Posted 6/12/2004 8:41 AM (GMT 0)
It's really late at night, but I need some advice. This is my second post -- my first was on "New Here" by SnowyLynne.
I'm 62 years old and my Significant Other of almost a year is 74. We get along really great, and he is very flexible!! He's a widower of 8 years, after a happy marriage of 31 years. To a strong woman who didn't do everything to please him! Which is great, because I'm a strong woman, too, so we get along great. Neither of us is the "dominant one," and we communicate very well. We are both strong willed, emotional, artistic, creative, and can be stubborn. We are also very loving, kind to each other, and affectionate. We are very sweet to each other, and help each other out in every way. We take care of each other -- are real family, and know and love each other's extended families, too.
If we get angry, we have learned to get over it quickly. We create for ourselves a program to follow, with a prayer, so we can remember what we need to "practice" to help us keep on the "right track" in our relationship. We are doing a good job and we both feel very good about things!
He dated during his 8 year widowerhood, but I am the only serious relationship he has had. He's careful and knows who and what he wants. I feel the same. He's wonderful. The only reason we are not married, is that I refuse. I have been married and divorced 3x, and will never every marry again. I am happy with my situation as an S.O. to a loving man, and he is happy,too. I think he'd probably be happy to marry me, but whether he would or not is a moot point. We have exchanged Commitment Rings. We are both in our relationship for life and know it.
Tonight, he took me to the theatre, which he does a lot. He's the senior actor there, although he has not been acting for over a year due to eye problems. (He'll be getting back into acting soon, since he's been cleared now, by his ophthalmologist, though.) I'm planning to get more active in the particular community theatre we both love, and even appeared in a music duo there with him last Christmas.
Tonight, after the theatre date, he was talking about where he wants to go together next week. He gave the address and said it was on the "East Side," and I said I thought it was on the West Side, but he might want to look it up. He adamantly said he knew it was on the East Side. I said I didn't think so, described the intersection at that particular East Side corner, and said why not go ahead and look it up? Nothing lost by doing that.
Well, he happened to have a paper with the place's address. He looked up the address. Then, in front of a couple of other people -- one of whom we both knew slightly -- he pronounced, "Yes, it **is** on the West Side -- just like I said." In other words, he took the words from me! Switched positions!
This just absolutely floored me. He and I are both highly forgetful. We both just hate being this way. I think I hate being the way I am, more than he hates being forgetful. In other words, forgetfulness bothers me as a concept/condition more than it does him. He is less of a philosophical sort than I am. He'll get really angry and burned up about a **situation** like losing his keys, whereas if I lost my own keys, I'll see it as a symptom of aging and creeping forgetfulness.
So anyway, this was the first -- but I think probably not the last -- time this behavior on my Dear's part.
So I am wondering whether anyone here might offer any suggetions for me?
1. Should I just never talk to him about directions at all? Travel with a capital T has caused us problems in the past. We have been able to solve the problems so far, though, by reasoning that if we can't agree on a travel direction or mode of transportation [to our destination, that is], we'll just get to our mutual destination under our own steam and our own way. (We both take public transit, so that's easy.)
2. When my Dad had A.D. Mother said she learned in her A.D. support group "Never Argue." Daddy was a retired lawyer. How on earth Mother learned "never Argue" with such a man, I will never know. But she did. And she was his caregiver for 5 years.
Daddy argued about everything. For his whole life. As his daughter, guess what? I learned to argue! If challenged to argue, I respond with a counter argument. "I grew up on the witness stand," since Daddy was a lawyer, and later a judge.
S.O. also argues. Remember what he said: "Just like I said, it's on the West Side"? Prior to that, it was just a simple discussion. He turned it into a battleground y that simple remark!
To me, that was throwing down the gauntlet. How? By (1) stealing my position; (2) saying it was his position in the first place; (3) saying "I win, so you lose" in front of other people -- while using my knowledge to win with!
3. Lastly, would a language behavior like the one S.O. used this evening mean possible dementia? And if so, what now?
This is a long post -- I sure hope somebody can give me SOME info.
Thanks,
ElderBerry