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I think my husband is bipolar because my life went to hell six years ago. I love him so much that I let him come back after two years of hell and he is now doing it to me again. Yes, I still love him, don't want the dissolution that he has pushed me to get, and frankly I miss him so bad it is hard for me to do anything else but think of him. I have two children who don't understand how someone they love can change so much, and I have no answers. I have all of this forced on me and bankruptcy because he won't help me with the bills. What else can I do? I have loved him for 26 years and he all of a sudden doesn't want me. I haven't changed how I feel and yet I can't do anything. The three people who have fought for him, he discards. If you have an answer, I would love to hear it. Signed No options.
I can totally relate to what you just wrote. I also had to get my ex-SO BP1 out of my life and it wasn't easy. We were together for 2 1/2 years and I absolutely adored him. I met him when he was manic and undiagnosed, so charming, sweet, successful and the life of the party. He moved into my house a year later and all hell broke loose. He began to withdraw and blamed his "not being able to get out of bed for a month" to migraine headaches. Of course the doctors treated his headaches and also diagnosed him with depression. Things seemed to go well for a while after this until his father passed away. His father was abusive and tried to commit suicide in the past.
At the beginning of this year, my ex-BPSO started changing. He became verbally abusive, starting throwing things and blaming me for everything. I couldn't do anything right in his eyes. He went on wild spending sprees, buying a new Mercedes, clothes, etc. All things for himself. All his checks to help me pay for the house bills bounced. I begged him to move out but he didn't have any money since he was totally maxed out.
He hit a major depression that lasted for 2 months and then I became his caregiver. He was worse than caring for a 5 year old. I begged his family for help but they didn't want to make the 4 hour drive...out of site, out of mind. He drifted deeper and deeper into depression and became suicidal. Once again, I took him to the doctor and they prescribed him with some different anti-depressants. His mood changed and he went into a rage, trapped me in the house and physically hurt me...I drove him to the hospital and he was committed to the psych ward for 10 days and diagnosed with BP1.
I didn't let him move back into the house and his family was forced to take care of him. He was in an outpatient program for 8 weeks. This meant I didn't have to see him for 2 months...so I detached and started finding peace that I had not known for quite some time. No more panic attacks, no more abuse and no more manipulation. He had sucked the life blood out of me! I started moving forward with my life. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do but after reading several posts on this site, I knew I had to make some changes and set boundries or my life would continue to be a rollercoaster.
He came back and I helped him move his stuff out of my house. He borrowed money from his mother to get his own apartment. This wasn't easy since I still loved him but I knew I couldn't let him move back in until he was stable and became held accountable for his treatment. He tried to manipulate me several times to move back in, told me I was the love of his life, that he takes his treatment seriously and that he was a changed man. I stuck to my boundries and have been there as a friend.
He is still on disability, borrows money from his mother, self-medicates with weed, doesn't attend therapy, still blames everyone for his problems and rages. He goes off the meds because he loves the the hypomania too much. His mother now enables him.
He wants a caregiver and I want to live my life the way the way I had always envisioned it...peaceful and in a loving relationsip with a partner. I would NEVER go back, WE want two different things.
I want a divorce from my husband, whose family doctor diagnosed him as "possible" bp and on lexapro for a year. He threatened to make my life a living hell if I would leave, because no one will ever take his kids from him. He has highs and lows and has abused me in the past. He never leaves the house and has issues with porn and is obsessive/compulsive.
I am scared so I agreed to have him live in the basement in a really nice apartment. However, he tracks all calls, emails, etc. He is technologically brilliant, and I always feel watched. I am not sure what to do.
