Bipolar Wife

Hi I'm new to this forum. I'm not sure where to turn to. My wife has been diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder. We have been married for 13yrs and have three children 11, 5 & 2yrs. Although she has only been recently diagnosed I seem to think that she has had this disorder for quite a long time. Shortly after we were married I found out that my wife was hospitalised for an anxiety attack while in high school (before we met). Add to this that her family has a history of lack which in turn added a lot of pressure to her well being, being the eldest of four children. She was always looked to for support by her sisters as well as her mother. Even up'til today her parents still depend on her/us be it for money, food or transport. Her parents did a "good" job of raising her as they knew exactly which buttons to press to achieve a certain reaction from her. Her condition has recently reached a level where it's hardly bearable to be around her. There are times when she makes no sense at all. Its totally disturbing for the children to see their mother who they love in an unstable condition. My wife has been to various counsellors over the years. I've gone with her on occasion but not to all her sessions. From the sessions that I've attended I could immediately pick up that she is not completely honest and upfront with the counsellors. She tended to twist events and her technique of equivocation lead the counsellor to believe events far from the truth. Now this was with me present... I can't say what went on in sessions where I was not there. With me being present in the session, the counsellor could get a more holistic view of the situation and within the next two to three sessions she would stop seeing that counsellor. Although I am not the most intuitive person at times I get the feeling that she has been talking about me by the looks i get from friends. I love my wife very much, but I'm not sure how much longer I can take living in the same house. Daily life is too much for her. Any situation that comes up in normal day to day living is overwhelming her e.g. cleaning/children/work/bills etc etc. I can relate in a certain way as I also feel the pressure of these daily tasks but if I can't get to do the dishes tonight, i'll do it tomorrow morning ... We have someone who come to help clean our home twice a week. I spend a lot of time with the children doing homework, getting them ready for bed, playing games as my wife is always too tired for this and having them all at very different ages is not always easy. On saturdays my wife attends a computer course from 8.30 to 12.30. Even though during that time I do the cleaning in the house, this is the most relaxing time for me and the kids. We have already been at the brink of being bankrupt, totally maxed out credit cards (plural), personal loans, maxed out store accounts due to bouts of depression followed by eratic spending. The constant barrage of phone calls every month from stores/banks demanding payment just made the situation worse and in fact kept the cycle of spending-the-money-before-paying-the-debt going. She bought a new vehicle with my knowledge before she had paid up the one she was currenlty driving. And this was shortly after I had to take out a loan to cover the lapsed installments of the old car before the bank repossesed it. In order for her to buy the new car (even though there was nothing wrong with the first car) she had to take out a loan for the deposit (as the first car was'nt paid up yet). She couldn't afford the loan repayments ... after a few months I had to pay the full amount or risk both our salaries being put into administration. At times I feel that I need to be a parent to my wife as well as the kids. I can see that this disorder can affect her judgement. I love my wife, her children loves her. I know that she loves us. I can see this when she is not in a bipolar state. But when she is (and it seems more often now) how do I trust her around the children? How do I trust her with herself? She is on meds presribed by a psych. but when I check the packet, she would have taken three to four times the dosage. Fortunately the monthly repeats are strictly monthly.

Hi WhichWayForward,

Welcome to HealingWell and to our forum.

You need to know that bipolar can be managed with medication and therapy but it takes commitment and honesty on the part of the patient and her family. But if she's not playing along, you're in a no-win situation. You're not going to get anywhere until her bp is managed. Like LFW suggested, it's time to sit down and have an "absolute honesty" talk session with her -- a loving one, but one where you let her know that she has to make some changes to her wellness program because her current treatment plan isn't working well. You need to get more involved in her treatment. Go to the doctor with her and talk with him/her about the problems you see. You'll need her to agree to this of course, so go gently, but try to make her see that you can be her partner throughout her struggles. Let her know you don't think she sees all the manifestations of her bipolar. Let her know you think it's affecting your family more than she understands. You can help her manage her illness and act as her coach if she'll let you. Then, follow through -- help keep track of her pills. Actively ask her when she's taken her pills on a daily basis and (if you think she's taking too much,) check. Not that you're going to be policing her, but just trying to keep her on track. The bipolar makes you muddled too. My husband asks me almost every day if I've forgotten a pill and I almost always have. It could be that she's not on the most effective treatment for her, so she needs to be reevaluated because it sounds to me like her moods are very unstable right now.

I also like LFW's suggestion of couple's therapy since it forces you to go together. It also puts the focus on you as a couple instead of just on her, and that might take some of the pressure off of her.

