My DH is ill and I am struggling

[JimLaheysWhiskeyBottle]

This is my very first thread, so please be gentle. Mid thirties mum of two, full time job etc and we live abroad away from family.
My husband has a diagnosis of bipolar, (I have added to threads a few times about him).

We’ve been together over 20 years and had lots of ups and lots of downs. The last 3 years have been rough, his mental health has not being good. Currently he is receiving treatment (the treatment and care here is absolutely outstanding and I am very aware of how lucky we are for this). He is also due to be voluntary admitted later next week for two weeks as he is not in a good place at the moment.

Now is the point where I feel like an utterly shit person. The last 3 years have been brutal. My DC2 was born whilst DH was on a very long sick leave. I have done 100% night feeds, appointments, care, baths, bedtimes. A lot of this is due to side effects of medication, but it has made me feel taken for granted.

I have 100% of the mental load as well as food prep, cleaning and all the other stuff that goes along with family life.

I feel that over the last 3 years he has slowly become more and more selfish. It feels like his needs and happened are so much more important than mine. Yet, at the moment they are, he has a very real risk of harm.

It’s my birthday on Sunday and i know for absolute certainty that he has forgotten, despite the fact that we have been together for 22 years. I know he has forgotten as i have access to the finances at the moment due to his risk taking behaviour whilst he is manic. I realise that it sounds precious to be bothered about my birthday, especially as he has all of his health issues at the moment, but he is perfectly ok to text me a list of his xmas present wishes.

When he eventually realises he has forgotten, he will be devastated, but part of me doesn’t want to remind him. Not to be game playing, but almost as confirmation to myself as to how little i actually matter.

I don’t really know what i am asking here. Maybe i need some sense talking to me, he is seriously ill, yet here i am acting like a dick.

If he can remember his own Christmas list then he can remember your birthday.

I really feel for you. You are having to give up your life to take care of him and you are bottom of his list - he seems to see you just as someone who's there to care for him.

You don't have to stay together, you know. Marriage isn't a prison. You have every right to happiness and self-fulfilment too. It's not just all about him. Perhaps it's time to think of a life where you're caring for yourself and your children and not him?

I think you are completely reasonable to have boundaries - in fact, you need them. If living with DH makes you miserable then you can act on that and you shouldn't feel guilty. Worrying about talking about things that are concerning you as they might upset him is a big red flag. It's awful that your DH has serious MH issues, but that doesn't mean it's okay for you to break trying to support everyone and everything. And for how long - forever? I'd question what you get from this relationship. You're supposed to be a partnership

Good to hear you're not struggling to get treatment for him (how is healthcare in Norway funded/arranged by the way?)

Could you ask his Mum or his friend to take him out to the shops to get you a present and card? (Or will it throw him off balance even if it's not you saying, "in case you've not got her present yet, I'm going out shopping, come with me and you can get her something"?)

It's not your fault you're stuck in this situation. The other suggestion I'd make is having a cry in the loo and then buying yourself something nice on his behalf (budgeting appropriately - if finances are very tight and there's a chance he might get a last-minute thing, even a box of chocolates - but SOMETHING).

It's a shitshow that's not your fault, and OF COURSE you wish things were different, of course you do, anyone would. But .. you won't be worse off for making sure you at least have the right number of birthday presents.

I think I read that 80-90% of marriages in which one partner has bioplar end in divorce. This is the reason - it's not your fault, it's not his fault, it's just a really difficult illness to live with.

You have two dc
It s a lot tocare for two dc AND an adult with severe needs
Something has to give
He is the adult here
Get his family or carers to cater to him sometimes
Make loud noise zbout celebrating your birthday with your dc
You,ve been with him since 15
You do nt have to stay

Sounds really hard. You’re effectively his carer.
Where’s your support, your backup? What happens if you become ill?

I don’t have any answers but think hard about what you’re getting out of this relationship.

Do you have a counsellor yourself whom you could talk to and explore these feelings?

You have become his carer. On that basis, you should be seeking (or being offered) support too. Because it's incredibly difficult and carers' needs are often ignored. Can you speak with your local health authorities to see if such programmes exist and/or see about local support groups? Possibly even just an informal conversation with his therapist?

