Chris 7 May 2008 @ 7:58 am

I have known my wife since she was six years old. She has had a traumatic childhood, but seemed to begin to prosper as a young adult. After I finished law school we began to date. Our relationship moved quickly and we were married a few months later. She was ultraorganized and a neat freak. Although she had been told by her gyno that she would never have chldren we conceived with the help of in vitro fertilzation. After Matthew was born my wife seemed like “complete.” She was a wonderful wife and a dedicated and attentive mother. She was anxious to try and have another child. After several more in vitro attempts, she became pregnant with twins. Kyle and Mallory were born nine weeks early and were in the NICU for a month. My wife would spend all day at the NICU and I would spend all night at the NICU. It was a very trying itme. Immediately after they were discharged from the hospital I noticed that my wife was not the same mother. She tried very hard to escape the children. We put Matthew, who was three at the time, in half day preschool five days a week, and my wife, Kimberly, had her mother care for the twins during the day. My wife usually went shopping and ran up our credit cards. After about a year I took over the bills and discovered that we were behind in all of our bills by a month. I managed to catch up and have kept the bills. My wife’s behavior became worse. She continued to spend money and often did it secretly. She began to smoke (an old habit), drink during the day (although not excessively), and began to act out sexually. She told me she always wanted to experiment with another woman, but never had. She asked for my permission. Although hesitant, I initially agreed. However, a day or two later, I retracted my consent and told her that I believed it would do damage to our marriage. As far as I know, she has not pursued that fantasy. She contantly is on an emotional roller coaster. There are a few days a month where she seems like the Kimberly that I married and the mother that she was when Matthew was born. However, on most days, all I hear about is how she can’t “take it.” She yells at the kids, especially Matthew. She doesn’t clean the house and leaves the chores to me and her mother. She was diagosed with bipolar and has been seeing a psychiatrist. We are scheduled to go to couples counseling today with her therapist. My wife is obsessed with knowing whether I will divorce her if her behavior gets worse, or does not get better. I keep telling her that I don’t want to think about that. She persists in knowing the answer. It makes me feel that she doesn’t truly want to try and get better, and wants to put me on notice that things will get worse. Was your husband obsessed with the “divorce” question?

cathi 26 May 2008 @ 6:33 pm

While I am both suffer from bipolar disorder (one of many labels placed on me over the past 30 years) I am also a carer. I have a VERy difficult time setting boundries for myself and tend to leave myself off the my “care for” list. This invariable leads to institutionalization and physical illnesses. I believe that many people suffering from mental illness, especially those who have been the “hero” in a dysfunctional family, have the problem of co-dependency as well as dependency. While I find myself helping others fairly constantly, I have a hard time receiving help in return, or at all. Please let me know if you have experienced this and if you know of, or have any resources that deal with this “doublt trouble” Thank you and ….hang in, hang on…and don’t hang.

cathi

lisa verna 16 Nov 2010 @ 8:26 pm

I feel so hopeless at our situation. I have been married for 28 years and the percentage of time that I have been happy is so outweighed by unhappy periods, yet I have managed to gain the strength from those brief windows of happiness to carry on coping with a husband who has been verbally and emotionally abusive , due to his undiagnosed depression….undiagnosed because he is able to see our doctor and lie, and paint a completely different picture of him as a victim of life (very much how he sees himself permanently…..the fault for everything always lies elsewhere). Our children have borne witness to his mood swings throughout their lives and we too, recognise the signs, (almost as if a light goes off in his eyes, and he does indeed become a Jekyll and Hyde figure) and spend our lives walk permanently on eggshells. The problem is , it is becoming more and more of my own problem as the children grow up and leave home (very relieved and yet worried about me), and I feel dreadfully guilty at having continued to inflict, what is, an unpredictable monster on them , thoughout their lives, because I always end up feeling sorry for him because he manipulates. However, I can no longer love someone who has inflicted so many emotional wounds, that never have the time to heal before the next bout begins. BUT, we have no one to turn to….our local GP, as I said has no idea, and therapists cost money , and my husband does not believe he has a problem, …everyone else is “mad”, me in particular. I am 51, tired of trying to understand and cope with someone who seems to be so utterly self centred and incapable of considering anyone else (including his children and myself) in his life unless it is in relation to his own needs. I don’t know what to do, but I feel I have done over and above the call of duty and neglected my children’s happiness in pursuit of maintaining a certain quality of life and in my committment to my marriage.