A
female
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:Hi I've been married 2 yrs now. I met my husband on vacation and we married a year later. I saw a few signs that he had a very bad temper but the love he had or that we had for eachother seemed just perfect! He was so different than any of my other relationships and it felt like a fantasy! He moved to another state to be with me and after about 6 months it all changed. He tried suicide twice. He literally 1 second away succeeded but I cut the cord and saved him the second time. That was very traumatic for me and I live with that thought on the back of my head every day. Not that I want to be appreciated for doing that for him but I just feel like that alone besides everything else he has put me through should be a wake up call to be better towards our marriage and respect me. He was hurt and injured himself and has fallen into a very deep depression . I've tried everything to help him and be there as a wife. Now he treats me like he hates me and has so much anger towards me. He blames me for only having me in his life when at first he acted like he didn't care and that it was just him and I. When we get along, our marriage is perfect but when we don't it's HELL. I believe he is bipolar. His counselor said he didn't think he was bipolar just very depressed. His depression is starting to become very painful and hard for me to deal with. I've tried everything and it's only getting worse. We don't get along any more. I feel like one day he's just gonna walk out. I'm so confused and don't know what I should do. He always plays victim.
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reader, anonymous, writes (9 September 2011): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionI just wanted to let everyone reading my story that I DON'T have any children with my husband and I wouldn't dare bring a child into our marriage with what's going on. I'm also a believer that children don't solve existing problems in a marriage. I will say, I take very good care of myself on that part. ;)
A
female
reader, chocoholicforever +, writes (9 September 2011):
if this marriage is destroying you, you should leave. Marriage is not supposed to be destructive. He's self-destructive, with or without you.
He does need help. But it sounds like it's beyond your ability to provide.
Ask yourself if, by staying married, you're keeping him only barely functional that he sees no reason to take responsibility for his own mental health care and thereby perpetuate this situation where he's abusive to you?
Marriage is not designed to have as its primary purpose being a lifejacket for someone who otherwise can't function in life on their own. That's not a marriage, that's a parent-child relationship or a professional caregiver situation. (Yes people may decline in their golden years and require caregiving from their spouses - that's not the same thing, because that phase is but part of the marriage, not what defined the entire marriage. And even in those situations, often times the spouse needs to hire professional caregivers to help or suffer emotional exhaustion and breakdown.)
Leaving the marriage does not mean that you're abandoning him, it just means that your relationship has changed to no longer be that of spouses. You can still be supportive and caring to him, without also being his wife.
If you do stay married to him, then you may need to re-define what marriage means to you. You may need to spend a lot more time away from him, cultivate your own interests and life separate from him, in order to preserve your own emotional and mental health. You may need to withdraw and keep an emotional distance from him so as to protect yourself from his verbal and emotional abuse. But ask yourself - is a marriage with a lot of emotional distance and separate lives, really a marriage after all? so if you choose to stay married to him while nothing changes, you may need to re-define what a marriage means for you.
Finally, if you have children, then my opinion is that you should leave him because the needs of your children come first, and it's extremely damaging to childrens' development to grow up in a household witnessing or being subjected to abuse.
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reader, anonymous, writes (9 September 2011): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionI would like to thank everyone for taking the time out to listen and read my question and leave comments. Yes a part of me feels like I should leave this marriage because I feel like it's verbal and mental abuse towards me and a part of me realizes that hes my husband and needs help with his illness. When he attempted the second time he was admitted into a phsyc ward at the hospital for 2 weeks with one week supervised. After all that happened he turned to Psycologist and psychiatrist. He's been on every anti depressant pill there is and they only work for a very short period and he gets off and decides he's ok. Then he tried anger management for his anger and stopped going again because he wanted to deal with it on his own and that the classes were just making him even more upset than helping because he had to bring up all the negative things and outrages hes had. I will admit he is a very loving person and a great guy but the other side of his illness is like a tazmanian devil. He snaps and when he snaps it's not good. I told him today that he really needs to get help and his response is that he's happy today and going to try to remain happy and not let his depression over power him. He mentioned he had been reading and listening to a guy by the name of jiddu krishnamurti and that listening to him made him understand himself and what he was going through. To me it sounds like again a game. How can you be one way one day and then read and listen to this guy and be 100% better?? Like a switch of a button. I still feel that pills are the answer, but are they really and who is this guy? I'm about to look him up. Again everyone thank you so much for taking your time out for me.