Anyone else trying to divorce/leave? Oh, we have been married for almost ten years and his entire family now hates me for giving up...a wife should be by a husband's side no matter what, no matter what abuse, physical, mental, etc....I am not strong enough anymore...I am tired, and I do not love him. I want to be taken care of....
hi, Reading all these posts brings me to tears, I have been married for 3 years and have 4 step children and 3 children of my own, 1 with husband now, shortly after my husband and I started dating I began to notice he didn't act appropriatly to normal events in relationships, very manic at times, police called, holes in walls,a lot of times just a path of destruction like a tornado, then the knife throwing (not really...form of speech) he will say the most hurtful, evil, things. I call them throwing knives because it hurts like such. He hates me, I try to run him, any little thing I say at any given time can be with an attitude not giving him respect. he wants a divorce, he would be gone now if it were not for our almost 2 year old. he can have who ever he wants.. the list goes on..then to be told hours to days to weeks later, he didn't mean it, i just don't take responsibility for any of our problems, then he gets angry and says things to hurt me and he really loves me...then make up sex, then walking on egg shells again, trying to make sure i don't set off the bomb. He has been to his own Dr. who was treating him with depression meds....That was a huge mistake...manic attacks even worse...I finally after 5 years talked him to going to my Dr. I have talked to her many times about my husband b/c I was having panic attacks from all the stress...He went...took tests..talked to her and she positively diagnosed him with BP, he started abilify a new med...first 3 days were great..4th-5th ok, now I think he has stopped taking them, i can always tell his mood and when things are about to go from good to bad in a blink of an eye...he went from telling me he loved me for 4 days straight which i havn't heard in I don't know how long to I hate you and want a divorce. He thinks If I say one thing that he doesn't agree with that I am not showing him respect,then he hates me and the problem is not him and his BP it is me...I can answer the phone and he gets mad at me, i can go shopping with my aunt and come home and talk to her later that same day and I care more about her then him...nothing can be normal...our family is seperated by your kid my kid, I could keep going on..what i would like to hear is if there is anyone who's wife/husband has gotten treatment, stayed on it and has a positive outcome.. i can't keep going through this... and the threat of I'm not taking my pill today is not going to cut it. I need to know if there is light at the end of BP or if this is pretty much going through meds and excuses and all the episodes all over again. thanks so much
Hi Sabrina, I know how concerned you are for your family,and you want to hear that things will work out if you really love each other. But if you have read all the posts on this site you must know that is not the case. Over time and with each episode a little more of the person you knew seems to disappear,after a while you wont even recognize any thing about him. They change completely.They mostly dont stay on their meds and even when they do they still have episodes.With the exception of a very few that I have read about on this and several other sites, it is impossible to have a successful marriage. Unless you call just managing to hang on through years of abuse, adultry, ups and downs,abandonments(sometimes months and years at a time)and cruelty, having a successful marriage. I dont, a successsful marriage is one where you do weather some hard times, but by and large you are good to and love one another.You dont go back and forth on loving one minute and hating the next. Above all you can count on and trust one another. You will never find that with a bp.After you give all you have to give and put up with everything they throw your way, they will leave you anyway.That may seem gloomy, but almost every bp s.o will tell you the same thing if they are being honest.It sounds like the problem with each others children is a big problem itself. It cant be good for them to live in an atmosphere where there is so much tension and stress. Think these things over carefully and be realistic in making your decisions. I wish you the very best and I wish with all my heart that I could tell you things will work out if you love him enough, but that is not the truth. Blaire
