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I don't need to go into great detail about all the difficulties. But suffice it to say, my wife was diagnosed about 12 years ago with Type I bi-polar. That's the really extreme kind. Another counselor recently suggested she might have borderline personality disorder traits as well. We've been married 18 years.
She had a really rough patch at the time she was first diagnosed. Then she has had too other major episodes where she was hospitalized. The last one was over a year ago, and she spent a month in a psych ward. Since then living with her has been difficult to nearly impossible for me. She gets in these negative spirals where to her even the smallest tasks seem insurmountable, nothing I do is good enough, and life isn't worth the effort.
I'm also worried I don't know what it feels like to be in a normal relationship. I get so much negativity and criticism so I have no baseline to understand what is a legitimate complaint and where I could really improve. I'm sure I have faults to improve on, but I know I am not as bad as she thinks I am. Simple things like watching my favorite team play a football game will set her off and she cites that as proof that I don't love her and put everything else above her.
Most nights we get in this pattern of me doing something that she deems inadequate, and then her giving me the silent treatment or sulking in our room most of the evening. Then sometimes, she will snap out of it and be happy and seem normal for a day or two. It's probably 75% terrible, 15% tolerable, and 10% good.
There are many times when I just want to give up on the relationship. There are two things that prevent that.
1. We have four kids, ranging from 14 to 3. She can usually pull herself together enough to provide adequate, if not ideal, care for the younger ones. She has frequent conflicts with our 14-year-old daughter, and nit-picks at her behavior, clothing, friends etc. She sort of follows the same pattern with her as she does with me.
2. If I left, I think she would probably not be able to make it on her own and could end up dead within a few years.
I've always been faithful, but lately I've just been wanting to have real companionship. I just don't know if that will be possible with her. Are there any success stories out there that could buoy my hopes? The thought of living like this for years to come is pretty discouraging.
Idk it's been a while since I've been in a long term relationship but from what I understand this is what lifetime marriages are made of. Quite a few years of terrible but holding on to the 25% you mentioned and treasuring those times. Even with normal people. This is why divorce is so high these days. Nobody wants to hold on anymore.
During the tolerable times have you tried to sit her down and talk about each other's feelings? Have you tried a marriage counselor?
It sounds like the doctors are trying to figure out the right cocktail of meds to get her back to the person you love. She's sick and you're not being very understanding. If she had cancer what would the difference be?
I am very very close to someone who has been diagnosed as bipolar.
I am not 100% sure the diagnosis is correct; but I have seen them go through what appeared to be manic depressive states in my earlier years.
I have also witnessed them self sabotage relationships. Dare I say having this type of mental disease has absolutely got to be one of the hardest thing on relationships...any type of relationship...whether it be familial, romantic, etc. I have seen her end things with someone that loved and cared about her for no reason (well, she made up reasons that didn't mean anything to the person she was letting go; maybe she just really felt unworthy of love from someone at the time...).
This person is related to me and I have started to distance myself from them as of a few months ago because I am just....tired. And I feel bad/guilty doing this because I am the last person in their life that is holding on to a relationship with them. I don't feel it's right to leave them alone. And because I frequently suffer from depression myself, I know that I often times do things to push people away although at the end of the day I need those people to continue caring about me. It really can be a life of self sabotage and few will be strong enough and care enough to hang on til the very end.
Anyways, I digress.
Maybe I read things too fast and may have missed this, but is she in counseling right now? Are you? This is such a tough situation to bare alone; I wonder if there are groups out there for people married to people who are bipolar so they can discuss their hardships and figure out ways of coping.
It sounds like she definitely needs more professional help in order for your relationship to continue in a more healthy manner.
One divorced
One divorced after bankrupting the family with crazy purchases
One overdosed and died (after multiple injuries from being drunk/high all the time)
One divorced
One divorced after bankrupting the family with crazy purchases
One overdosed and died (after multiple injuries from being drunk/high all the time)
I wouldn't do it.
Yeah, after watching that Richard Gere movie "Mr. Jones" I'd have to say I wouldn't want to get involved with someone dealing with that issue. Sounds mean, but it is what it is.
One divorced
One divorced after bankrupting the family with crazy purchases
One overdosed and died (after multiple injuries from being drunk/high all the time)
I wouldn't do it.
Do you mind clarifying what you're saying you wouldn't do?
The OP has stated that they are married to someone with bipolar disorder and have been married to them for over a decade.
Idk it's been a while since I've been in a long term relationship but from what I understand this is what lifetime marriages are made of. Quite a few years of terrible but holding on to the 25% you mentioned and treasuring those times. Even with normal people. This is why divorce is so high these days. Nobody wants to hold on anymore.
During the tolerable times have you tried to sit her down and talk about each other's feelings? Have you tried a marriage counselor?
It sounds like the doctors are trying to figure out the right cocktail of meds to get her back to the person you love. She's sick and you're not being very understanding. If she had cancer what would the difference be?
We have gone to three marriage counselors in the past year. One felt like we had the tools we need, and at the time my wife was hypomanic so her moods were generally better.. My wife didn't like the second one, so we didn't go back. The third got worn out by the futility of our situation because every week we would come back and nothing had changed. She finally said she had done all that was possible with us and we shouldn't come back. And yes during the tolerable times we try to talk.
Like I said, I'm not perfect. But 90% of marriages where a spouse is bipolar end in divorce compared to about 40% of the typical population (Marriage & Bipolar: Words of Wisdom | bpHope - bp Magazine Community). Something is drastically harder in bipolar relationships. Cancer and bipolar are total apples and oranges. One tragically affects the body. The other tragically affects the soul.
I'm looking for success stories from the 10% who have actually made it work, because it is damn hard to never know what tonight, let alone tomorrow, will be like.
My friend was in one (then took her back years later and it failed) with a girl, she was to die for if you ever just looked at her. She was a 10 as far as looks go. But she was pretty manipulative and got very crazy towards the end of their first relationship. He works a seasonal job, where he works 80-90 hours weeks for 7 or 8 months a year, then has 4 months off. Well the business was on strike for a year and he was living in New Jersey and she was living in California, so he moved in with her and went to California for like a year and a half. Then when the strike ended, he had to go back and she was doing all sorts of things into trying to guilt him into staying. Even going as far as to saying that he needs to forget his job and she'll support him. She has a very good job too, so she could have done it. He didn't want that and promised to return in another 7 or 8 months, as well as visit for holidays and breaks. She couldn't take that and started flipping out. She was also a recovering alcoholic, but was sober, so I'm not sure if that played any part in it.
One night, they got into a fight while she was cutting open boxes with a box cutter and she slashed him with it. Then was apologetic less than a second later and told him he needed to get stitches and she would take him to get them or call her brother, who is a nurse, to come and give them to him.
She also developed an obsession towards that time with her wanting him to physically strike her during sex or even just at random, because she said it would turn her on. He said she would do things to **** him off her hardest, just to get him to hit her, which he never did and didn't even feel comfortable doing it even lightly and with her consent. He was best friends with her brother and they kind of grew up together, many years before getting together like that. But they lived in different states when they first hooked up. We thought maybe she was abused as a kid, but we know her family very well and they seem like good people. Our other friend basically lived with their family for about 5 years after his parents moved out of state. We did come to find out that she inherited this from her mother, and that her mom is on meds for it.
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