too. so I had to pay over $1500.00 in his charges to keep my credit intact. And the joint card we held for 20 years was cancelled because he didn't pay the bll for 3 months and when I did the 4th month they said we were a credit risk (always paid bills in full, no balance, no late payments). Would no longer extend creidt to either of us.
This is very seroius stuff which you may have to deal with for years.
Yet another tale: my hb had a credit card I didn't know about and charged $4000 (not all at once) on various things he couldn't remember. I learned of the card when I answered the phone ... I had to pay it off. Cancelled it, of course. See an attorney; don't just let things slide until October. Sorry you have to be "with" us, but it's a helpful, invaluable sitee in my estimation. Blessings.
My only thought in addition to the excellent advice you have been given by others is to think about what might happen if he spends ALL of his half of your split savings. You would then need to use your half to bail him out of further trouble if he is mismanaging money...and it sounds as if he is. A lot of money can go missing between now and October. So sorry you are having to deal with the many issues this disease brings.
Thus, far, he is totally obsessive about paying off credit cards in full, early in fact. So I can only hope he remains high functioning enough until I have this nightmare figured out. This Sunday my sons are coming over and we will sit down and come up with a game plan (HAH!, GAME) NOT. DH must have had a rational moment last evening and called to warn me a huge dust storm was approaching where I live. I acted appreciative and pseudo=normal . But it didn't escape me that he did fail to later call to see how I fared. Nonetheless, it is nothing less and quite a bit more than this new version of my DH has shown in longer than I care to remember. Right now - I am thoroughly disgusted with this new manipulative monster of a husband. I constantly feel that he is demonstrating just enough BS to keep me sucked in.....which has worked quite efficiently up to now.
My dear DIL is taking me out to dinner tonight, and to say it is something I need desperately is an understatement. So out I will go, attempt to put my problems in the background and not discuss him or the moster he has become at all tonight. As Scarlet O"Hara famously said, Tomorrow is Another Day. If he happens to call while I am out tonight, I am sure he will make me pay for that in spades. But at this point, I wish he would just stop demonstrating any concern about me whatsoever....so that I can, without a guilty conscience, get as far away from him and his manipulations as soon as possible. I was watching my hero, Dr. Phil, today and he said something to someone who bullied and manipulated her family shamelessly. He stated that she admitted she only does that to those who love her because she knows she would have to pay dearly if she treated any one else in that fashion. WOW...did that resonate with me. Brain Illness???? No, he stated it was nothing more than callous manipulation and abuse to those who love her. Sounds like really intential selfish behavior, not to mention complete cognition from a bully who only thinks about his own gains and benefits. Call me skeptical, but I just can't seem to shake the belief that some are really no where near as incapable of cognizant thought and ramifications, when it benefits them. Again, I know, I'm ranting. And Again, I plead, please excuse my rambling. My heartfelt appreciation to all of you for your kind patience. Gina
Callous, manipulative and abusive people can also get dementia, and it becomes impossible to know where one ends and the other starts. I think that you need to protect yourself no matter what the cause, or causes, are. It's like defensive driving. It doesn't really matter why the Mack truck is coming your way; you need to get out of harm's way.
Mary and Bluedaze, It is really baffling to contemplate such behavior. You guys are so on target that whatever the harm is predicated on, it's something to protect yourself from. As for where bad behavior ends and dementia picks up......yep, I've been agonizing over that since I found this site. And to be honest, I really can't believe he can, especially in these early stages, be acting out of dementia alone. My Monster is just too manipulative and cunning for me to swallow it whole. No, he was never this way... cruel, selfish and insensitive to me in all of our years, without apologizing for the once in a while offense....and having a lot of time pass before I ever saw a hint of it again; but in retrospect, I do believe I did signs from the beginning of a hint and shadow of such character flaws as I now see much more prevalent and appalling. Yes, he may have had more control back then and knew how to temper it, but let's face the facts.....I was young, attractive, successful and quite independent back then, and would have left in a heartbeat if his flaws were continued...and he knew it. Now I am older and much more dependent on him, and I do believe he thinks that I have no other great options in leaving now....except to acquiesce, and take the BS he may have really wanted to dish out all along. Call me cynical, and by all means my situation is so very different from all of you whose LOs truly can't help themselves. But something deep down inside of me says it's not all illness, although there are enough signs to point to some amount of illness. In any event, I think I am done suffering and agonizing over the Monster he has become. Whatever the reason, I am done. With no hope of his going for a dx, there just seems to me there is no hope either way for us.
