Family & Friends of Bipolar Support Group

Feeling that way is the most normal thing in the world and you should not feel bad for wanting the best out of your life that you can have. In my experience there is not real time for me in my relationship, unless i am prepared to pay a high price. Last Friday night i suggested to my BF that if he was going to be 2 hours late home he could maybe call me so dinner was not ruined, this resulted in him walking out and staying away all weekend and then coming back and making me cry (again) with his unpleasant comments to me. I had been very calm when i said it as i knew the possible reaction but i felt that i needed to say it for my own self respect.
I think this is the problem, time for yourself seems to come with a price. However, it is still your right and your obligation to do the best for yourself that you can.
I know this is not so helpful and i am sorry but it is my experience.

Sweetie, I am so sorry, I can hear the pain in your words and the "lonliness" of having what feels like a one-sided relationship. It is so difficult some times for those of us with BP and we become so wrapped up in our own emotion that we forget about the people that love us and care for us. I dont think it is so much that we dont want to be the one showing compassion and giving love, we just dont feel capable.

I have spent years working on myself through therapy and self help. I have learned to break out of the cycle of selfishness so I believe it is very possible for others to. My personal opinion is that it is much more difficult for men to do this than women. Women are so much more emotional and see things in a spectrum of colors.

You are doing all the right things by working together in therapy. The most important thing I can suggest is that you work on your life and your self interests. Dont focus your entire life on your husband. Find things that interest you, hobbies, spend time with your girlfriends and family, develope your own interests. Sometimes you can get so wrapped up in one persons life that you loose yourself and your own identity. You deserve time to focus on yourself even if he cannot focus on you right now.

I have to believe that if he keeps working with his meds to find the right balance, works hard in therapy, he will learn to see others outside of himself. It took alot of work and self-realization for me, but I finally found that balance. I have been married for 25 years and have four beautiful sons. There were times our life was a roller coaster and pure hell but we made it through.

I would not wish this disorder on my worst enemy. It can be extremely debilitating at times. However, never should it be used as an excuse for bad behavior. Once we realize we have the disorder and we understand the behaviors it can manifest, we should work diligently to modify them. In some cases of this disorder, it is very difficult to do that and sometimes impossible. I learned a great deal with cbt,dbt, and eft therapy that helped me learn a different way to live.

You also have to set boundaries for yourself and how far you are willing to go and willing to loose yourself. That is one thing my husband and I have always had. We made sure to protect his "self identity".

I wish you the best and hope that you can find your way through this and recieve the compassion and tlc you so deserve.

xo

Shelly, you are a blessing !

Hi there. I am new on this site and your posting was one of the first I read. It struck me hard. this is soooooo familiar. Not so much your husband's "bad" behaviour, but rather your feeling of guilt for being "selfish" in wanting to be loved and cared for. So I am not the only one! I am married to a very sweet BP man, but our relationship is currently falling apart. The problem lies in complete lack of emotion/passion/libido/etc. on his part. I have tried and tried and gradually started to withdraw, feeling extremely guilty at the same time. Everytime I didn't get any response from my husband I hoped that next time will be better. That time never came. I tried less often. Finally, I stopped trying blaming myself for the loss of interest. I vividly recall the one-sided conversations in which I asked precisely the same question you are asking now - will there ever be time for ME? what about my needs? I often felt that I can't address certain things becasue it would cause stress for my hustband, which in turn would trigger deep depression and so on. I don't know what to tell you, since I have failed. All I know is this: You have only one life. By adressing your needs you are adressing the needs of your loved ones. You need to be well to be there for them. Otherwise you too will fall into a depression, like I did. I hope things will work out for you. I, on the other hand, have just moved out and am restarting my life. As strange as it sounds, my husband and I are best friends, and we see each other often. I still hope to see some response in his eyes, but in all honesty I don't think it will ever happen. He, on the other hand seems to be more relaxed now. It doen's make much sense, but what does when it comes to this disorder?

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies.

Amanda, is your BF "stable" and still acting that way? My husband and I have had similar experiences with not calling to tell me he is going to be late (sometimes out all night). Whenever I broached the subject, his response was that I was trying to control him and what was the big deal. We haven't had to deal with that particluar issue since his BP diagnosis and new meds however, because he has not been out while home. My hope is, with time, he will be able to be more considerate.

