Jim recognizes he is faltering and it scares him.

He often asks if he can be doing more to make me happy. Which breaks me because I know he can’t, no matter how hard he tries. He will continue to decline and I will take over more and more of a management role in his life.

I am in this for the long haul.

This is where the child/parent caregiver books fail for those of us in a romantic relationship with a dementia patient.

Parents have decades of emotional links to their child. This helps to ease fears of abandonment. Even if they can’t grasp their toddler is now an adult, there is (at least in healthy relationships) a level of certainty that the relationship will continue.

Jim and I have only been together for 9 years, less than 10% of his life. Our age difference has always made him insecure and now he seems terrified I’ll leave as his memory fails.

He has always been the one to look after everything and now he feels guilty and possibly a bit ashamed that he has to pass the baton over to me. Car repairs, banking, insurance renewals these were his realm of responsibilities and now he barely understands the process for any of them.

It’s increasingly hard to reassure him I’m not going anywhere.