I dont want my husband to come home

Just to say here, I am religious and I don’t take the idea of divorce lightly at all, but why can’t it be him who says “your health is as important as mine and I can see that my presence in your home would negatively impact your health”? In abusive relationships, for example, they’re never going to say that. So if they don’t really love or care about you, divorce it is. In other circumstances, the partner may not see that they have become a negative influence (because they’re ignorant, selfish or mentally ill) and divorce is necessary then too - alcoholics, compulsive gamblers. It doesn’t really matter what the problem is if they can’t fix it, we don’t have to sacrifice our lives for someone just because we once believed or hoped that we could make our relationship work for the rest of our lives or in sickness and in health.

You're assuming a Christian church wedding here. You don't need to vow "in sickness and in health" in a civil ceremony, or probably in various ceremonies. Marriage is a legal contract which stands until it is ended by death or divorce. For those who choose to combine this with a faith or other belief system ceremony and vows it can mean much more, but we cannot assume what sort of marriage others have had.

The trouble then though, is that you get people who are picturing the DH as a depressed double-amputee and they’re judging the OP for saying she doesn’t want to do it.

The context is very relevant here.

Isn’t the point that the OP didn’t want to tell the backstory. She wanted an opinion on her present feelings, not a rerun of everything that had been said before. People should have respected that.

Wishing you well. I think of you often. 💐

same here re pm xx

Good luck @IveNameChangedObviouslyand please stay safe.

@IveNameChangedObviously my PMs are always open if you need to offload without explanation or justification. Take care of yourself.

It would be totally reasonable to have a hard boundary over not living with him unmedicated. Not many relationships survive an unmedicated manic long term.

You might find a support group helpful - talking to people in a similar situation to you who know what it’s like https://www.bipolaruk.org/get-support/find-a-support-group/family-and-friends/

OP, I would advise that you make an appointment to see a solicitor.

Beginning divorce proceedings at this point may very well be the right thing for both of you.

https://solicitors.lawsociety.org.uk/

Absolutely agree with all PP that your daughter should come first. But if you do decide to have husband move into supported care and not to come back home (which is an absolutely reasonable decision, don't get me wrong) - I'd just be mindful about making sure the reasons are explained to your daughter as being best for everyone. The last thing anyone would want is for your daughter to feel guilty that this decision was made on behalf of her needs alone.

Are you going to receive a lot of judgement if you break up? Yes. A lot of this judgement would be coming from people who have never lived with this and have no idea how unrelenting and unsafe this is for you and your DD. Would that be worse than living with who he has become? Probably not.
Personally I think you need to have a very frank conversation with your DD and the discharge team. I have lived with a family member with MH issues. It became their entire personality and their excuse to continue treating people badly and to opt out of adulting entirely. It took a long time but that person is not part of my life now. They affected my own MH and my kids were afraid of him. I was also unwilling to become his de facto parent. (But this person was not my DH or father of my kids. I can see why that makes your choices harder.)

I absolutely agree with this too.

At first it sounded as if you were talking about a man who had care needs - eg/cancer, physical disability, maybe even a traumatic brain injury - but what’s happened is very, very different from all of those.

This isn’t a man who might leave the tap running or need help getting onto the toilet.

This is a man who threatened your daughter and made you both feel very unsafe. He’s still volatile and gearing up to discharge himself before he’s stable on a treatment regime.

It’s worth considering how difficult it was to get someone to section him last time - you don’t want to put yourself in this situation again. It’s not fair to you or your DD, or your DH.

He needs to be in the supported housing you mentioned where they can move swiftly if he starts to deteriorate.

As a PP said, maybe in time you’ll feel safe and will naturally come back together but for now, your priority has to be keeping your DD safe. And yourself, of course. As it stands, it’s not certain that you would all be safe for long if he came back home.

The time to get support in place by refusing to have him home is now. Once he’s back home it’s much, much harder to get help if you can’t cope or you start to feel unsafe.

I really don’t think you have any viable option other than to insist he lives elsewhere for the time being. And if that feels difficult, hold onto the fact that you’ll be doing him a favour by ensuring he’s somewhere that will get him help much faster than if he were at home, should the need arise.

I dont think I want him home. 😪 I have gotten use to him not being here and I dont think I want a relationship with this new person and these new rules.

Then there's nothing more to say. Get divorced. Plenty of men don't stock around when their partner gets a permanently disabling condition or a serious or terminal diagnosis. You don't have to either. People will judge you, but that's just them and their opinions, you'll have to learn not to let it affect you emotionally - because it can't affect you practically, so it's within your control. You probably will need to make some new friends that don't know your history and just don't tell them, then they can't judge. Moving to a new town will help.