Originally posted by Blaire: Hi Sabrina, I know how concerned you are for your family,and you want to hear that things will work out if you really love each other. But if you have read all the posts on this site you must know that is not the case. Over time and with each episode a little more of the person you knew seems to disappear,after a while you wont even recognize any thing about him. They change completely.They mostly dont stay on their meds and even when they do they still have episodes.With the exception of a very few that I have read about on this and several other sites, it is impossible to have a successful marriage. Unless you call just managing to hang on through years of abuse, adultry, ups and downs,abandonments(sometimes months and years at a time)and cruelty, having a successful marriage. I dont, a successsful marriage is one where you do weather some hard times, but by and large you are good to and love one another.You dont go back and forth on loving one minute and hating the next. Above all you can count on and trust one another. You will never find that with a bp.After you give all you have to give and put up with everything they throw your way, they will leave you anyway.That may seem gloomy, but almost every bp s.o will tell you the same thing if they are being honest.It sounds like the problem with each others children is a big problem itself. It cant be good for them to live in an atmosphere where there is so much tension and stress. Think these things over carefully and be realistic in making your decisions. I wish you the very best and I wish with all my heart that I could tell you things will work out if you love him enough, but that is not the truth. Blaire
Blaire I was trying to reply to your message to Sebrina. I agree with you 100%. The only difference is that even if they leave you, they tend to resurface. When I think about all the wrong my husband has done to me, and all the stress he has caused in me and our child's life, I'm glad I made the decision to finally leave him for good. The emotional abuse, the blaming, the cheating, lying, etc....was just to much to handle and I finally realized that over the years his treatment of me was getting worse and not better. We are so much more peaceful without him and still he ocassionally shows up on my door step only to realize I'm never going to let him in. When that doesn't work he calls and tries crying. I decided that wasn't going to work either. So he tried e-mailing, I never bothered to check his messages. then he wrote letters which I can now just throw in the trash because he makes the same excuses he always has and its unbelievable that he thinks I would fall for any of them again. To the person who wrote we should think about how our bp significant other feels....I totally disagree. Why should we think of them when they don't care enough about us to think about us? From what I can tell the people on this board including myself have suffered so much because we cared about our bp significant other more than we cared about ourselves. If bp's whether treated or untreated want to self destruct isn't it better for them to do it alone rather than taking their wife, and children along for the ride???
Givenup,thanks for the reply and the honesty. Sometimes I think that us S/o's downplay our feelings and talk a lot about how our bp mates cant help how they are how they don't mean what they say,because we don't want to sound like we are criticizing an illness. But it's an illness that has hatred,betrayal, abuse and cruelty among its symptoms, its hard not to take that personally ,because it is the very essence of personal. The illness becomes the person we deal with to the point that they are no longer seperate.And it is so not true that they do not mean what they say and do! They mean it when they cheat and when they carry through with a divorce that was out of the blue and unwarrented. How can you argue with completement abandonment, its a testimony of proof that they mean what they say and they feel what they say.Thoughts and actions and personality make a person who they are,where ever they come from.I have read people on here say things like "Hes with his girlfriend now and I just hope he comes back to us when he crashes". I am not criticizing anyone here, this kind of emotional stress and abuse can cause us to act like we normally wouldn't,at least for a while.But those are not words that should ever have to come out of a spouses mouth no matter what the circumstances. It is monsterous.Why should a person ever have to accept that behavior and be expected to choke it down,much less make an excuse for it on the abusers behalf.They can controll themselves, many bp's on these sites have said so.They just choose not to, whether its by refusing medical help or refusing to admit a problem or even loving their "highs" to much to stick with their meds, its a choice. So why should we feel bad because we choose not to keep putting up with the cycle of abuse.I no longer feel bad about it. They dont worry or feel bad when their kids cry and ask why daddy left and you cant give them a good answer because you werent given one.They dont feel bad when they are sleeping with another woman and breaking the promise they made to you and god. They dont feel bad when your sick with worry over finances and