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Deb,

Read your message about separation and divorce/anullment from a bipolar spouse. My husband is bipolar and I am at the point of really having to consider separation for my own sanity. He was the sweetest, most loyal, intelligent, funny man and we've been married 12-1/2 years now. He was diagnosed four years ago after a psychotic break. He had lost his job and we were under tremendous financial stress, losing our home, my mom passed away. It was a terrible time. He went wacky and after a few months was diagnosed and began treatment. So, he's been on bipolar meds in varying combinations for almost four years now. But, for the last two years, he has been more aggressive, mean-spirited, agitated, argumentative... where he once was my biggest fan and would stand up to anyone who dared to say anything unkind to me... now he is the one who hurts me emotionally. Last week, I discovered that I'd been hoodwinked. For the last couple of years, he's been using illegal drugs and alcohol and I was gullible enough to believe his behaviors were attributable to his bipolar or to side effects to new med combinations, etc. I don't know if I just didn't want to face it or if I was just so in love with him that I trusted him implicitly and never questioned the behaviors. How could I know that he was agitated because he was withdrawing from drugs when he sometimes was agitated when he was manic? I feel like I can believe nothing he says, that it is all lies. I feel like he can't love me and treat me so badly. I've told myself that he's still in there and he'll come back to me when the med combination is right and he is off the alcohol and illegal drugs... but I feel like I'm lying to myself just like he's lied to me. What a horrible situation to be in, to have the person you love, whom you expect to spend the rest of your life with turn into someone you can't bear to be around. We are in counseling and he is very compliant with taking his bipolar meds but of course they are negated by the alcohol and illegal drugs. So, what chance do we have? Just because he says he wants me and doesn't want to lose me, that isn't enough to make him someone he no longer can be, does it? The real man I love and married is gone forever, isn't he? So, staying in this situation, this marriage that is so painful and scary, it isn't helping him or me is it? We have no children together. We married in our late 30s and I'd already been married before and had my kids. But, I can't have my grandkids over; I'm a stranger to them, because I never know what to expect out of my husband and do not want the children terrified or traumatized. I was raised in an alcoholic home... and I feel like I'm back in a similar hell.

Did you get your divorce? Are you happy now? Does life get better?

— laura-285595

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