NEED ADVICE, ANYONE OUT THERE

I have been married 5 years. I have 2 children and a beautiful wife. For almost a year now things have been rough. My wife has been diagnosed Bipolar Manic/depressant and possible personality disorder. Alot of what has been said has happened to us. Since about the first of the year, my wife started out on what I've come to believe is her manic side, always wanting to get outta the house, away from me and the kids. This turned bad when she thought she grew fealings for someone outside of our marriage, and turned worse when she tried to act on them. From my understanding, a bipolar woman in a manic state is very manipulative. I have found out first hand. Once all this was brought out into the open, she hit a depressed state on a downward spiral. lost interest in her friends, family, never wanted to get outta bed in the am, yet could never sleep at nite. We are seperated now. as she says she still loves me, but to me since this whole affair with another man happened. it seems she only wants me when she is depressed, and when she has her manic episodes, which seem to be controlling the majority of her day to day moods, (spending money, LOTS, leaving, even dropping kids off at day care when she has the day off, drinking, etc.) she pretty much has the attitude well if you love me you'll accept me for who I am. Then when she realizes how awful she treats me by either actions or words, its back to the depression and all over me" i love you, i'm sorry, i want to change, it's not me, i don't know who i am, etc. she has been on Paxil 40mg now for about 3 mon. consistantly without missing doses as she was before. Or to the best of my knowledge, as she is now living with her friend, i do remind her before bed with a text to not forget her pill. She always thinks i am trying to change her, I fell in love with her for who she is , not for who i want to make her out to be, but i am falling outta love with who she is becoming. Her father and I are really close. we have been the most stable figures in her life as her mom, who was bipolar skitzofrenic or however you spell that, left when she was a child. My intention is not to give up, by any means. but lately i feel like i am changing. I was always one of those fun guys, center of attention and the one to get everyone pumped up and have a good time. Lately tho i feel like i drag others down, alltho I dont speak whats on my mind to my friends, they must just be getting that I'm hurt/down vibe from me. Well i have never done this before, dont know if someone will reply, so just incase, I dont wanna write too much and have it been for nothing. Just some of the stories I've read and replies and advice from others have been helpful/hopeful in a way that if there is the slightest chance we can get ahold of her condition and stabalize, it will be well worth the wait and constant battle. I have only loved 3 women in my life, and I have stayed close friends with the other 2. My wife on the other hand is the mother to my children. And for that i will never stop lovingher, amungst other things. N E way, i hope to get a reply. I pray for some advice/guidance that could help us on th rite track.

Hi Downer08,

First let me welcome you to HealingWell and to our board. I think you can join in with the other men who have joined just this week (I think you are the 4th) who are in VERY similar situations. Improperly treated bipolar can wreak havoc on families and I am truly sorry to hear what you are going through.

One thing in your message stands out to me: Paxil alone is not proper medication for a bipolar patient. Antidepressants (that's what Paxil is) ALONE make mania WORSE not better. Obviously I'm no doctor, but this is "common" knowledge amongst people who have done any research about bipolar. You need to get your wife to the psychiatrist. If she saw a psychiatrist already and this was all she was prescribed, you need a new psychiatrist. If she just saw a general practitioner, it's time to get her to a psych, pronto. Bipolars need what is called a "Mood stabilizer" drug. These include medications like lamictal, geodon, lithium. Then they can take antidepressants for depression or antipsychotics for mania WITH the mood stabilizers. I hope that makes sense.

I'm sorry you're separated from your wife, but it sounds like you still have a lot of influence in her life. I hope you can still help her get back on the right track.

In the mean time I recommend some therapy for you, because you're going through a hell of a time, and you could really use some support of your own right now.

