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Please…Take a moment to find out how you can restore hope about your future. Discover all the answers you’ve been searching for about how to love and help a bipolar husband, bipolar wife or bipolar partner…
I’m Elizabeth Atlas, author of the new book, “Married To Mania: Jumping the Shark* Without a Seatbelt.” It’s a funny le for a topic that is far from funny…heartbreaking, in fact.
This book is about how to find your footing with a bipolar husband or bipolar wife and preserve your sanity in a marriage or relationship that’s built on quicksand. Your bipolar husband or bipolar wife may make you feel that everyday is a new dawn. Deep down you know nothing in your past has prepared you for what will happen in your bipolar marriage today, tomorrow or next year.
It’s a given: You love your bipolar wife or bipolar husband very much. “Bipolar” is not one of the top 10 adjectives you use to describe the love-of-your-life to other people. “Bipolar Disorder” may not even be in the top 100!
But if you’re like me, “bipolar disorder” is on your mind all the time. Your bipolar radar flashes when you second guess your bipolar husband’s financial decision making. Your bipolar radar arms when your bipolar wife drowns you in love and affection…because you know, very soon, you’ll be hunkered down protecting yourself from a painful verbal ault and threats of divorce.
Many times I diagnosed my own condition as PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). But it wasn’t “Post.” It is ongoing. So I decided to “stop the madness” on my part and learn how to “fish or cut bait.”
I learned how to handle “my problem” of how to be married to a bipolar husband. Then I wrote a book to help other husbands, wives and partners, married to Bipolar Disorder (yes, it does seem that way most of the time!), who are caught in the same love/chaos/trauma drama I was in.
When you love a bipolar husband or bipolar wife, your relationship is not on a level playing field with other loving relationships or marriages you’ve admired.
The relationship problem-solving skills that you learned from your relationship role models: your parents, your friends–even TV couples like “Lucy and Ricky” don’t work in your marriage. Those relationships–yes, even the fantasy TV storylines (!)–will never have the same roadblocks and heartaches that you tackle every single day of your life with a bipolar husband or bipolar wife.
Even if you’ve read a few books, surfed online and gone to a few support groups, you are no match for your bipolar husband or bipolar wife. In fact, you are at a tremendous disadvantage.
Your bipolar husband or bipolar wife has a “PhD” in Bipolar Disorder. This “degree” may not help him find a “cure” or steer him toward acceptance of his illness, but he’s been through a lifetime of mental machinations that you will never understand or keep pace with. It’s downright exhausting!
“Why do their moods change to where you absolutely do not believe they love you and you wonder whether or not they’re even capable of love?” IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!
“We have raging arguments and we’re not very close. How can I get him to understand and accept that he has a problem and go get help?” IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!
“Nine months after I divorced my bipolar husband, he killed himself by hanging. He was sober and this ‘depressed’ cycle wasn’t different from hundreds of others he’d been through–even when he was off his medication. How could I have known?” IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!
Your in-laws think you’re an angel; your friends think you’re nuts. You don’t know what to believe anymore but you know something’s broken and needs to be fixed. NOW. TODAY.
The only thing left is to take some of that good lovin’ you’ve been dishing out, and spend it on yourself.
My husband was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder at age 40, one year before I met him. (He’s now 55.) Prior to that, I had never known anyone with mental illness (who goes around talking about it?) and there was no evidence of it in my family (did you know there’s a genetic component?)
I spent 3 years in denial, 5 years in therapy, 7 years in intense research to “figure this illness out” and 13 years doubting myself and beating myself up, knowing that if I could be a better wife, then…
If you’re like me, you probably already have. Despite mountains of reading… Read more…
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