I'd also say that it feels that your H's focus has shifted from seeing you as his partner to seeing you as his carer. So he can pull it together to remember other people's birthdays etc but not yours because effectively, you are invisible to him except in your role of helping him to cope. Sort of like a child who is sweetness and light at school but then comes home and takes it all out on their parents because they know it is "safe".

I don't know enough about bi polar to suggest a solution to that piece, but again, I'd be inclined to see if I could get support or advice professionally. eg via his support team who perhaps are unaware of this and therefore are not helping him to address it but rather focusing on other things?

It's ok if you want to leave.

It's ok if you want to leave even if that makes his mental health worse.

It's ok to want to leave even if he self harms or becomes suicidal.

His life and health does not trump yours ot your childrens.

Just wanted to say that.

I don’t like how I can hear the resentment when i read what I have written. And then feel like a terrible person because he has a debilitating illness
Even if his behaviour is caused entirely by his illness, that doesn't mean that you can switch off your own entirely natural human reaction to being forgotten. Especially as you live abroad without your family and are already having to suppress your expectations about ever getting a hug, locally useful advice or other support from them. Plus constantly having to put on a brave face and forget about the comforts of a nice cup of tea, a chocolate digestive and watching Coronation Street or whatever other familiar things might cheer you up.

You're also clearly stressed out and in need of your own support, and shouldn't feel in any way bad about seeking it out from professionals. Let yourself be the patient for a change.

From the ups and downs you have had in the past, it sounds like he's always been hard to live with. Does he ever apologise?

OP, as a mentally ill person I feel confident telling you that you can only help someone as long as you are helping yourself first.

He forgets his meds, so you help him remember. Ok, as long as you want to do it.

He is angry when you forget to remind him. NOT OK! If he forgets, like I often do, then he can sort himself phone alarms or other reliable methods (again, like I do).

You're meant to be his wife, OP, not his carer. It's ok to have reached your limit with your partner's illness.

Thank you again for all of these incredible responses, I am very grateful that you have taken the time out of your day to reply.

I’m going to try to reply to different questions in a bit when bedtime is done.

There is a lot to think about, especially about the future. Unfortunately as a poster up thread stated, most marriages end in divorce and also there is the very real threat of suicide to consider. In very dark times, he has before attempted suicide, two of them were extremely close calls and all before a concrete diagnosis and medication. He knows this as much as i do.

I think i need to start considering myself. First point is counselling for myself, if our marriage does end, i need to be mentally strong enough to deal with the aftermath of that.

I think i also needsupport in communicating with him without being afraid of the impact i will have and the responsibility i will feel.

I also need a cadbury’s twirl,a cup of Yorkshire tea with 2 sugars and some episodes of father ted and shooting stars, so if anyone can pop them round, you’d be a love.

If it were me, I'd let him forget and don't rescue him. You have taken the Mummy/rescuer role and you have a self absorbed teenage son there in DH who does not see you as an equal.partner because your expectations for each other have changed in response to time and lifes challenges. You don't expect him to act like a grown up. He expects you to put his needs first and that this is what you 'want'.
Look, you have found a 'sick' man to marry and to mother. Maybe you had a sick Dad and you saw your mother doing this.
Its a learned pattern of responding and you can unlearn it. I suggest you go to counselling and get some emotional support in your corner to get you through this tough time. Best of luck. You are a good woman doing your best.

You do need to consider yourself, and if this is how you want your life to be.
You only get one, no re-runs like the TV shows !

Ok, what about you and the support you need?.where is that coming from?

You cannot be responsible for everything and it not take its toll.

You do know you don't have to remain with him, don't you? Of it's too much, it's too much. You've stayed through sickness and he isn't getting better. He doesn't remember (or even try to remember?) To take his own medication. He may not go in for inpatient treatment. I think under those circumstances, he isn't doing everything he can. He's not playing fair. And it's not fair to expect you to carry on picking up all of those pieces. It'd be one thing if he was reliably taking medication, reliably getting the inpatient treatment he needs. But he's not. He also clearly has capacity to remember other people's birthdays, which demonstrates that he's not treating you with the respect that would mean you could put up with the other stuff.

I know it sounds like you're a terrible person if you leave him, but at some point you have to look after yourself, no? And I don't think that's terrible at all.

