Granbury, Texas - When 36-year-old Daniel Porter opened his eyes one day in July 2020, he got the shock of his life.

Where was he and who on earth was lying next to him in bed?

Ruth was just as baffled by these questions, which is understandable, given that they were coming from her husband of 13 years!

The 37-year-old quickly realized that it wasn't just her that Daniel didn't seem to remember. He had evidently forgotten everything: their home, their daughter Libby (10), the family dogs, the works.

In fact, the last memory he had was from 1999 – and Daniel was shocked at how "old and fat" he looked in the mirror.

"He thought he was either drunk and gone home with a woman or that he'd been kidnapped. I could see him looking for an escape route" Ruth the Daily Mail.

The scared and confused Texan then asked to see his parents, who luckily lived right next door and were able to confirm to him that the stranger was indeed his wife.

Up until that point, he was still convinced that someone was playing an elaborate prank on him.

The whole family frantically made their way to the hospital, where doctors discovered that Daniel was suffering from transient global amnesia (TGA) – a sudden, temporary short-term memory loss.

While the couple was told he would regain his memories within the next 24 hours, it still hasn't happened to this day.

In the following months, Ruth tried everything to jolt her husband back into remembering something. She drove him around his old neighborhood and re-introduced him to his friends. But nothing worked.

"‘He doesn’t remember meeting me, getting married, getting pregnant, buying our first house, our daughter’s birth or 9/11. It's weird because I'm in an old relationship and he's in a new one," Ruth said.

There are some clues to Daniel's mystifying condition. Just a few months before that fateful day in July, he began having regular stress-related seizures due to major changes in his life .

Within a short period of time, he lost his job, had to move back in with his parents, then hurt his back so bad he ended up using a cane to walk.

"We had a really traumatic year in 2019," Ruth shared.

She still thinks all that turmoil could be responsible for Daniel's memory loss: "He dealt with all this other stuff back to back and it was like his brain just said it didn’t want to do it anymore and just swiped 20 years of memories."

But even after all the challenges of this big reset, the two are still together, going strong. There are even some positives: "He’s more friendly and sociable, he loves going out but he didn’t use to."