Do it now before he comes home permanently, because it'll be so much harder to leave when you're enmeshed in caring duties, for one thing you'll have no time to organise things in if you're running around after him all the time. And it will impact his life if you divorce at that stage, better to do it now so he doesn't come home until he can cope without needing a carer and the hospital/social services have put in place support workers for him. He'll be discharged far sooner if they know you're at home to dump everything onto.

My mother had a severe psychiatric breakdown when I was 11 and tried to kill me. She was in hospital for 6 months. I developed PTSD with OCD features which relapses from time to time. When she came home it was very hard, she was initially different but we made it work and became close again. On medication, she was stable but still had major mood issues.

Unfortunately, I became her carer after my grandmother died. I'm not sure that was healthy or whether if she had gone into supported care and I had other stable care, things may have been easier for me.

I am just saying this to let you know that whatever you decide, please put yourself and your child at the centre of it. If he is really, truly compliant with medications and treatment (which it doesn't really sound like tbh) then maybe he could come home for a while, sleep in the living room or something, while you work out other accommodations for the long term.

I guess if he owns 50% of the house when your child is 18 you might have to sell and give him his share. Would that work?

My heart goes out to you. No one understands the impact of severe psychotic mental illness like this unless they have directly experienced it. It's not your husbands fault, it's tragic. But you have your own life and most importantly that of your daughter to think about. Best of luck x

I think MumsnetHQ should put a request on this for people to RTFT before replying. OP is getting a lot of harsh and unhelpful advice because people aren't aware of the situation. I know you wanted to leave the back story off but honestly that feels like a form of emotional self-harm the wording in the OP seems like maybe he's about depressed about losing a limb or something and now you just don't fancy it. That is obviously very different from 'My psychotic husband had to be sectioned after he began having fixated delusions about, and threatened to abscond with, our disabled daughter. Now he's having suicidal episodes and not complying with meds WIBU to say he cant move back in with us?'

I'm so sorry for what your family has been through it's so terribly unfair but what you are feeling is understandable and CORRECT you feel uncomfortable about him coming home because he really cannot come home!

This is spot on.

@IveNameChangedObviouslyI wonder if a charity such as women’s aid might be able to offer advice.

I appreciate that you didn’t want to add very much backstory to your OP, but what this boils down to is that you and DD feel unsafe around DH, and his previous behaviour has left you feeling traumatised. It’s clearly not his fault that he’s unwell, no one is blaming him but that doesn’t change the fact that you need to kip yourself and DD safe.

This is an incredibly tricky situation OP. I Think you’ve had lots of helpful advice on this thread and from what others have said it seems clear that need to tell your husband’s medical team, and social worker that you are not prepared to have him back to the home, or to take any responsibility for his care.

Most importantly you need to do this now, and not after he has been discharged. If you can do this now then there is a decent chance that he when he is discharged that can be into alternative accommodation with carers.

Do not put this off. Doing so will cut off opportunities for him to be rehoused and allocated carers.

You must do what feels right but I can’t help feeling that either way, living separately is the right thing to do for now for both of you. You and DD need to feel safe, that is a very basic right which we all deserve. Regardless of how you feel about DH you have to put DD’s and your own safety first. In other words even if you did feel you wanted him home it wouldn’t be a sensible way forward- you feel unsafe and traumatised. That’s totally reasonable.

DH may recover more, or he may not. He’s potentially more likely to recover in alternative accommodation, with carers and support than if he came back to your joint home. If you feel able to you can support him whilst he’s living elsewhere. You won’t have abandoned him, but you will have done the best thing for everyone involved.

My own experience of divorce leads me to think that it could be a very difficult process and as things stand currently your DH would be considered vulnerable, high needs and unable to support himself. As such he’d likely be awarded a significant proportion of your joint assets. I think maybe it would be best to put this option on the back burner for now.

It doesn't matter that he wouldn't do it if the tables were turned. People are different and vary hugely in what they can cope with. You have to do what is right for you, not what you imagine is the 'right' thing to do. Life isn't a virtue competition.

You really have no idea of what OP and her daughter have been through. Understandably as OP has chosen to not give all the details that some of us were privy to seven months ago. In the circumstances your comments are not really helpful.

He said he'd take her away and the OP would never see either of them again. I think it's pretty clear what he intended to do. I really don't think he was planning, in his psychotic state, to start a happy new life elsewhere with his 16-year-old daughter, away from the OP.

He threatened to take her away. It hasn’t been said that he threatened to murder her.