Jeez, am I first spouse to give up on this site???? Certainly not a title I wanted nor would normally deserve, but I do feel I am intuitive enough to know when I may be the victim of someone half evil and half demented but fully playing with me with all 4 burners functioning. I really don't know if any one else felt this way in the beginning but I guess time will tell just how sick he is. In either case, for what he's put me through during the last 4 years, I am done......for my health, which has suffered terribly (lost tons of hair and 45 pounds, and suffer from constant dizziness).... for my sanity, which I don't even think I possess lately, and for my peace of mind. Please, everyone, don't judge me harshly. I think you guys are saints and do believe you are doing what is right given all the diagnoses that at least provided you with a valid explanation. But, for me, there just isn't enough evidence in my situation, and I must do what is right for me, for a change. It breaks my heart to finally let go and I would have rather it all be from illness alone, but without proof of that, I just need to move on and take care of me. Again, thanx to all you dear, dear people for responding in the kindest way possible. My heart goes out to each and everyone of you. Gina
Gina, There are still days when I think to myself ..........RUN!!!!!........But my DH is mild mannered compared to what you are having to put up with. If your DH will not go see a doctor, will not live with you, will not communicate with you. What else can you do. You need to save yourself.
I know I have read of at least one other who like bluedaze said went through a divorce. But who knows how many come here and read early on find out what is going on and leave and never sign on this site. Who knows how many of them get divorced. I am sure it is many. Like I said I was headed for the divorce route when all of this went down for us. We still have a child at home, that was why I was staying.
Keep in touch, let us know how you are doing. I wish you well. Remember only you can know what is right for you.
I know that this has been said before, but I don't remember on which thread, and these are not the exact words: "Whatever characteristics a person has before dementia can be exacerbated by dementia." Would you consider going to your doctor and asking him for his advice? You may just need steered to the right person to help you. If you and your husband have the same doctor, perhaps your doctor could get your husband to come in for some other reason, and then he can evaluate the situation. It seems to me, and I haven't gone back and read your posts and maybe you've already covered this, that you deserve some input from professionals. Added knowledge gives you added power, especially since you have already mentioned financial considerations. Many of us have gone through similar situations and made our own decisions. If you have decided to cut your losses, than make sure you protect yourself as much as possible. I believe a consultation with an elder lawyer will save you money in the long run. I know that you are angry and fed up and hate what's happened. Time to be practical, too.
Gina: If I may say one last thing to you, if you really decide you don't need us or want us, that too is ok and we all understand. BUT, there are many things you can replace or live without....but your financial security is not one of them. When the money is gone there is no way to get it back or replace it.....if you take nothing else away from all our comments....Please see an elder attorney and get financial protection. To be have the concern of your husband's illness and the actions it causes will seem like nothing if and when you find out one day.....there is no longer any money in the bank, there is no insurance...there is nothing.
When I first came here several years ago I was told that immediately. I waited a year or two and began to hide money myself and make transfers into accounts in my name only so he could not get to the money right away. Last year we saw an attorney and now I sleep really good at night knowing I don't have that worry. Good Bless you and keep safe.