how all of this turmoil is going to effect the kids.They dont worry period, except when "they" become unhappy when the selfish choices they made dont turn out to be as wonderful and fulfilling as they thought they would be.Then they worry, worry that you wont turn your life upside down again to make them happy again ,for the moment.They never think about making you happy or feel guilty about what they done to you.As long as they are happy, you can live or die for all they care. They even seem to get a charge out of rubbing salt into your wounds. While you are left wondering what you ever did to insite such hatred when all you did was give and give.Thats why my advice is to get out of the situation, unless your S/O is doing everything they can to stay on top of their illness,and they fully understand that there are lines that they cannot cross, ill or not.Even animals recognize bounderies why would we accept any less from our mates. Sorry about the rant, but I hate to see anyone taken atvantage of. Blaire
Blaire, it's funny, sometimes on these posts you read something from someone that is exactly what you need to hear. Your post did that for me today. I constantly wage a battle in myself between doing what is good for me and feeling sorry for my ex BO because of his illness. I have difficulty with separating the illness from just plain bad behaviour. I read these posts and nearly all BP's exhibit the same behaviours and so you start to think that it is something they cannot control and that therefore you as the SO need to be more understanding of their illness and behaviour even though it costs you dearly. I would agree that my BP is one of the most selfish people I know, selfish and narcissistic. I don't think he truly thinks about the effects of his behavior on me, he simply looks at me as a security blanket. I constantly battle over my own thoughts of responsbility and guilt that I feel toward him and everyday I wonder if I have done the right thing in leaving him. Every day I feel like I need to go back to him because he is hurting and in a bad place, even though it isn't beneficial for me. I beat myself up because I didn't set boundaries with him, but I expect an adult to know how to behave. I have given so much, gotten little in return, but feel horribly guilty for having left.
Dr. I just read your post and I honestly understand how you feel. I used to feel that way every time I attempted to leave my soon to be ex. This time I decided I was leaving him and never ever going back to him again. Its been several months and most days I know without a doubt I made the right choice. Other days (less frequently) I question that choice and then I have memories of some of the awful things he said and did to me and that reminds me that I made the right choice. The last time I talked to him he was threatening me and I told him not to contact me again. He didn't for a few weeks but has started calling leaving messages like he doesn't remember that things are over. He also calls my family members and talks to them and they told me that since I left him and won't talk to him they are beginning to see a side of him that they never noticed. They said that they really believe he is sick by his constant fluctations in mood and his flawed thinking. He actually calls my family to blame me for all his problems and tell them I make him act the way he does which is absurd. I'm glad others are starting to notice. Anyways the only advice I can really give is that relationships don't work when you only stay in them because you feel sorry for the other person. Feeling sorry for someone is not a foundation for any healthy relationship. People with bipolar disorder are good manipulators.....they will make you feel sorry for them even after they have treated you like crap. My husband has been self desructive for a long time. He will be that way with me,or without me so I figure there's no point of me allowing him to drag me down more than he already has. I know there is nothing more i can do to help him. I did all I could and now its time for me to live again.
Givenup, thank you for the support. I know I don't want to go back to the relationship the way it was, and he is still not in therapy, he is still drinking although he does take his meds. I just don't think he gets it, that this is an illness that needs treated. He doesn't think he is ill. I can't force him to read about bipolar or seek more help, so I feel like the only thing I can do is remove myself from the situation for my own protection. I will say that I am much happier without living with him where his moods and behavior affect me every day. There is a part of him that I love very much and always will. But there is that black side of him that is involved with partying, women, porn etc. etc. that is so destructive to a marriage. I would give anything to make it work, but I can't make it work without sacrificing my own mental health and happiness and self worth.
