January 29, 2010

“Let go and Let God” – Separated from Bipolar Wife

I have been reading many of these posts and feel so low today. I have been married for nine years. My wife and I have always had issues, but she was not diagnosed with anything up until a year ago. Until then I thought she was just a woman who had the worst temper on earth.

During our courting period, the lust factor and hormones raged on, creating our story. I experienced the first phases of her anger before we got married. We would start arguing constantly and then one day before I knew it we were married. That day was an Oprah interview in itself. My mother says I didn’t even look like me in the wedding photo, a shell of myself.

So we got married, she already had an 8 year old son. When she got mad, she got mad, and sometimes it became physical on her end. I would stand there and try to fix it like a begging dog not to be abused, whether verbal or physical, those years were the hell years of my life. I would cry in the shower every day for God to save me from the marriage. I never cheated, even though I wanted to escape in my mind with someone else every day, maybe that was betrayal in itself. Everyday during the marriage, I would go to work for a few hours and escape to my parents’ place, talk to my mom, be around my siblings. Feel safe and secure that life would be ok. But there was always the emotion of fear, what if my wife found out I was here all this time? I better get home quick or there will be a fight! That was my life EVERYDAY for 5 years.

Anyway, one day the emotions came to a boil, I could not bear it any longer, so I left. This after many times of being abandoned by her, kicked out, left, yelled at, screamed at, spit on, sometimes slapped. She was in such a shock that her life had just done a complete turn. A month went by we did not speak. Finally during a telephone conversation we spoke and she cried and pleaded and begged for forgiveness. It took a little while but I went back. Still fearful and full of doubts, yet she vowed to never be that person again.

It was all roses for a while, yet I still found myself going to my parents for a few hours sometimes, escaping work, my back issues, my internal issues, plus I had been use to escaping for 5 years. Anyway, slowly we began to bicker again, about her issues with me at my parents, me not putting her and her son first. It was never as explosive as it once was, but she found ways in her passive aggressive behavior to argue with me, make her anger known and then tell me to leave her alone. I would again, always beg for a solution. To not be angry, to discuss in calm. Yet when her anger had reached her, she did not react the way she once did, but she still would abandon me, get angry.

I understand I had made my own mistakes but I did not recognize reality anymore. Why can’t two people just talk to each other kindly, without anger, despair, resentment? Why was I always the one begging to fix it?

That became our struggle for a little while and then she went into a depression shortly after she quit her job. I was always the major financial source. It always ate at me how I was bringing in all the money and she could spend it, spend it on her son, yet I had to live in fear and uncertainty when it came to bills if my cheque was lower. Anyway, she tried, she could not help her depression.

I helped her through, doctor gave her meds. A few months later she seemed to be doing better, but it was hard on me as well. Then she opened up her own business. The issues were always there about me and my parents and family, her and her son not being first. Little bickering would lead to the “leave me alone.” We were both afraid of being abandoned in the marriage and so on, and so on….

Then she fell into depression number two. Financial worries, she wasn’t really making money, I was making way less. We had a new big house we bought after we moved out from the one we lived in for five years. Things were spinning out of control again.

issues with her son, issues with me and her son, issues with the three of us. Her parents helped coming from out of town, we moved back and forth to their place…. All the while my heart pounding and yearning to get out, to free me. Suffering in my silence. We would talk about certain things, but it was clear to me I was depressed in the marriage. Would write blogs in secret on how much I wanted to leave her!

Then she found a job she loved, and her excitement I began to see was astronomical. During that time I saw spending patterns arise. Her money she would say, I’ll buy what I want. Lows were lows but her highs were crazy. Then she got into an altercation at work and the rest was history.

Last July she was admitted into hospital for a manic episode. Since she had post partum psychosis during her pregnancy, she was told the antidepressants she was on were doing more harm than good to her mentally. She was in hospital for 17 days, where I was submerged into a world of hell myself. She was released without medication at the end, doctors saying she just had a melt down.

Anyway, a week back at home, a lot of pacing and me trying to help her. I noticed our arguing a bit more, then one day she just got angry and was spewing heartfelt anger towards me. I had enough and after a few years of trying again, I left.

Shortly after we began to talk on the phone, and decided to meet for coffee. She was tired but happy, she wanted to let me know that the marriage was never going to work, but wanted to be friends. The relief I felt was like nothing I had felt, it was freeing. We talked, shed some tears and parted. I knew looking at her though it was her…but wasn’t. Know what I mean? I even told her that.

The next thing I knew later that night she is off on a mission of hers, ends up arrested and in jail. That was hell in itself. Her parents were there as she didn’t want to see me. Then she ended up in the hospital for the third time. Where doctors were finally thinking this was bipolar.

During that time life became drenched in tears and uncertainty for me. I found freedom however during this crazy story and her stay in hospital, when I found out that from the hospital she emptied our bank account and got a boyfriend in the ward, who was also bipolar. I felt free at last. However, I knew that all her family she had pushed away was too tired to help her through. Even her son was so discouraged. I sucked it up, and stayed with her every day for up to eight hours a day in the hospital for nearly a month. I kept telling her positive things and telling her that God had a beautiful life prepared for her. She was like a drone for a while but we kept going. Her parents moved in and out of my house every week to help me.

Then nearly four months later being on the right meds, having family support there for her she texts me that she is still in love with me, wants the marriage to work. I tell you that the depression I started to feel was unbearable. All the self securing feelings I was holding onto instantly shattered.

I told her that it was impossible, so much had happened, I needed to find my own place in the world. She cries out, wants it to work. We even met at a family counselor where I was honest with my feelings. She took it all in as blame for doing this to me. I told her she was not responsible, we both were for the mistakes we made. Yet the counselor said he appreciated our honest emotions, how much emotion was actually there, but how different the accounts of our lives together were when being described by me and her.

She described our life as having difficulties but getting through them, loving me. And I described them as me being depressed, always trying to find away to avoid arguments and when we would argue she would abandon me even though it was different from the first five years. She couldn’t understand how I saw life like that. I told the doctor, of course we had beautiful moments together. Going to movies, the park, the river. But I always felt inside that at some point there would be some bickering, something bad happen. We left there and she cried a little, but knows how desperate I am in my own depression right now to find my own peace.

I do love her, I always will, but I know life would never change with us, it never will. So do I return because of guilt? I think of the moments that were special, do I return because of doubt?

Our house is going up for sale today. She wants to save the marriage and I have no strength for me. I want to leave this country for a while, move to Italy to see my family, get away from this life. Some nights I have such sweats and bad sleeps that I beg God to heal me.

A doctor prescribed an antidepressant to me, I just sit and look at the box, never took a pill.

Need help and guidance. Maybe just a little faith, in myself. That finally moving forward on my own will open doors that I refused to look through out of fear before. I wish there were peace.

God bless.

Peter