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Thank your lucky stars that this happened, and if she later says she is back on her meds and wants to get back together, do whatever you have to do in order not to get lured back into the relationship--change your phone number, change your name, whatever it takes. I am also a "been there, done that" and believe me, no matter how much you love/loved this person, it is not worth sacrificing your peace of mind, your energy and your life in order to try to make it work.
I am sincerely sorry for what has happened to you, but I wish what happened to you had happened to me before I got too involved to walk away.
And for those of you who are still single and looking, the minute anyone you are dating mentions that they have bipolar disorder, even if they tell you it is under control, run the other way as fast as you can. It is not their fault, but this disease will eat you up. Save yourself.
Have had a few extra days to process this. Still trying to figure out what happened to the woman I fell in love with and had planned a future with. It's like an alien took over her body and she is completely different. Still very sad and feeling a sense of loss. Talked this over with my sister and she put a good spin on it. Told me to focus on the two and a half years of a great relationship and not focus on a week's worth of pain. It was not my fiance that told me to leave, but her mental illness that told me to leave. So moving on and hoping for the best.
Sent an email to a few of her family members letting them know of my concerns and how she has changed. Want them to keep tabs on her to make sure that she keeps herself safe and out of trouble. I still love her, but know that it won't work. Just want to make sure nothing bad happens to her.
Have had a few extra days to process this. Still trying to figure out what happened to the woman I fell in love with and had planned a future with. It's like an alien took over her body and she is completely different. Still very sad and feeling a sense of loss. Talked this over with my sister and she put a good spin on it. Told me to focus on the two and a half years of a great relationship and not focus on a week's worth of pain. It was not my fiance that told me to leave, but her mental illness that told me to leave. So moving on and hoping for the best.
Sent an email to a few of her family members letting them know of my concerns and how she has changed. Want them to keep tabs on her to make sure that she keeps herself safe and out of trouble. I still love her, but know that it won't work. Just want to make sure nothing bad happens to her.
You sound like you want to "save" her. You can't, save yourself. Cut the ties. I have a lot of experience with this, my best friend from the time I was 12 (I'm 53 now) is bipolar and I have seen how crazy she can get, violent, and when she was like that, you couldn't reason with her, she couldn't see any other perspective. That's how co-dependency begins, we think if we can find just the right way to say it, just the right book, the right way to help, we could help her see it, but it's not possible and so very unhealthy.
When she left my friend's dad when we were 14 for a salesman (bipolars tend to cheat when in manic phases), my friend wanted to stay with her dad and continue at her high school, but her mom told her she'd kill herself if she didn't come live with her! Can you imagine the utter selfishness to put that on the shoulders of a 14 year old girl??
25 years later, when my friend had her first child 8 weeks premature, her mother came to the hospital and told my friend she was being punished for the way she treated her. The ironic thing is my friend has sacrificed over and over to help her mom, took care of the many financial catastrophes she created (again, in manic phases, lots of overspending/stupid investment decisions), let her live with her off and on over the last 30 years, etc, yet her mom used to scream at her all the time. She lives with my friend now, but she's close to 80 and now frailer and much more docile, but she was a nightmare.
Her mother let me live with them for a couple of years when I was about 18 and a mess, and I was actually fond of her, when she wasn't "sick" she was funny, outgoing, the life of the party, and fun to be with. But other times she was so toxic (like what she said after my friend's baby was born). She would call me and want me to sit there and listen while she went on a verbal rampage about how horrible my friend was to her. She believed what she was saying, too, nothing I ever said made her see the truth, it was like she had a complete inability to see when she was wrong, in her mind it truly was everyone elses fault. I in the end decided I had to take care of me, and she was too toxic to be in my life.
So when I moved and changed my number, I never gave it to her and asked my friend not to give it to her. I used to feel guilty, but honestly there is no way to help.
