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How to Deal With a Partner That Fades Before Your Eyes
When grief looks like anger
When James first reached out to me, his request sounded simple enough:
“I get too angry with my wife. I want to handle it better.”
His wife had been diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia — a disease that erodes memory, orientation, and function hour by hour, unpredictably. Some days she seemed almost her old self. Other days, she didn’t know how to make a cup of coffee.
James wasn’t proud of his flashes of anger. He would erupt when she’d forget, resist, or get confused. “I know it’s not her fault, but I still snap”, he said.
But anger was only the surface. He didn’t realize that yet. Below it lay an ocean of ungrieved losses.
When it’s not just about today’s frustration
At first, we worked on the obvious triggers: the coffee spills, the endless reminders, the conversations that went in circles.
James practiced pausing, stepping out of the room when he felt the heat rising. He tried breathing exercises. He even began labeling his emotions: frustration, loneliness, sadness, grief. A great resource for it is the Wheel of Emotion, which goes over in a…
