Your partner is disappearing, and nobody around you can see it.
The person you married still remembers your anniversary. They can still find the car in the parking lot. They scored almost perfectly on the cognitive test at the doctor's office last month. But they said something cruel to your daughter at dinner, bought three identical power tools on the same Amazon order, laughed at a news story about a dying child, and have not said "I love you" back in six months. You know something is deeply wrong. Nobody believes you yet.
Frontotemporal dementia is not Alzheimer's. It attacks personality, behavior, language, and empathy while leaving memory largely intact, which is exactly why it takes an average of three to four years to diagnose. By the time the neurologist finally says the words, you have been carrying the weight alone for longer than anyone should.
This is the book that should have been in your hands at the diagnosis.
Loving Someone with Frontotemporal Dementia is the first practical partner guide written specifically for the spouse or long-term partner of someone with FTD. It is not a memoir. It is not a clinical textbook. It is a chapter-by-chapter manual for the real life you are living now, from the pre-diagnosis years through behavioral changes, financial protection, communication strategies for primary progressive aphasia, placement decisions, hospice advocacy, and rebuilding yourself after.
What you will find inside:
How to document behavior changes so doctors take you seriously. The specific brain regions behind every symptom that feels like a personal attack. Scripts for conversations with family members, medical teams, police, and your own children. The legal and financial checklist that cannot wait, including the Social Security fast-track most families never learn about. Behavioral strategies that actually work when reasoning fails. Communication techniques backed by research for partners of someone losing language. The grief framework that finally names what you have been feeling. And honest guidance on intimacy, placement guilt, hospice criteria that fail FTD families, and what the first year after looks like.
Written with clinical depth, real-world warmth, and zero platitudes, this book treats you as the capable, exhausted, loving human you are. Every chapter includes partner-tested scripts, reflection prompts, and action steps you can use today.
If someone you love has FTD, or if you suspect they do, start here.