My dearest Gina, hold on, we are not all saints. This is the 1st of your posts that I have read. So, I don't know your background entirely. I came to this site thinking my H had AD, but was quickly brought to reality by experts here who told me his whole brain radiation had caused dementia. If you search kitty, you will find my story. Long story short, one day I woke up, my H (now my ex) told me there was no money left, we had to sell our house! What? I had never been involved in our financial affairs, it was all separate. But I was told by people on this site that my rental property (I owned prior to marriage) would go to medicaid should he need it. That scared the bejeebies out of me. (I am now living in that property.)
He had been a stock trader, lost all of our retirement money trading. When I looked into things, it was something like he owed $25,000 on a credit card he was not making payments on. Fortunately, I was not a joint holder of this credit card. It took 3? miserable years to sell our house (MY HOME!) I noted that so many people here have such difficulty getting a diagnosis. Then, I found that if I were to divorce, they would appoint an attorney to protect his interests if he WERE diagnosed. Do not give up on this site. Believe it or not, with all these saints who have stuck it out through thick & thin, I was coached, applauded, on my way to a separate life. I am 61 years old, could not in my wildest dreams imagine the life I am living now. I am working full time, our retirement funds depleted.
I so want to help you as I was helped. I could not have made it through all this without this site. It gave me my sanity. I am the one bluedaze mentioned whose husband divorce her. Yes, in the end, "he wanted to move on with his life." No awareness whatsoever of his state of mind. Stay with this site, they will walk you through the most unbelieveable hurdles. Do not trust for one moment his ability to be able to handle finances. I always trusted my husband, and was never a snoop. A snoop you must become. I will be watching your posts and hoping for you a good outcome.
Kitty...nice of you to chime in...I came to this site probably about the same time you did. I remember all you went through and wondered how you could handle it. I was reading many of your posts as well as others responding by giving you advice and encouragement that prompted me to move as many of the assets we had into my name only even though I knew that probably was not the final answer. Over 18 mos. ago my dh and I went to an elder attorney (probably shouldn't have waited so long) and had every thing taken care of and like I said .....I sleep good at nights now regarding finances. This issue is so important if not the most important and probably the issue that many put off taking care of. Glad to here you are doing well and have moved on. Judy
Thanks Judith. I hope all are forewarned about the financial side. So glad you can sleep nights. Dementia can not only steal their brains, but our security as well. Never imagined I would not be able to retire at age 62, next year. Can't even believe I am approaching that age. People tell me they think I am in my 40's. But I am tired, & actually feel 61. I will say this again. If you even suspect your spouse has dementia, PLEASE look into your finances. Look at credit card statements (it never ocurred to me to do that!), look for late fees, etc. My H hadn't even paid the property taxes on our house!
Kitty, so happy to hear you are moving on! I wish only the best for you in the future - you surely went through hell. I wonder if you ever get over being "tired". This takes so much out of us.
KItty, so glad you checked in; I was hoping you would. There is nothing like experience to put things clearly. How did the new friend turn out? Hope he is kind to you.
kitty nice to hear from you - its a very hard decision having to start over but at least you have that under your belt and can now move on. this disease devastates our lives whether you divorce or stay. your experience can help newbies here who have no idea what can happen. divvi
Gina, don't let Health Insurance stop you from divorce if that is what you want. Finding a policy to cover you may cost you for less than staying married. I am so sorry that you have this problem but you will get through it and find you are a stronger person than you ever thought possible. You are still young enough to make a new life for yourself. As for me, I am just hoping I can survive with my sense of humor intact.
Wonderful to see familiar names & faces! Feels like a reunion of sorts. Mary, new friend didn't turn out. :-( I am totally on my own. Well, except my cat Katrina who continues to delight me. My son & his wife adopted a dog, so now I have a "granddog." They live in NYC, & when I visit, he sleeps with me. He is not allowed to sleep with his parents, so it is a treat for us both. For dog lovers who love to read, 2 great books, The Art of Racing in the Rain, a novel by Garth Stein, and A Big Little Life, a memoir of a joyful dog named Trixie, by Dean Koontz.