I would take the two weeks that he is away to evaluate if you want to continue this relationship. You might very well find that life is easier and you are happier without him in the house. In the same way that his mental health is his responsibility, your mental health is yours. If being away from him is what you need then don't feel guilty for that.

If i discuss these things, there is a very real risk of self harm.

This is no way to live. How much of this might be manipulation?

I feel for you op. You are clearly a loving and kind person. You want to do the right thing.

As a pp said, although your DH can't help some of these things due to his illness, nor can you help the fact you aren't able to cope. Your DH has you supporting him all the way, looking after him. Who is looking after you?

Worse, you feel it isn't all down to his illness, directly. Remembering friends birthdays but not yours suggests he takes you completely for granted. He doesn't see you anymore, or appreciate you. (For all the caring for him you do, you'd think he might want to spoil you especially for your birthday, but no).

It is OK if you can't cope, to leave.
There will come a time - and it might be soon - when you need to leave for your own wellbeing. Your children need one reliable parent at least. If your own health is affected, if you lose yourself altogether, if you spend all your time worrying about/ looking after your DH, your children will suffer, as well as you.

You’re effectively a carer. It’s not really a relationship and I think you are more than entitled to decide if you want to live this way for the rest of your life. You get to have a life too but at the moment it’s all about your DH. When do you put you first? I hope you are receiving therapy/counselling?

@youvegottenminuteslynn

I have bipolar and am lucky to be stable due to medication, I don't have (or at least haven't had for a few years) flare up episodes thank goodness.

Even as someone with the same diagnosis as him I plead with you to remember this - one person's mental health doesnt trump that of another person's.

Him being bipolar doesn't mean that you should be able to magically cope with being last on the list all the time, taking 100% of the mental load and feeling increasingly unwell yourself.

It is not up to you to make yourself smaller at the times his symptoms get bigger, to accommodate him into your shared life.

While it's sad and difficult for him, that doesn't lessen the impact on you at all. It must be utterly exhausting and those disappointments (like forgetting a birthday etc) add up to death by a thousand papercuts.

You aren't an awful person if you have simply reached your limits when it comes to what you can cope with. If someone's diagnosed mental health issues are impacting your own mental health, it doesn't mean that impact is something you should dismiss.

It's your life too

This.

I divorced my husband. Best thing for our children and me. I was struggling to hold it together. Really struggling to the point I saw no point in being alive. No one recognised my needs.

cadbury’s twirl,a cup of Yorkshire tea with 2 sugars and some episodes of father ted and shooting stars

If only I could post them!

Think about your DC. Mine were hugely impacted by DHs behaviour. It was the right decision for them to separate.

I too struggled to separate MH and personality and worried about self harm. It doesn't really matter....the thing that does matter is your wellbeing.

@Justilou1

I am so, so sorry.. I have a darling friend in the same position. I have known him since I was five, and when I met his girlfriend and saw how happy he was, it was such a joy! When they became engaged, he put me on speakerphone with his mum. We all cried tears of joy. He and his girlfriend were together about four years before they were married. He didn’t have much to do with her family prior to the wedding despite living in the same town, and she was on the one to them all the time. After the wedding, his wife’s personality changed very quickly and in a very bad way. She was paranoid and began locking herself into their home, refusing to go to work, etc… She stopped eating, drinking, sleeping, lost a lot of weight that she couldn’t afford to lose. When he finally convinced her to see a doctor, it all came out that she (and her family) had kept her diagnosis (schizophrenia) a secret from him until well after they were married. She is a very well-educated, artistically talented woman who has quickly changed from being adventurous and passionate - engaged in art, life, friendships, music, teaching and politics. In a short period of time she became so shut off from all of that and dependent on him for all kinds of sustenance (physical, mental, nutritional, hygienic, etc) and resenting him at the same time, that he has entirely lost sight of who he was, let alone who she was prior to this. Neither of them like each other anymore, let alone themselves, and he is grateful that they have no kids - which breaks his heart also.

He can’t bring himself to leave her, and yet feels like he’s been sold a lie by her parents and her.

Heartbreaking all around.

Meanwhile… Devil’s advocate.

