Marriage and Divorce with a Mentally Ill Spouse (addict, personality disorder, harmful)
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Hi everyone. I have so many mixed feelings about where our life has brought us to. I'm hoping to get some perspectives. Here's my situation.
Married for 20 years, with 4 kids. My wife was diagnosed 14 years ago with Bipolar I. She's been hospitalized in 2006, 2015 (twice), and in July 2018.
After a rough couple of years in 2004-06, she was pretty stable until 2015. Then she had a major manic episode and was hospitalized for over a month total.
Since 2015 she has been very unstable overall. Also in 2015, she met a guy in the hospital. Exactly a year ago, I found out that she was having an emotional affair and sexting relationship with this guy. We started marriage counseling at that time, but she took that affair underground, and in February, I found out the affair and sexting had been going on the whole time we were in counseling (non-physical as far as I know).
Once again she re-committed to giving it up, but in June I caught her sexting with another guy. In July, I told her I wanted a divorce. When I did that, she texted my 16-year-old daughter for advice on how she should kill herself because my daughter "would know the best way" Then later that day, in front of DD and DS she said she was going to kill herself. I checked her into a hospital that night, where she spent 6 days.
At the end of the stay, she was on board the divorce train, saying that "freedom" was what she needed. She said she got married too young (she was only 20) and missed out on exploring life in her 20's. She also said that the reason she got married to me was because her parents liked me and it was like an "arranged marriage."
She moved into the walkout basement (we have a mother-in-law apartment down there), while we sorted everything out. Anyway, she sexted with another guy in mid-August as well. She was all aboard the freedom train until last week. Then I think reality hit and she started really worrying about her future.
She came to me with a plan to change. She was going to go to an addiction treatment program. She now wants to stay together. She set up marriage counseling with a new counselor. She said the first marriage counselor was only focused on her deficiencies, when she should have focused on my problems as well. Especially that I am emotionally distant. She also deleted her Facebook account, so she wouldn't sext anymore.
In a way, it was easier when she just wanted her freedom. But I'm sure she's now scared and trying to salvage her security. When I wouldn't just call everything off, she wrote the following letter to my mom and sister, which read in part:
Quote:
Im trying to straighten my life now ... I’m going to lose everything, and insurance for someone with bipolar is going to skyrocket and take my income to nothing most likely, not to mention I have no way to make money because I’ve been raising kids most of my life. He’s going to try to prove I’m an unfit mother so he can get the kids and not pay child support and he’ll use my illness against me and wants to pay as little as he can to me, which will make me have to struggle probably living paycheck to paycheck. I’ve been trying to do right. I’ve gotten rid of all social media, which has been a very hard thing for me to do. I’d reconcile but he’s past getting back together. Just thought I’d let you know the situation before he turns you against me.
I'm not actually planning to try to keep her from the kids, but I definitely do feel like majority custody is important in this situation.
So basically I'm posting all this to get a sounding board. My desire to live with her anymore is gone. What she has done has been so damaging to our marriage. Plus hearing that she basically feels like she settled for me, is almost as damaging as the sexting. And because this instability has gone on for 3 years and only seems to be getting worse, I just don't see improvement as likely.
But it's wrenching for me to think of tearing up the family with kids (ages 5-16). At the same time that I realize how incredibly damaging her instability is, the kids really do love her despite all that's happening. Also, I do care about what happens to her. I really worry her mental health will drop off if we split up.
So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd be really interested in hearing from people who have struggled through marriage with someone who is bipolar. Did you divorce or did you stick it out? What was your life like after you made your decision? What advice can you give me in this situation?
I divorced someone who had developed an immediate all-encompassing drug addiction 15 years after "I do". Drug addiction brings about and magnifies many degrees of mental illness. It took him to dangerous places that put our family at risk, physically and mentally. He wasn't the dependable father and husband we needed. I had to put my child's needs and rights to a decent life ahead of the guilt and "death do us part", as I felt the end was iminent one way or another.
I gave him more than a chance, whether he was coherent or not, I offered the chance to be with us if he got better. He didn't. It's a hard situation to be in, but what feeble excuse is there to stay?
Well I will throw my hat in the ring to say stay till the kids grow up. I know that's not a popular decision these days. It's no fun, but consider it. It's a very hard road, I know, but it is just 13 years.
To feel hurt by what she says is only human, but many times it is just the craziness talking and not what she really feels. This is a result of her mental illness and a way to medicate herself by assigning guilt to you and reimagining her life to find the elusive cure and happiness in her mind.
Went through this with my sister. Her husband left her and it didn't turn out well for the kids, or her.