DR, I am thrilled that what I said helped you in any way. Each day dealing with life in general, much less life in relationship to bp,is so tough.We all need whatever strength or wisdom the other possesses for however long they possess it. Because, isnt it true, that we all wax and wane so much in our stability in dealing with these issues. We are never without need of a boost.If we have kids with a bp ex or if we just cant seem to break off , completely, that commitment that we feel toward them, then we can never be finished. So we need occasional help and sometimes a friendly kick in the hind parts.One time you will be able to provide that for someone and when you are low, perhaps they are in a good place, and can give that to you. DR, its clear to me that you have given your marriage every concievable chance. You have no reason to feel guilty for wanting a stable life for yourself. You cant do any thing more for a man who wont help himself, and particularly one who is cheating on you. You deserve to find what makes you happy. Thats what he has been doing, at your expense for years.You cant help him ( none of us seem to have been able to do that for our S/O's) but you can still help others by contributing to sites like this, and it will keep you strong too. Be good to yourself. Blaire
If either of you read this post, I would be interested in your point of view. Have either of you read the article on this website by Berry Capote (Sp) entitled "Being Married to a Bipolar Spouse - some pointers". It seems that this persons opinion on whether bipolars are responsible for their behavior is different to what I have read from both of you in your posts. You both seem to be of the opinion that they can control their behavior, this article suggests otherwise. I wondered if either of you could comment. I ask because this is an issue that concerns me a lot and contributes hugely to the guilt I feel in leaving my relationship. It is an issue that seems unclear, at least to me. Your thoughts would be much appreciated.
Originally posted by Gemini: My husband is currently in involuntary care, has been there for 10 days and just received a court order for a 21 day extension. I just found out that he has bipolar and has had it for years. We have been together for 3 and 1/2 very wonderful and very loving years. I absolutely had no idea that he was bipolar. We also have a son who is almost 2. Until the last few weeks, my husband has been nothing but the most doting, caring father to our child and the best husband anyone could ask for. I truly thought we had the best relationship, we were so in love, everyone thought we were great together, etc.... Recently, there were some outside situations that I believe triggered my husband to go into an episode, including the cancer diagnosis of 2 of his family members, financial troubles and he was having trouble finding a job. I noticed his mood changing, he was becoming more controlling of me(always had been equals), bizarre behaviors, paranoia, etc... until once confronted(I sat down calmly and quietly to ask him about his behavior) he became very manic and somewhat violent to the point I had to have my family intervene to get myself and our son out of the house. Once we were out, he became much more manic, threatened suicide and the police were called by another family member. My concerns are, now that he is in the hospital, I have suddenly become the enemy, he wants a divorce, I am a bitch, I am brainwashed, on and on... he lost his phone priveleges and so I just today received an extremely hateful letter. I am so hurt and confused by all of this.... I don't understand how someone who loved me less than a few weeks ago has now grown this hostility and anger/hate for me? I feel completely blindsided by all of this and I want nothing more than for him to receive the help he needs. I am all for him coming back home and remaining in our lives, but afraid if he refuses to maintain medication that I will have to let him go for our safety. I love my husband very very much, never loved another man the way I have love him, but our son most definitely has to come first and I have to remain healthy for him. Please, does anyone have any advice or similar experiences? Should I believe the horrible things he is saying to me, or should I think that it is just the BP talking? I really do want to help him and want to give our family a shot if he will take meds necessary, etc... but I don't want to go through all of this pain if he really means the things he is saying to me right now and will just leave anyway once out of the hospital. When someone is having a bipolar episode, are the things they say and think true...are they things that have always been buried deep inside? Or are they just things said to hurt the ones they love because they are hurting and scared as well? Sorry to ramble, as you can tell I am just so in awe of this and very very confused right now. Thank you! ...Oh, I also had to sign an afadavit the night the police were called, which my husband now has a copy of, I wasn't aware that he would receive a copy of it(still wouldn't have altered anything I said) but now I feel like he is using everything I said against me...will he always harbor these resentments or will they subside when he is stablized? Will he remember the things he said and did, will he feel remourse and go into a depression? I have so many questions and concerns right now and am also currently seeking out a local support group for family members, but thought I would check online groups as well. Thanks again, any response would be appreciated.
Hi. I feel your pain. I think it is the hardest thing in the world loving someone who is bipolar. My husband has terrorized my completely when he is on his ups and downs. After many years of running out of the house in fear, I filed for divorce. I have been stuck because I still love him very much, but this is crazy. He says and does horrible things. Now he says them to the kids. It is just horrid. I would love to talk to someone who might really understand. I am sorry that you are feeling the pain too.
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