Irreconcilable Diseases

Posted by fxckfeelings on November 14, 2011

When you love someone who gets mentally ill and doesn’t recover, you may not only lose that part of their personality you loved the most, but also get stuck with a double dose of what you liked least. After all, it’s one thing to vow to be there in sickness and in health, but sickness and negativity and mania are usually more than most people bargain for. If your spouse’s mental illness makes your marriage unbearable, keep a lid on your negative feelings by respecting the burden life has put on both of you and refusing responsibility for putting things back the way they were. Once you can accept that sad reality, it’s time to figure out whether there’s room in your marriage for you, your spouse and the disease, or if your old vows no longer apply.
–Dr. Lastname

My wife suffers from non-medication responsive depression (we’ve done ECT’s, every med in the book, and she has a psychiatrist). She’s bitter and short to family; she goes off on the kids and then can turn around and be nice. I do all the work around the house, get the kids to activities, etc., and I’m wearing out. She comes home from work and just logs on her lap top and sits in front of the TV while I get dinner and clean up. She shows no affection towards me and I feel like a servant. When I complain or push her, she talks about killing herself and putting herself out of our misery (she’s been hospitalized several times) or just hurting herself (sometimes she cuts on her arms and legs). I’m getting to the point where I don’t like her anymore. She just seems to have given up. Nothing interests her, nothing tastes good…she gets no enjoyment from anything. What can I do? She’s in her forties, now, but she struggled with depression in her twenties and this current bout has been going on for 5 years. Her doctor and therapist are really committed to her, but it seems like she doesn’t care, like she enjoys being miserable. Sometimes I feel like I’m spiraling down with her, but I’m not going to give up. If I just stand by, she seems to just sink lower, but I can’t leave, because she’s said that the kids and I are the only reason she’s still alive.

If you’re like most married people, you become dependent on your spouse for a positive response, no matter how independent you are as an individual. You married her because you respect her opinion and take pleasure in her approval. You make her happy, everyone feels good. You see the problem here.

So it’s normal to feel bitterly disappointed and deflated when depression turns her into a grouchy, nasty, unappreciative, unaffectionate black hole who threatens suicide if you criticize her and never does her share.

It’s not just the lack of approval from her that’s bothering you, it’s the overabundance of disapproval, of you and everything else.

Unfortunately, the bitterness you feel in response to your unmet needs adds to her self-hate, creating a vicious circle of negative emotion that demoralizes everyone. Controlling that bitterness is the one thing you can do to improve what is an otherwise impossible situation.

First, pretend that she’s had a stroke that zapped the part of her personality that was warm, active, and responsive; your loss isn’t personal or preventable, and your needs are no longer plausible. Acknowledging these difficult truths now prepares you to assess, without hurt or a sense of failure, whether your family is better off with the two of you together or apart.

There are positive aspects to your marriage, like the fact that she contributes financially, and that, by staying alive, she helps the kids, and hopefully she does some parenting from time to time. She’s showing courage, whether she knows it or not. Maybe the advantages of staying together outweigh the many disadvantages you’ve listed above.

Whatever you decide is best, present it to her positively; tell her you know she’s trying and there’s probably love and affection in there somewhere, if the depression would only lighten up. Remember the person she was and talk to that person as if she’s still there but, like Sleeping Beauty, can’t wake up.

If you feel separation is for the best, let her know that you value and support her role with the kids and that what you are separating from is not her, but her illness. And if she threatens suicide, tell her that her threats are a factor in the separation.

When depression takes over your personality, it makes you do bad things, like putting your life in other people’s hands. If she could control that side of herself, she might improve her parenting and your partnership, even if her depression does not improve. Recommend DBT, a kind of therapy I often recommend, that helps people who feel terrible protect themselves from acting terribly.

Decide what’s for the best, don’t be a victim, and ignore blackmail. You may be a victim of her illness, but you’re also the man in charge who’s doing a wonderful job of soldiering on. If you do what’s best for you and your kids, then it doesn’t matter what she says now; the healthy part of her approves, even if it can’t be heard.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’m taking it from all sides and that all the love and nurturing I give my sick wife comes back as shit. I know, however, that her response is not her, but her illness. I have assumed a huge load as a single parent who must now go on alone without the love and support of a partner. I will make hard choices that she may see very negatively, as she sees everything. I will hold fast to my own vision of what’s best for the family.”

I’m writing because my husband wants me to. He thinks there’s something wrong with me, but I like being a little manic, so I haven’t taken my mood-stabilizer medication in 10 years. It’s true, I talk fast, I can’t hold a job, I’m irritable, and he’s had to put me in the hospital a couple times. On the other hand, I don’t hurt anyone and I like the way I feel, most of the time, except for one thing: he wants me to be the way I used to be and he’s always unhappy with me. I hate sleeping in the same bed, but he’ll give me a hard time if I move to another room. My goal is to get him off my back, so I agreed to write.

As noted above, when you’re married, you can’t help depending on your spouse’s approval, in some deep, hard-wired way, which means that, if you never seem to get it, you become a permanent rebel who cares too much to leave but feels better every time you do the opposite of what he wants. In the process, you lose track of your own priorities.

On the other hand, you know your priorities about your hypomanic mood. Keeping it natural and un-medicated is more important to you than holding a job, staying out of hospitals, and keeping your husband happy. That’s where you stand.

The problem is, you wish your husband would get used to the new (10-year-old) you, but that’s not going to happen. There’s no point in talking about whether he should accept you, just like there’s no point in talking about whether you should damp down your hypomania. He can’t help where he stands and neither can you.

So instead of writing to someone who’s supposed to persuade you to take your medication, face the sad fall-out from your decision. Don’t blame yourself; just ask whether the marriage is worth it, because clearly, your old marriage and the mania can’t co-exist.

On the one side, you’ve shared a lot of years together and your standard of living is probably better with him than without him, given that you’re on disability. On the other hand, there’s the mutual non-acceptance, which is hard for both of you to live with.

Whatever you decide, stop whining. You’re not to blame for a bad decision, and you aren’t a victim of bipolar disease, so don’t make yourself a victim of your husband’s non-acceptance.

If you want to continue to live with him, have the balls to stand by your decision. Tell him you’re sticking with the temperament you’ve got, you still want to live with him, you won’t talk to shrinks, and you’ll sleep where you sleep. If he wants to throw you out when he realizes, after 10 years, that you aren’t going to change, so be it. You don’t blame yourself for choosing to live with your hypomanic mood, and you don’t blame him if he wants to leave his life with you behind.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’ve ruined my marriage by deciding to do what’s right for me, but the decision has been costly in so many ways that I know I didn’t do it lightly or to spite my husband, so I respect my decision. Now I need to ignore feelings of guilt or wishes that he could accept me the way I am and instead accept him the way he is. Whatever I decide to do about our marriage, I’ll do what I think is best for us and never be a victim.”