My husband has dementia. We are 70 and have been married 46. He takes Viagra and wants sex every night. I’m tired and have joint pains. He often forgets we even had sex. He gets upset with the possibility of me moving to another room. He also is creating false situations of me meeting up with a man we knew in college. He’s never hit me but I’m getting nervous.
Other than his obsessing on sex you don't tell us a whole lot, but it you are fearing violence I think that he must now be 24/7 care, requiring really a staff and shifts, not one person.
Please consider a discussion with your husband's doctor about his obsessive ideations about marital relations so that you can have the viagra changed out for something more benign. In fact, dependent on the status of his dementia that may be something you can accomplish to yourself.
You cannot live in fear of someone in this manner.
I would begin with a trip to an elder law attorney about options for divisions of assets and protection for your own assets for your future care. But you are edging in, I fear, on a time when you will no longer wish to live with this man. For me that time would have come already.
There is someone else on this forum who recently posted that her husband with dementia just wrestled her to the ground and was almost choking her until she called for help. She described her husband formerly being her protector and a good man. But dementia changes all that and no amount of reasoning or logic has any affect.
You need to do what it takes to protect yourself. Dementia also robs its victims of the ability to have empathy for others. Your man literally cannot care how his actions affect you. So, you need to do what it takes to protect yourself and your own qualify of life through this all.
Talk to his doctor. There are many medications out there that can be prescribed that will kill the sex drive, keep him calm, and curb the delusions. You can even put them in his food and drink without his knowledge.
Also, who cares if he gets upset if you move to another bedroom? Let him get upset. You don't have to put up with him going after you every night. Move to another bedroom and put a good strong lock on the inside of the door. You cannot allow him to form a "shadowing" habit with you where you have to be right with him every second of he day. That always ends badly. Adult daycare is a good way to prevent a shadowing habit from forming. Sleeping in another room is too.
Talk to his doctor soon. Go and see him yourself without your husband and talk about pharmaceutical solutions for your husband. Also, talk to him about some care options like memory care. I may be prudent for you to put him on a few waiting lists at good places.
How is he getting to the pharmacy? Surely you're not allowing a man with a broken brain to continue to drive are you? I hope and pray not.
Someone driving with dementia is no different than someone driving drunk or high on drugs. I know that you would never be able to live with yourself if he were to severely injure or worse yet kill someone, knowing that you should have stopped him from ever getting behind the wheel.
You think you have problems now, you could literally lose everything you have if your husband was sued because he was driving with dementia and killed or injured some innocent person.
And if he's not driving but it's you that's taking him to the pharmacy to get his Viagra, just stop taking him.
And do have a talk with his doctor about his increased sexual appetite as there are medications available to help with that.
Also if you don't ever feel safe, please call 911 and have your husband taken to the hospital, and once there let them know that he can't return home because you don't feel safe anymore and that he is an "unsafe discharge."
They will then have to find placement for him.
Don't compromise your safety or your comfort. The man you married 46 years ago is no longer the man you know now. He's got a brain condition that makes him prone to ugliness, aggression, and sexual insistence. Placement may become necessary for your own sake. Start looking at the situation from a logical standpoint and not an emotional one.
Wishing you the best of luck with a difficult situation.
“ A husband can’t even have sex with his wife” and giving in because it calms him down.
I’ve hidden it before and he fights with the pharmacist to get another script filled.
Now I’m Needing to figure out how to talk to the kids.
Make sure to contact his Doctor who cares for his dementia, and be honest what is happening. You need to protect yourself.