@ChickenNameChange
Re leaving:
If a person was married to someone who then developed a life limiting illness that put limits on things and their partner left them, they would be considered an awful person.
How is this different?
I had this dilemma too. Almost exactly the same, though with depression and anxiety. People who haven't been there simply don't understand. When someone posts about a mentally ill partner on here, there will be page after page of people saying how you should leave if they're not trying to get well. Or like pps here, that their abuse and their mental illness are separate.
But sometimes they ARE trying, and it's still not enough. And the abusive behaviour absolutely can be driven by the mental illness, because the illness is effectively abusing and controlling them, and that results in them passing on the pain to everyone else.
My former DH is in so many ways a wonderful man. Our lovely times were so lovely, and when he's well, he's thoughtful and kind. The bad times were horrendous, all of us tiptoeing around on eggshells while he raged at himself and us and then sobbed and self-medicated.
I deeply regret that I didn't leave in his first major depression, but even then, in my early 20s, I'd absorbed the message that you can't leave an ill person and that a good woman cares for her man through it all. Instead we stayed together, focussed on the good, things would get better with a new medication or job or more time to exercise... Then things would get bad again.
My eldest has undoubtedly been scarred. My middle child seems unaffected, but it took me too long to realise that they never voluntarily do anything with him. Wish we'd separated long ago, I miss him sometimes, but mostly feel that this is liberating for all of us, including him.