Posted 12/12/2008 10:01 PM (GMT 0)
Hello everyone. I am a new member and married to a bipolar spouse as well. We've been together for 3 1/2 years. Last April without my knowledge he opened a separate bank account and informed me that he was leaving... the basis for his statement was that I had remarked that we needed to sit down, tighten our budget and get a handle on our spending habits. After a week, he came home, apologized saying that he had overreacted. He closed the account and things went back to normal. In September, I was planning an anniversary weekend away when he informed me that he had once again opened a separate account and would be spending his long weekend moving out. (which he did.)
Several months passed with him partying to extreme, being extremely hyper-sexual, (yes, he was unfaithful numerous times.) and extremely hurtful in the things he would say to me, I filed for divorce and suggested that he may want to consider seeing a doctor, because I believed that he was bipolar. He laughed at the time, but when he received the divorce papers a couple of months later, he did some research and discovered that reading the symptom list was like looking at his life's resume. (It seems that a previous wife had alluded to the same thing as well.) He rang and asked that I talk to him, he felt that I may be right and was afraid of what lay ahead, but trusted me and didn't have anyone else he felt he could be that honest with at the time. I told him that I would supportive, but I wasn't going to make "us" a priority at that time, that he had to take care of himself and make that his priority and he agreed.
He was diagnosed as a "rapid cycler" in February. He was seeing a therapist and is on Lamictal and Lexapro. I let him come home at the end of April and we decided not to divorce. (He went on his own and closed the other bank account again.) At the end of the summer, we recognized that he was heading into a manic phase as his spending habits were increasing and becoming a bit strange. He had stopped therapy about a month prior, so he rang the doctor, got in immediately and they chose to increase his Lamictal. That did the trick and things were great for a while. We had been discussing starting our own business for years and this fall decided to really push for that. He had changed jobs by then and I left my job and started working on getting the legalities for our business together. He chose to fund the business with the 401K from the job that he had left instead of rolling it into another plan and getting a loan, so we took care of all of the paperwork and were waiting on the funds. Around Thanksgiving he asked how the research for the business was going and when I didn't have an update due to preparing for the holiday, he accused me of not caring about it at all. I tried to make him understand that it wasn't that I didn't care, I just had the holiday as a priority, a child going into basketball and babysitting our 9 month old granddaughter. He said I was just making excuses.
Last Friday, he came home and informed me that he did not want to open a business with me, that he had once again opened another bank account in his name only at another bank and that he didn't feel he could trust me, that he was not investing his 401k because he needed to buy a car and anticipate being thrown out of the house. (?????) Two days ago he didn't come home from work, spent the evening out drinking and eventually ended up calling me at 2:30 in the morning to pick him up. Seems he must've "fallen asleep" and hit a curb, he blew a tire and the turn signal popped completely off the car. I picked him up, then proceeded to listen to him tell me how terrible I was to him earlier that day and that's why he didn't come home. He didn't want to argue. He missed the next day of work and stayed in bed most of the day. This is a repetitive part of his previous cycle... the drinking, the staying out all night. The apologies, it won't happen again. All the while, I feel like I just woke up and it's Groundhog Day again, only this time, I'm unemployed, looking for work and all of our bills are in my name. I love him beyond measure and have no desire for this relationship to end, because I know what he's like when the disease isn't winning, but I'm also exhausted and starting feel paranoid about whether he will start being unfaithful again. (The stories he told me from previously were gut-wrenchingly painful to hear.) I'm starting to feel like the pendulum of a clock. I want to thank you all for taking a moment to read my story and for sharing yours, it's comforting to know that I'm not alone and that hope prevails :)