Thank you for participating in this forum! I've been following these posts for a couple of years and yours is the first post I've seen from a self-identified gay man. I'm a woman married to a woman. We've been partners since 1985 and married since 2003, so we've weathered a few "in sickness and in health" situations together already. However, her cognitive impairment is a whole new world that we struggle to cope with every day. We're fortunate to have strong friendship circles, including both individual and mutual friends, and we live in a large liberal city, so we rarely if ever are directly confronted by homophobia, but I worry (probably excessively) about the future. With no children or siblings who can care for us as we age (we are both mid-70s now), we will eventually need to move to a senior living community, and she may need to be in assisted living memory care at some point. How can I make sure that we end up in a situation where we'll be accepted for who we are? My challenge is to stay focused on the present, which is still very good if often frustrating. Like you, I achieve some balance in my life through an outside activity (storytelling) that is both creative and social, but it also adds stress because of scheduled gigs and deadlines. It's not something I can sustain as caregiving responsibilities at home ramp up, and that makes me so sad to contemplate. We're lucky that her MCI is progressing very slowly, and we're able to talk about it honestly and try different adjustments that maintain her dignity and independence as much as possible. We both experience moments of despair, but usually on different days!

Anyway, it sounds like you and I are in fairly similar situations, so if you ever need someone to listen or bounce an idea off or just vent, feel free to get in touch.