re: Anyone Ever Divorce a BiPolar Spouse

quote:

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Would you leave your spouse if she had Cancer or early Alzheimer's?

Bipolar is a disease like any other. Only a coward abandons a sick spouse...

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Agreed, and disagree. My wife is bipolar and we've been married 13 years, so I think I can speak from a place of experience.

YES, mental illness is a disease just like cancer, MS, or tuberculosis. And they are no more at fault for having bipolar than a person with one of these other diseases.

BUT, if there is a medication that will prevent the symptoms of a disease, lessen the suffering, and keep the person from getting worse and it affecting the whole family, and the person refuses to take it, then there comes a time when you may have to draw a line in the sand.

Imagine taking care of a cancer patient and the meds they take keep the cancer in remission. But they refuse to take the meds, the cancer comes back, the family is thrown in to chaos, the person can't work so your income drops, you spend countless hours taking care of them from the terrible symptoms of the cancer, and you worry your arse off and are stressed to your limit.

You plead with the person to take the cancer meds and they finally agree and get back on the meds. THings get better. For a while life is awesome. Even though you have to recover from the financial hit and maybe even repair some relationships with friends or employers from the episode.

Then, with no warning, they stop taking the cancer meds again and the cycle repeats.

How long should you put up with that? Are you really a "coward"? After all you've done for them, you're a "coward'? NAH, you gotta be there to help someone, but they have to do their part too.

In the 13 years I've been with my wife up until this January she'd only had 2 episodes. The first was when we were engaged and she was graduating from LSU with her masters. The stress got to her and she went manic. Luckily her parents picked up on it and we were able to keep her stable enough to graduate and get through all that pomp and circumstance.

The second was a few years later when the stress of leaving her job to start with a new doctor (she's a PA) hit her. She was feeling really guilty about it and it manifested as a manic episode. I picked up on it quickly and was able to get her to take the meds that knocked her out and "reset" her brain. It was super quick with no repercussions.

Then, this year, after YEARS of stability she had two episodes. One in Jan-Feb that came on slowly and took me a while to recognize but when I told her I thought she was manic she agreed to up her meds and we shut it down. SHe did miss 3 weeks of work though and there was some other fallout.

We thought we were home free for another 11 years or so. But in May she had another and it was the worse one yet. The thing that made this one so bad, and brought me close to my breaking point was that in the past she had always been trusting and cooperative with her treatment. This time she refused to take any meds, lied to me and her doctor, avoided me at all costs, and was very secretive. I was forced to read her texts and emails, something I never do, to make sure she wasn't saying or doing something she would later regret, or worse, something that I couldn't forgive.

It lasted 4-5 weeks. I was more stressed and worried and angry than I've ever been. I actually looked in to a divorce lawyer. I didn't want to, but had she done something like cheat on me, it would have been a bell that can't be un-rung.

Thank God she didn't cheat or do anything unacceptable. But she was delusional and believed she was leaving me and going to marry the guy she had dated before me. She never contacted him, never took any steps towards another man. But in her brain it was what was happening. I finally got her to take the meds needed to bring her out of it. But in the process I lost an aquaintence over it (not a friend because a friend would understand) and her psychiatrist fired her as a patient. The doc said she couldn't work with a patient that refused treatment.

SO we had to find a new doc. And she got on a new medication. And I actually was able to diagnose what caused this rapid cycle. She's 48 and is pre-menopausal. Her body chemistry changed and the meds she was taking stopped working.

Things are better now and in some ways better than ever. And I didn't leave her in her time of need. So by your definition I'm no coward.

BUT, after all that I just typed, and all I went through, had she actually cheated on me, would I be a coward if I said "that's it, I'm done"?