Shelly, thank you so much for your post. It has filled me with hope!
I don't expect miracles, I expect there will be always be times when he disregards me and my feelings. I just hope that those times will be balanced by other times of affection, support, compassion and TLC-this will help me get through the bad times. Your post has given me hope that this is possible.
I appreciate your advice about "refinding" myself. I seem to have lost myself in all of this. I love being and wife and mother, but I have allowed it to becoome my whole world outside of work. I have a high-stress job and am out of the house 12 hrs a day during the week-there is little time (and energy) for outside interests after household obligations and time with my husband and son (which I wouldn't give up for anything!) But I need to carve out a little time to rediscover what I like to do outside of my family. It will probably make me a better wife and mother (and person) to have a little "me" time. The key is finding the right time and I will work on that.

What is cbt, dbt and eft therapy?

Mariola, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I am so sorry things aren't working out for you. I really appreciate you sharing with me in such a difficult time. It really helps to know I am not alone in my feelings, although I wouldn't wish this pain on anyone.

Hi bmzimmer!

I will also echo what others have said. Take care of yourself first, develop yourself first. It will lesson the impact his rollercoaster will have on you.

If you have focused everything on him, you are probably a caretaker and codependent like so many other spouses of bp sufferers.There are both in person groups to deal with this, as well as books. You might check it out.

CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy), DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) and others are forms of therapy where you learn to identify your negative, faulty, self defeating thoughts and discover ways to fight them. I use an anonymous site from Australia for self directed CBT. Type moodgym in your search engine and you should be able to find it.

You cannot expect your husband to change. You can hope that once he gets stable on meds that he will be the person you loved in the first 3 years of your marriage. This may take a long time, because finding the right mixture can go on for more than a year.

Shelly4 is a rare person who has come through the fire and become an incredibly empathetic person. (Most people, including me dealing with my clinical depression, don't become as good of a person as she appears to be) There are other bipolar sufferers on the regular board that sometimes post here, who have a balanced perspective and not only realized the effect the disorder has on others in their lives, but try to do something about it.

This is not the norm for the behavior of bipolar sufferers, based on my reading the posts and advice of suffers on multiple sites for nearly a year. Based on what they write, most seem to be pretty selfish, and have little concern for the impact of their disorder on their loved ones. Maybe they really do care, but its not what they say on the sites.

This is also backed up by my personal experience, in which my stbx wife left because she wanted to live the wonderful exciting life that her manic phases showed her regardless of any promises made to me or her daughter just months earlier.

In the meantime, like others have said you have to develop interests outside of your husband. You are working incredibly long hours which doesn't help, but, for example, you could set aside one day every week that is "yours" where you go do something that you want that he would never be interested in.

Make sure to communicate with your spouse so he doesn't think you are abandoning him and so he understands the importance of you being able to grow and like yourself.

Its my belief that there are many success relationships where bipolar is a factor, but that since those couples are dealing with it effectively, that they may never have joined a support group like this.

The majority of people coming to the F&F board are here because we are seriously struggling with how to stay married, support our person who has BP, and stay sane ourselves.

You are going to find that most of the currently active posters on this board do not have much hope. Many of us ave been beaten down by the disorder. You may need to look at other sites to get a more balanced perspective from friends and family.

There is another site, mdjunction, that also has a friends and family of bipolar board, but the tenor of the posts there right now are as unhappy and resigned as this one. I think that this is just a really hard season for whatever reason.

The bipolar board at healingwell.com recently had a post that gave resources for the supporters of suffers like you. You might want to check it out.

One more piece of advice. Be careful what you post on the regular bipolar board if you plan on it. Right now there is a big backlash against non-suffers who think they have the right to discuss the pain the disorder causes.

imdealin................GREAT POST........

Hii there, he appears to be stable right now after three months of highly unstable behaviour, he is unmedicated and not receiving any form of treatment and also has multiple personality disorder where he experiences loss of time...he believes any restriction put on him is a lose of freedom and to quote him, when i take his shoes out of the lounge and put them in the cupboard i have taken away his freedom to have his shoes where he wants them....i think he just looks for drama so that he can pour unpleasantness on me if it suits him.