I hope this is useful, and I wish you good luck. Let us know how things go.

serafena

I can relate 100% to what you are going through. I'm new to this site but have been on another site for about 2 years. My husband just left me again. He packed up everything, had friends help, took my 11-year old stepson (again) and disappeared. I've only seen him the last two Fridays when he needed me to get my belongings out of "his" storage unit so he could get rid of it (one less bill for him). I also have a fourteen year old (he did this right before his birthday) and a fifteen year old. He "can't handle" anything either. And he also goes around telling his family and friends how horrible our marriage is and I am, even though, most of the year, we are so in love and are a family. It's twice a year when he goes manic. The same time every year. And he doesn't see it. He turns into this "person". I can tell because I can no longer see my husband in those eyes. He left me for a week about 5 months ago. He went around and lied to people and said that he knew people who witness me flirting with men at my second job. He admitted to lying. Did admit this to all of the people he talked about me to...no. I was horribly ill at the time getting treatments for pre-cancer. He said he was waiting for me to call and ask him to come back and I never did. He said he was going to divorce me and then came home. Two years before that, on my birthday (Nov. 15), I came home to a dear John letter. This was when he had been diagnosed with bp. I had seen a sadistic turn in him before. He told everyone I was doing things I wasn't and that he had to get out because the relationship was tainted and made him unhappy. A month before, he wanted to have a baby with me. He literally disappeared for two months. I guess he started coming down off of the manic and his mother turned to me to "help" him. He came home.
He leaves me the same time every year or at least thinks about it. It's been 3 weeks. Before he left we didn't speak for 2 weeks. A dumb fight that revolved around me telling him I needed help from him. When he left me 5 months ago he was manic and quit his job because he was mad at his employers and went to work with his brother, which payed him $2/hr less, no medical and he was gone 3-5 days a week. He started drinking every night and smoking pot with the guys. He quit his meds because of no insurance. He got use to having no responsibility and being able to do whatever he wanted. So when he'd come home, he'd go into his reclusive state, bouncing between video games and playing drums.
It's our anniversary today. I'm sad. Is he going to come back? Who knows. He's hiding out again, and I think he got his old job back but am not sure. He has his own place and I have no idea where my stepson is going to school now.
Friends and family, I have learned, can be extremely dangerous for your situation when they don't understand or believe someone is bp. Their words can be so influential. His mother had a lot to do with him going over the edge, see, she's bp too, but doesn't know it. I know it because I see her doing EXACTLY the same things in her marriage. She gets mad at him for something way in the past, poisons the family against him, separates, and sleeps around because "it's O.K., we were separated", then goes back crying when she hits the depression stage. He tells everyone he's "unhappy all of the time" because it's a bad marriage. I hear the same things every time he's manic. They say, well then, Shane, you seem happy in general (when he's euphoric) you should get out of a marriage that makes you so miserable..so he does, not realizing that when he's in this state, his love for me switches off immediately, and he skips away like nothing.
So here I am. Left with every debt in my name, mortgage, credit card bills, and I don't know how I'm going to make it. There's not enough. He's sitting pretty with all of his money to himself now and no debts, just like last time, and he still had to borrow money from his mother. It's sad to say, because I truly love this man and care so much for his health and well being, but I hate the people who surround him and keep him from getting the help he needs and prolong his manic states. One of his old bosses, a female married to his other boss told me, "we love Shane, we're like a happy family here, you need to move on". Like they know him better than me! She has no idea the horrible things he said about her right before she quit. None of them do. He can say the most horribly unforgivable things to me when he's manic. It makes me sad because we've been a happy family for the past five months since his last episode. Sorry, I'm rambling on.

Hi Lostwife,

Welcome to HealingWell. You're in a terrible situation and I'm sorry to hear it. A manic person is absolutely someone you cannot reason with, as you've clearly come to realize, and you're going to have to just ride it out. The choice is whether you're going to take him back when he inevitably comes back to you again.

And it isn't an automatic decision, because your husband isn't doing everything he could be to keep himself stable. You are allowed to take care of yourself and he needs to show responsibility for his illness and his behavior. The minimum he should be doing is seeing a psychiatrist once every 6 weeks or so and taking medication for his bipolar. If he's not willing to do that, his moods will continue to cycle like this. The bad news is that traditionally, people cycle worse and more frequently as they get older. So this doesn't get better. He needs to treat this as a medical illness and get treated.

Also, you need to get the financial situation cleaned up so you aren't left holding the whole bag like that. Spending is a real problem in many people's mania's and I'd hate to see you left with a whole lot of debt just because his name wasn't on the credit card. Talk to your lawyer about making sure your assets are equally divided.

Finally, just to remind you, you can say no. I know you love him and you can take him back. But just because he has bipolar doesn't mean you have to put up with verbal abuse or personal attacks. You are allowed to insist he respect you. And if he doesn't, you are allowed to set ultimatums and stick by them.

It sounds to me like he could use a few days in a hospital to get his mania evened out again. I'm sorry he has one of your children with him. That's the last thing a kid needs -- an irrational, unpredicatable parent.

Good luck with this and please keep writing. let us know how you're feeling and how things are going.

serafena

Hi again allstressedout,

One thing I want to let you know, just so you aren't disillusioned, your wife may never be exactly the same again. Bipolar never heals. She may get stable again, but it never goes away. She will always have ups and downs. She can and will get better but don't expect "forever" because that is very, very unlikely. I'm sorry.

serafena