I recently had occasion to see this video clip of Dr. Ed Tronick demonstrating a psych experiment in which the mother of an infant becomes (for a very short time) non-reactive to the baby's attempts to interact with her. Of course, the purpose of THIS experiment is really to demonstrate how children with schizophrenic, narcissistic, or otherwise highly undependable parents can grow up very insecure in the world.
But I found it to be a striking analogy of what happens to the spouse of an AD victim as the disease changes the victim's brain. Real early on in the disease process, I felt very much the way the baby in the video seems to feel. There I was, playing my part in what was a 20 year long pattern of interaction...I'd send out my signal, and get nothing back. It was disturbing, unnerving, distressing...and led down the road we're all traveling--to the caregiving doldrums and eventually to hospice.
I realize there are some cases among us where the victim's cognitive losses don't necessarily deprive the spouse of interactivity, but I think that for the most part, this loss of reciprocal interactivity--the knowing of, and interplay with the beloved other--is the worst, most painful thing we deal with in navigating this illness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0