Keep writing and let us know how things are going.
serafena

Diskus- i am glad to hear you  guys are on the rite track, I too gave an ultimatum, which is why we're in a seperated state. Now I feal bad as it appears the psyc she is seeing is a quack. Even wikipedia states that Paxil should not be prescribed to patients with possible BP disorder. and Side effects are Suicidal thoughts, and withdrawal syndrome. Which, in fact, my wife ommitted herself into the hospital for thoughts of hurting herself for things she has done to push me and her family away. They did prescrib her an antipsycotic when they released her, but with no refills and that was that. And When i say i will never give up, i am not nessasarily speaking about the marriage, but more or less on her in general. should her and i not work out, I will always be there for her as a friend, and she i is the mother of my children, and for the best interest of the kids, it is important for them to have stable parents. Serefena- I did notice though that since she has been on paxil and it started to take its effect on her she has not been in the so called depressed state as often, however as you stated Anti depressants alone can make mania worse. I aggree. but she is going to a psyc, not a gen doc. But I think we might have to request a transfer. To make our life even harder, our financial situation is not hte greatest. She is a hairdresser, and I have been working self employed for the past 7 years. Some of the government contracts i have gotten had health care included, but they would only last 2-3 months at a time. and if i decided to keep, it costs upward of 700 a month. The kids are covered through a pennsylvania kids healthcare. She sees her doctor for free through a program called stairways, but makes me wonder if they just don't care like a facility that is not state funded would. My therapy includes working out daily, and golfing. I speak to my wife on a regular basis. as we have children together and no matter what we will always be best friends. I cant afford to see someone, free or not, i cannot miss work at this time. I just started at GE and after about 6 months, i will be making enough i can take the time off and benefits will cover that as well as my wifes treatment. Again, should things not work out, i will still add her to my insurance as long as she still caries my name. Needinreassurance- for me, before my wife was being treeted, I would have never thought of another person in the mix. We were  ( i say WERE) very trusting. We usually spent alot of time together, one night a week we each had our own nite out. about a month before things were out in the open, she started texting alot on her phone. we each have mutual and solo friends of both gender and never had jelousy issues. I told her that no matter who she is speaking with, when she is with me, it is rude to be carying on a conversation with someone else, save that fr your time, not when we're at the movies, dinner etc. One of our mutual friends told me she stepped outta line while intoxicated. She had come on to him. I brought it to her attention, and she blew it off. like it was nothing. which, really wasn't, flirting is flirting, if your gonna stay married forever, if you cant at least go out and see that others find you attractive, with no actions being made or steps to continue it is just flirting. Well thats when the going out alot started. It wasn't till I was hearing she said she went out with one person, yet they were somewhere else. i brought to her attention. She then was starting to say I was paranoid, jelous etc. Which i have never been that way. farthest thing from jelous. she started going to her therapy, and told me about her condition, whenI started looking up on BP one of the biggest issues was what I thought was going on. Lately she had been spending lots of m,oney on cloths, makeup, tanning etc. I asked her one more time, and Since we were friends first, and Ive known her for bout 10 yrs, I knew she was lying. I went thru her phone one day, our mutual friend who had brought to my attention she came on to him had been having lots of conversations with her, luckily it was him, and not someone who didn't respect me, 90% of his responses were, you have a loving husband, ur just confused, etc. And her texts were i cant believ i am doing this to him, i have to tell him, etc. etc. When i brought to her attention is whenshe broke down. She had said she started having feelings for him and thought they were just that he was a close friend. then she said she had been feeling for him, the way she had felt for me when we first started dating, she admitted coming onto him on a few occasions, even came close to trying to get him to sleep with her, but he just laughed and would say your just drunk, go home to your husband. She then was contemplating a divorce but the fact that he wantied nothing to do with her on that level, and that the few times she came on to him, he made her leave, is why she never said anything, and for the past three months she had beeen living a lie with me, and fooling herself into loving him. It wasn't until she came clean with her doctor,(who she even hided from) and started talking about, she realized she was confused, in a way, she associated our relationship with stress, kids, bills etc. and when she was around him, there was none of that, and thats when things started turning to the worse. I still speak with the mutual friend that this happened with, for the longest time, he avoided me at all costs when I threatened his life, as i am Irish with a big temper, and before I knew how things really went down. He did one day ask if he could meet me somewhere and apologized for what happened. even though he reacted appropriately to her actions, he was in the wrong for not bringing to my attention. By the time he realized how she really felt for him, and that she was contemplating divorce, he only thought of it as her have been too drunk and flirtatious. didn't want to mess up a good thing over little stuff. Which, i probably would have been the same way. I cannot lie and say i have never cam on to another girl, and or/ kissed at the bar when 1 shot away from throwing up. But i was open about my actions, and never acted on little crushes that i may have had with friends of my wife's that she worked with. Before this, it was all kind of a joke. I would tell her, ooo, i think so and so at your work is hot, and we would kinda role play and such, keep things spicy and interesting w/ our sex life. well, I am at work, and even though i do work on the computer, i do have some real work to do. Sorry for any miss-spellings or typeO's. Thanks for your replies, and I will be talking with her psyc next week and bring up some discoveries about meds/treatment to her. Thank you agian so much, it is very uplifting to speak with people other than my parents or siblings.

