Before Bruce Willis was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, Emma Heming Willis says she mistook his early symptoms as a sign that their marriage was in trouble.
“It’s very gray to know where Bruce stopped and where his disease kicked in. I started noticing his stutter started to come back, but I never in a million years thought that was a symptom of FTD,” Heming Willis told People in an interview published Thursday.
Their relationship started to change, in part because they were having issues communicating.
“Conversations weren’t really aligning anymore, and our relationship started to shift. It was hard to put my finger on why and what was happening,” Heming Willis said.
This led to a lot of frustration and made her question whether their relationship was failing, she said.
“I thought it was something I was doing in our marriage that was not working anymore,” Heming Willis said.
“It’s like you’re banging your head against a brick wall. You’re just like, ‘Where is the miscommunication coming? What is happening within our relationship?'” she said.
Looking back, Heming Willis said her husband’s eventual diagnosis gave her clarity.
“There was relief in understanding, ‘Oh, okay, this wasn’t my husband, it was that this disease was taking parts of his brain,'” Heming Willis said. “Once you hear that, I just softened.”
In 2022, the “Die Hard” star stepped away from acting after he was diagnosed with aphasia. A year later, Willis’ family announced that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.
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The condition mainly affects personality and behavior or language and speech because of damage to the front or sides of the brain, Sebastian Crutch, professor of neuropsychology at UCL’s Dementia Research Centre, UK, told Business Insider in 2023.
Behavioral symptoms can include seeming insensitive or rude, and a loss of interest in people or activities.
In an interview with Diane Sawyer for the ABC special “Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey,” which aired on August 26, Heming Willis said she had moved her husband to a separate one-story home nearby where he has round-the-clock care.
She told Sawyer it was “one of the hardest decisions” she has ever had to make.
“But I knew, first and foremost, Bruce would want that for our daughters. You know, he would want them to be in a home that was more tailored to their needs, not his needs,” Heming Willis said, adding that she and their two kids spend a lot of time there with him.
A representative for Heming Willis did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours.