To many reading this, it'll sound like she's some kind of b*t** horrible person....she's not, she's a very sick person. It's a truly horrible disease and not her fault. I don't dislike her, I care for her and I pity her, but I can't help her, and I can't have her in my life, for my own health and sanity which must come first in order to have a good life.
You don't have to be angry at someone to cut them out of your life, it is about what is good for your life, nothing against her as a person. You too cannot help your ex, she is going to make a mess of her life, over and over and over, and you cannot stop her. If you think you will just help once or twice then stop, you are kidding yourself. You are going to be sucked into a toxic vortex, and no new woman you meet is ever going to tolerate her in your life, so you will end up enmeshed forever. Don't feel guilty, just don't. You can't help her.
You sound like you want to "save" her. You can't, save yourself. Cut the ties. I have a lot of experience with this, my best friend from the time I was 12 (I'm 53 now) is bipolar and I have seen how crazy she can get, violent, and when she was like that, you couldn't reason with her, she couldn't see any other perspective. That's how co-dependency begins, we think if we can find just the right way to say it, just the right book, the right way to help, we could help her see it, but it's not possible and so very unhealthy.
When she left my friend's dad when we were 14 for a salesman (bipolars tend to cheat when in manic phases), my friend wanted to stay with her dad and continue at her high school, but her mom told her she'd kill herself if she didn't come live with her! Can you imagine the utter selfishness to put that on the shoulders of a 14 year old girl??
25 years later, when my friend had her first child 8 weeks premature, her mother came to the hospital and told my friend she was being punished for the way she treated her. The ironic thing is my friend has sacrificed over and over to help her mom, took care of the many financial catastrophes she created (again, in manic phases, lots of overspending/stupid investment decisions), let her live with her off and on over the last 30 years, etc, yet her mom used to scream at her all the time. She lives with my friend now, but she's close to 80 and now frailer and much more docile, but she was a nightmare.
Her mother let me live with them for a couple of years when I was about 18 and a mess, and I was actually fond of her, when she wasn't "sick" she was funny, outgoing, the life of the party, and fun to be with. But other times she was so toxic (like what she said after my friend's baby was born). She would call me and want me to sit there and listen while she went on a verbal rampage about how horrible my friend was to her. I in the end decided I had to take care of me, and she was too toxic to be in my life.
So when I moved and changed my number, I never gave it to her and asked my friend not to give it to her. I used to feel guilty, but honestly there is no way to help.
To many reading this, it'll sound like she's some kind of b*t** horrible person....she's not, she's a very sick person. I don't dislike her, I care for her and I pity her, but I can't help her. You don't have to be angry at someone to cut them out of your life, it is about what is good for your life, nothing against her as a person. You too cannot help your ex, she is going to make a mess of her life, over and over and over, and you cannot stop her. If you think you will just help once or twice then stop, you are kidding yourself. You are going to be sucked into a toxic vortex, and no new woman you meet is ever going to tolerate her in your life, so you will end up enmeshed forever. Don't feel guilty, just don't. You can't help her.
Don't want to save her, just make sure that the decisions she makes don't cause her a great deal of harm. Had two and a half great years with her and will always have a soft spot in my heart for her. I'm moving on. It's just tough because we were planning on getting married and I was all in, 100% committed to making it work. All her friends and family wanted to see us together and I was told often how much of a good influence I was on her.
But my bags are packed, it's my last night in our house. Moving 30 miles away to make it hard to see each other.
Don't want to save her, just make sure that the decisions she makes don't cause her a great deal of harm. Had two and a half great years with her and will always have a soft spot in my heart for her. I'm moving on. It's just tough because we were planning on getting married and I was all in, 100% committed to making it work. All her friends and family wanted to see us together and I was told often how much of a good influence I was on her.
But my bags are packed, it's my last night in our house. Moving 30 miles away to make it hard to see each other.