 

I feel for you. It is such a lonely road for us on the other end. It's been almost 5 weeks now since my husband loaded everything up in the truck, and left with my stepson. Says he's getting a divorce (again) and probably will this time. His family and friends are toxic to him when he's manic because they don't understand bipolar at all. When they see him manic, all they see is him being "focused" and "happy happy" and being generous to them. They think that it's just because he was in a bad situation (he tells them this) and wasn't happy BECAUSE of his marriage. They don't list to me when I tell them that he was totally in love with me and wanted a baby just a couple of months ago because he tells them how horrible I am. They don't see the "closet abuse" that goes on when he's manic because the only time he starts calling everyone is when he IS manic and needs sympathy and to be validated. My husband has left me on average twice a year during his manic episodes (it still doesn't click for them) and our relationship continues to be the cause of his "problems" even though he was doing this when I first met him.

The other thing I noticed when he's starting to have a manic state, is that he reverts back to his childhood things; starts buying toys on E-Bay that he had when he was a child, starts going to places he did when he was a teenager, and I think he starts thinking about his ex, with whom he got pregnant when 17 and who, according to him, was (and she is) a horrible drunk who cheated on him all of the time. But yet, all of the sudden, after a year of her having no involvement with her son (he lived with us), he's been contacting her left and right, I hear, about their son. He also goes back to mommy every time, who has severe bipolar (and isn't aware of it) and they trigger each other, get drunk together, cry together, get drunk some more and talk about how horrible their spouses are, even though she cheats on him left and right and comes back crying, saying she's been raped for the umteen-millionth time. She's got my husband like a puppet on strings, manipulating him left and right (because she needs him, she told me before he left) and has told him I said a bunch of things that are absolute lies. She acts like "ha ha, I have him and there's nothing you can do about it". Throws it in my face. It's sick.

I can relate to what you say. Before he left, and every other time he go manic and left, he started in with the, "accept me for who I am", and "she's always trying to change me". Other phrases are, "I can't handle this", or "you're the one who needs help for depression and pessimism". My father says you can see him slipping through the cracks when he starts the mania. I know that once he starts, there's very little I can do. He loves me one second, want to rip my throat out the next. He drinks heavily during this time and also started using pot, chewing and chain smoking all at the same time. The hardest thing, is that you've seen that wonderful, loving and kind person buried deep within. You've experienced it and you know that this is the "other person", but when the mania takes over, it happens so quickly and your left feeling that same constant love for them with recent happy memories, and they go off like you were never anything to them. And finding someone new is nothing to them....until the downfall. I almost look forward to it (horrible, I know), but at least he starts to remember me, remember us. It's like he's in a coma for a couple of months and someone else is operating. I just started taking natural serotonin and it really seems to be helping somewhat to deal with the pain of him being gone, and dealing with the fact that he left me with the mortgage, $25,000 in credit card debt, a timeshare HE wanted and two upset children (not his but it's been 6 years). Everything in my name. Hang in there and think about yourself right now because, as my mom says, "he's not thinking about you at all right now".