Unfortunately she is mentally ill, like my sister, and needs someone to care for her. She may be beyond caring for herself and that will impact the kids negatively whether they live with her or not. The mental health field is so useless, she most likely won't get any care that will help her if she is left to herself. Meanwhile, during the time left keep a diary and establish any records and history especially involving doctors any police calls. This will help if she needs to be committed against her will in the future, which is what we had to ultimately do.
Well I will throw my hat in the ring to say stay till the kids grow up. I know that's not a popular decision these days. It's no fun, but consider it. It's a very hard road, I know, but it is just 13 years.
I would like to offer a different perspective. Please know that I am not married and I don't have kids, so my opinion may be understandably unwanted or off-base for this particular situation and discussion. I have been through a similar situation with a severely bi-polar parent, but I fully recognize that the dynamic is wildly different.
If it was me, and based on what you've shared, I'd do the exact opposite of what this reply is suggesting, but for the same reason and from the perspective of a kid who went through it. If you stay "for the kids," you are by action teaching them that putting and/or keeping ourselves in harmful situations for the benefit of others is okay to do. Honestly? It isn't. Your well-being as a person, as a father, as the accountable and responsible party for the lives and well-being of tiny humans who did not choose the life they have must come first.
Your wife is ill. Demonstrably so. People with bi-polar disorder are notorious for their ability to manipulate those closest to them and for their ability to appeal to human emotion. You cannot allow her to continue to do this to you or to your children. Threatening to kill herself in front of her children should be the end of the discussion, period. You have a responsibility to protect them from this harmful behavior and from the psychological fallout that accompanies hearing something so traumatic. I am 29 years old and I'm still in therapy trying to find a way to heal from my mother screaming at me that she would kill herself if I didn't _______. Fill in the blank using your imagination - I've probably heard it.
Seriously, the "til death do us part, in sickness and in health" vow is null and void at this point. Get them and yourself away from her and do it sooner rather than later. Her "plan" to change is a great start. She needs to do it on her own. She needs to prove that she can. She needs to show you with action rather than words that she's capable of improvement and positive, healthy change. She can do this from a distance. You can love her from a distance. You can support her recovery efforts from a distance. It doesn't mean that you keep the kids away fully and indefinitely. This is you making it clear to your children (and to yourself honestly, because people forget how important their own mental heath is when dealing with a more severely affected loved one) that mental illness does not excuse repeated harmful behavior.
It is not better for them to stay. It is not better for you to stay. This is far more than "not fun" and, frankly, 13 years is a long damn time.
I think for the kid's sake, it's usually good if you can stay together, but in this case, I think it would be better for the kids to split up if you can get primary custody and she would have supervised visitation.
Her trauma and drama and threats of suicide that she displays in front of the kids is way more damaging than divorce, in my estimation.
She is only concerned about herself at this point and how she will support herself. That should not be your concern.
The trust in the relationship has been eroded and you are done - now, what is best for the kids?
I would get a very good divorce attorney. Document every event as best you can, and take your list with you and get some advice.
OP, you are the only one who can decide what is best for you and your kids. But as parents you are modeling for your kids.
They are seeing a very unstable Mom who is inappropriately asking them the best way to kill herself, and a Dad who seems to condone this behaviour by staying with her.
The older kids should hear the truth, their Mom is sick and needs professional help, they are old enough to learn about her illness and be part of her treatment.
Staying in such a dysfunctional relationship is bad for you, you wife and your kids.
Has she also been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder?
Save yourself and your kids and get outta there. I was married to a man with BPD, which he self-medicated with alcohol abuse. He was a financial train wreck and verbally abusive. He was unemployed the last 5 years of the marriage, spending money as if he had it, and after he maxed out his credit cards he fraudulently used mine. Our son was being raised in a war zone. In the last couple of years of the marriage I couldn't answer the phone because it might be his creditors, then the phone got cut off because he ran up $1,000 in long distance bills I wouldn't pay. There were judgments against him and at one point the local hospital tried to attach MY wages for his expenses (well, he didn't have any wages).
Our son was becoming a nervous wreck with no self-esteem and I decided God didn't want people to live that way. It took 18 months and it was ugly but I divorced him. That was 1997. I started dating a wonderful man whom I married 6 years later. He turned out to be a spectacular stepfather. DS found his direction (after 4 expensive years at NY Military Academy). He finished college, landed a good job and is happily married with two beautiful little girls. With my second husband, it really WAS "till death do us part"- he died almost 2 years ago. DS would not be the fine young man he is without him. I'm enjoying the blessings of a comfortable retirement. My ex, sadly, died of his alcohol abuse 8 years ago. It was a waste of a brilliant mind.
I feel bad for your wife- it wasn't her choice to get that brain chemistry- but don't let her drag the whole family down.
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