The sad fact is the decisions she makes ARE going to cause a great deal of harm. You have to accept that, and then accept that you can't do a thing about it. You might want to check out a nearby CODA group (Co-Dependents Anonymous) if you can't help yourself from trying to help her. I'm glad you're moving, don't give her your phone number or address.
I want to add, my friend's mom when young was not this bad....she got worse starting in her late 30's, and really really horrible in the menopause years, lest you think "my ex is not as bad as this lady". My friend's dad had no idea how bad she would become when he married her.
Just a weird postscript to this whole thing. I had pretty much come to terms with moving out. Found a new place and ready to move on with my life. Still reeling, but know in the back of my mind that this relationship wouldn't have worked. My last morning in the house I fire up my computer and notice that my fiance is no longer on my Facebook friends feed. So I go to the search button to go directly to her profile page. Not only did she "un-friend" while I was still in the house, but she has blocked me from finding her. All she told me is that she doesn't want me to be sad when I get on Facebook. This is coming from a woman that will add a new Facebook friend if she talks to someone for 10 minutes at a party or social function. She even has a few old boyfriends from her past as friends. Other than her first husband, I'm the only relationship that's lasted more than a few months, so I figured I would rate at least as a friend on her Facebook page. All in all, perplexing behavior.
I recently dated a sweet loving woman I think suffers from this and it's not in treatment...it's the worst.
I won't discuss that in here (you can find all the incident in "How to make amends with a bipolar person) because it's too long but I will say this:
It's not gonna work, unless the person suffering from BD is on treatment
Like any "mental illness" (depression, schizo, borderline) the person needs to train their brain. If not you will continue to fall over and over and their partner will suffer the consecuences.
Bipolar is the most "tricky" illness for the patient, they usually don't understand what's going on with them...only people around them can tell, and often the patient doesn't acknowledge the problem.
I have a friend (40years) who is Bipolar, every one of her relationships have ended in disaster. She is incapable of maintaining any kind of balance in life, and when she goes off her meds, all h#ll breaks loose. There are times when I just have to back off and let her be, as dealing with her is just too toxic. Another thing is that she has gotten progressively worse as she has aged, her meds are constantly being upgraded or changed to deal with this ongoing problem.
It is not a pretty story, her family has really been affected by her mental disorder, they are all worn out, dealing with her has done a lot of damage to that family.
Now that it's been a week and have been able to put some distance between us, I should have seen the signs. Have done enough research on dating a bipolar woman to be an expert now. So many little clues that didn't mean anything to me at the time in hindsight are adding up to paint a fuller picture. Her diet changed for the worse, eating a drinking a lot more sugar & soda, going from a non-smoker to a half a pack a day within a few months, the increased sex drive and willingness to experiment more, rash financial decisions, poor work performance along with willing to leave a very stable government job (but boring & secure) to making plans to move cross country.
I have not contacted her in a few days. She did contact me to find out where some coffee mugs were. I was in a rush to pack and by accident took a few that didn't belong to me. Then yelled at me for contacting her family. Told her that I was very close to her family and it didn't seem right not to wish them a merry Christmas. Will be interesting to see what happens when she returns to town, if I know her family they are probably giving her grief for letting me slip away.
It is very scary to see up close what mental illness can do to somebody. Made me much more sympathetic to the cause but I do not want to get involved with her again. Now that my blinders are off I can't go back and I am making positive steps to start dating again.
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. The ironic thing is my friend has sacrificed over and over to help her mom, took care of the many financial catastrophes she created (again, in manic phases, lots of overspending/stupid investment decisions), let her live with her off and on over the last 30 years, etc, yet her mom used to scream at her all the time. She lives with my friend now, but she's close to 80 and now frailer and much more docile, but she was a nightmare. 
She believed what she was saying, too, nothing I ever said made her see the truth, it was like she had a complete inability to see when she was wrong, in her mind it truly was everyone elses fault. I in the end decided I had to take care of me, and she was too toxic to be in my life. 