My brother has Borderline Personality Disorder. Since my parents are now deceased, he assumed that it would be my job to take over from them and make myself available at all hours of the day to sort him out, be on the phone while he processes every thought as it burbles up from the stream of drugged up consciousness and out through his mouth, and accept any abuse he hurls my way because it may not suit me to have phone calls that wake my kids at 4am and talk about car choices and dreams, etc. Of course now that I am nc with him, he is affecting other people, and he has become “Poor D” because they don’t want to put up with that shit either and they want to push it back at me.

If you look at MH funding, after WW1 & WW11 there were lots of “convalescent homes” and smaller hospitals and asylums for people to convalesce following admissions for acute MH illness. There is nothing like that now. Not only that, but there are fewer MH beds available in fewer MH hospitals. Waiting lists for any kind of MH help are ridiculously long and when you think that if statistically speaking MH needs haven’t really changed over time, but the population has actually increased exponentially since then, you can actually see how bloody underfunded that section is.
There is virtually no help available. What help there is is virtually shit.
You are
Not a dick. You exhausted and rightfully so. You didn’t sign up for this. While you DH may not have wished this on himself, you may have to accept that looking after his needs is eclipsing your needs and those of your child’s. It is not being a dick yourself.

This. Divorced this year after 30 years marriage and last 20 of that “caring” for exh with schizoaffective disorder . I twice ended up really unwell mentally myself. It was relentless but I stayed becuase he accepted help and I had hope. Hopes a very strange thing in that it makes you continue in terrible situations when you should do something else. I only left him when he stopped taking meds and lied to me about it over a considerable period of time. He basically left our “marriage” over that decision. The NHS is terrible for MH - early on after diagnosis I tired everything to get help that wasn’t just over medicate so that he became a zombie. But it’s like banging your head against a brick wall. I absolutely agree that closing “bed” facilities was a disaster. “Care in thecommunity” does not works when he had no community and only saw a CPN. Once every 6 months for 20 mins,

Op, you are not a shit. It does feel like the person is selfish as they can become so self absorbed and struggle with cognitive processing to think outside their headspace. I tired for so long, and then some. But in the end I had to walk away.

You have to protect your own mental well-being. None of us married to become a carer for our spouse, but MH issue is a different league. It is not “caring” , it is like having another selfish child , the person isn’t even aware they’re ill , they resent any intervention and at worse you can become the target and focus of their delusions

Do you. Never mind what anyone else thinks. They certainly wouldn’t sign up for it.

Having mh problems doesn't give you a pass to be a dick all the time or lazy.
Sounds like this is an unhealthy relationship.

@Triffid1

You have become his carer. On that basis, you should be seeking (or being offered) support too. Because it's incredibly difficult and carers' needs are often ignored. Can you speak with your local health authorities to see if such programmes exist and/or see about local support groups? Possibly even just an informal conversation with his therapist?

I'd also say that it feels that your H's focus has shifted from seeing you as his partner to seeing you as his carer. So he can pull it together to remember other people's birthdays etc but not yours because effectively, you are invisible to him except in your role of helping him to cope. Sort of like a child who is sweetness and light at school but then comes home and takes it all out on their parents because they know it is "safe".

I don't know enough about bi polar to suggest a solution to that piece, but again, I'd be inclined to see if I could get support or advice professionally. eg via his support team who perhaps are unaware of this and therefore are not helping him to address it but rather focusing on other things?

What carer support? They’ll do a carer assess,ent. If you’re “lucky” you get sent on a few course to tell you how you should act dealing with someone whose mentally ill. Almost all of it is NOT designed for spouses so is particularly useless You might even get referred to a self help group- great, you can sit around with other miserable trapped carers indulging in competitive horror shows. And that’s it. No respite. No individualised support. No relationship councelling for you and your spouse as that doesn’t exist even if NICE. Guidelines say you should be offered. The OP is on her own with this I’m afraid. She has to decide if she can endure it any longer or not.

First and foremost : nobody has a ‘right’ to a relationship.

I think sometimes I think people are quite selfish in assuming this.

I have ME/CFS, and partly I wouldn’t actively seek a relationship for that reason - hard on them, hard on me. Though I am a woman. I do notice that many women are more expected to take up the carer role. However detrimental it may be to them, and even their children.

It’s a decision only you can make OP though. But if the relationship is poor and detrimental to you and children, but you can co-parent still, I don’t see why you have to stay in this situation. You may both be better off separate.