September 12, 2008

I can relate to so many of your stories…I have been with my fiancé for 9 1/2 years. We have a daughter who will be 2 next week – she is my angel. I am 36 y/o, he is 38. He has a daughter from a previous marriage who is 15. We were the dream team – everyone thought we were the perfect couple, and actually we always were. We had arguments, he had an aggressive side to him and I am not the type to put up with it.

We met while I was in undergrad and we would go out and drink all the time. I realized about 4 years later he was an alcoholic. I related all our problems to this. I was planning to leave and then got pregnant. He quit drinking cold turkey once he found out I was pregnant. He made all these promises. He remodeled the house – he is very handy/intelligent/successful. He had everything planned perfectly for the new baby and our family.

For some reason we could not get along. He always drove me crazy. He would do strange things I did not understand. He would leave and be gone for two hours, he would say he was getting gas, then come back with the car detailed and things he had bought that we did not need. I would get so annoyed! We would argue – that seemed to happen all the time. I just thought we could not get along. He also tore up every room in our house during his construction and never finished one room completely. It drove me nuts.

The baby came and he was still remodeling. He did all the work himself, he would not sleep and would stay up all night hammering and keep me and the new baby awake. Again, we would argue. He said I was ungrateful. I asked him to spend time with me and the baby – he couldn’t because he was doing all the work, doing his job and building me this house that I did not even appreciate. He made mean comments about how I was not working, although the baby was only weeks old and he had always said he did not want me to work – I graduated from graduate school at 6 months pregnant and was going into internship when she was turning 9 months, but this was not good enough all the sudden.

Things just got worse and worse. He started to get jealous, which he never did before. He questioned who I was talking to. He always said I was lying. We would argue and he would call me a bitch. I would get angry and try to slap him for that. He would grab me and push me to “defend himself.” This went on continually. I didn’t know why this was happening. He never had time for us, and when we were together it was total chaos and miscommunication. We use to finish each other’s sentences, and now we could never finish our own sentences. I did not know if I should leave or not – he loves our daughter and she adores him. I continue to hold on to the memories that are the best of my entire life.

In January this year he got worse. Sending me texts at work, accusing me of having affairs with random people, even one of his best friends I had not even seen in a year. No matter what I said it could not appease him. Then he started saying people at work were out to get him and were following him. He locked up his company truck and I was not allowed to get in it – before I had rights to his entire being and he did mine as well. He stayed out all night one night following people that he said were following him. He then started to make threats to me about killing his best friend and my co-worker I was “sleeping” with. He ended up Baker Acted. He blamed me for the Baker Act while he was in.

Once he got out he was on Zyprexa and was the perfect man, the man I love. That did not last. He hated the medicine, he had no sex drive, he slept all the time. I tried to make an agreement to administer his meds each night to encourage him to take them. He agreed at first but then got angry. I was not allowed to know about his health after that – he wanted to do it himself.

Things stayed fairly stable until July. Then, it started again. Same story. I am having all these affairs, people are following him etc. This time he started to think I was trying to poison him. He went to the hospital for labs. They recognized there was a problem and Baker Acted him only he escaped. I had not seen him because he had not been home for a week. I did not know how psychotic he was. He had been smoking pot constantly. We argued about it, because I had not been doing it and I did not want that anywhere near the baby.

He ended up coming home and immediately I knew this was not the man I love. He looked like a mad man. He was skinny and jittery and angry. He attacked me. He threatened to kill me, held a knife to me, and I believed he was going to do it. He choked me for about 5 seconds. My niece was there and he got arrested. He went to jail for a month. He just got out 2 weeks ago and now has an attourney, will probably go to trial. I found video he made of himself the week he was gone. It was scary! The whole thing is him driving around threatening random people that are “screwing” with him and “out to get him” and filming cars that belong to my “lovers.” He taped himself in his hotel room collecting evidence of how he was being poisoned by his best friend and me – water bottles, coffee. He also took threads from his sheets that he thought we had planted under his skin. He dug holes in his back with his pocket knife. He had 7 rolls of film of the cars and license plates, random people in stores.

I have pleaded with the courts to get him help. He has been seen by 10 psychiatrists who all diagnose him with bipolar disorder and also adderall-induced psychosis with paranoid delusions – yeah, come to find out he had started taking adderral while I was pregnant and he was remodeling the house. It was prescribed. He hates me and wants nothing to do with me and the baby. He blames me and still thinks I tried to kill him and that our baby may not even be his. He won’t speak to his family because he says they are in on it too because they told him he needed help. He says I am trying to make him look crazy but he’s not.

His lawyer talked big and said he knew he needed help and they would address the court about getting him help – he lied. He bonded out and has to go see a psychiatrist but does not have to document his meds or have drug tests for the adderral. We have an injunction on each other so he can’t see me or the baby, or call, or write. He says he wants it that way because he hates me. He also lost his job, he made 6 figures. Now he will probably lose our house he worked so hard on. I am struggling financially, had to move out with 3 days notice. I can’t afford anyone to keep my daughter so she is 6 hours away at my sisters. I am working on some way to get her back here.

I still love him very much. I want him to realize the truth and get better more than anything. I want my daughter to have her daddy. This is a nightmare and I never thought it would happen to me. I know if he got off the adderral, took his meds, we would be the perfect family. I don’t want to endanger myself or my daughter. I feel sorry for him because this is not him. The real him loves us so very much. He was abused badly by his mother growing up – she said she wished he had never been born. He never had anyone who really loved him until me and he has a hard time trusting, maybe that is why he thinks I would cheat on him.