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reader, anonymous, writes (8 September 2011): PS, there is no such thing as a "psychiatric ward" where they send people away to be treated for the rest of their lives, unless it is a psychiatric prison due to a serious crime. If he is hospitalized it would be a short stay, such as 72 hours. Or he could go into a rehab facility which is still temporary, for example 28 or 90 days.We no longer lock away the mentally ill into asylums or "loony-bins". That is a movie-magic fantasy. It is up to the patient and the families of the patient to care for them, not some hospital. I am not only bipolar but my cousin has sever schizophrenia. He is 60 years old and was diagnosed in his early adulthood. He is disabled and unable to hold a job full time, and must be supervised to take his medication. He has lived with his mom and dad his whole life, not hospital. Also, people who are mentally ill are very capable of being loving people, good spouses/partners, and great parents. But they must have a good support system and be in treatment, accept their illness, and take responsability for their care. People will mental illness suffer like any other illness. You have good times, bad times, times of recovery and times of relapse. It's like having cancer or diabetes and is a biological disorder and not something that is made up. Being ill is not easy, and going it alone is even worse. But if he refuses to get help and even after a hospitalization refuses to care for himself, then soemtimes you have to make a hard choice. I wish you luck. It isn't an easy road.
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reader, anonymous, writes (8 September 2011): I have bipolar disorder and I can tell you right now that your husband needs to see a psychiatrist (a medical doctor specializing in psychiatry) and not a councelor. Whether he has bipolar, major depressive disorder, or a personality disorder can only be made clear and diagnosed by a psychiatrist. When you have uncontrolled mental illness you need a lot of support. Suicide is a symptom of a much bigger and deeper illness, it is not the illness itself. Mental Illness is not curable but it can be treated and controled much like diabetes. But no one can get well unless they want to.You cannot force him into care unless he is a threat to himself or others. If he makes another suicide attempt you call 911 and have him hospitalized. If he attacks you then call the cops. Otherwise, he needs to decide on his own to be treated.
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reader, anonymous, writes (8 September 2011): you need to leave this marriage. Not everyone is able to function in a relationship or marriage, and I'm talking about your husband here. When such people get into marriages (usually by accident or deceptions and with partners who have their own issues that made them overlook warning signs), they end up mentally and emotionally destroying not just themselves (which they would be doing with or without you anyway) but also their partners.
You married a man who has no business being married to anyone because he's extremely dysfunctional and can't take care of himself let alone function in a partnership. If he's still suicidal he needs to be in a psychiatric ward and under the care of mental health professionals. He does not need a "better wife" , he's way past that, that's like saying that someone who's drowning because they can't swim needs a better swimsuit. It's completely unsurprising that all your efforts are not making him better - of course they're not, his issues and dysfunction have nothing to do with you. It's also unsurprising that things are getting worse because the more you try to "fix" him, the more you're interacting with his dysfunction and presenting him with more situations to twist and distort.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (8 September 2011): sounds like he's got Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), you can look it up. The intense mood swings, going from thinking you're great one minute to completely hating you the next...
he needs to see a psychiatrist, not "just" any counselor. Not all counselors and therapists and psychiatrists and are not trained or equipped to make mental illness diagnoses. I'm surprised his counselor hasn't already referred him to a psychiatrist.
whatever he has, I really think he has some severe mental illness. He may need medication to be normal. even if it's "just" depression, it's obviously very severe if he's tried suicide.
realize that there is nothing you can do, because his mental illness is still gonna be there no matter how good of a wife you are. Whatever you do or don't do, as long as his mental illness is not being treated adequately with therapy and/or medication, nothing you do or don't do will have much of a difference and if you make it your responsibility to make a difference the you're becoming part of the problem as well and you're digging yourself into a hole that you won't be able to get out of.
at this point I would take him to a psychiatrist, and then leave this marriage because this is no way for you to live. You literally saved his life once, now he needs to save his own life, it's not marriage that he needs to survive it's therapy and/or medication.
marriage is not meant or designed to be a lifesaver or caretaker situation for people with serious mental health problems. it's meant to be a union between two healthy individuals so they can both give mutually to each other without being pushed beyond normal capacity all the time.
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