http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... lness.html
'I didn't know when I married him that my husband had a mental illness'
In Lifeclass this week, Lesley Garner advises a reader whose husband suffers from bi-polar disorder.
By Lesley Garner
Last Updated: 11:31AM BST 01 May 2009
Dear Lesley,
I would sincerely value your advice. I have been married for 15 years, and have no children. I am in my mid-forties, and my husband is 10 years older.
Two years into my marriage, he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He has been in and out of mental institutions ever since, and is more or less stabilised on medication.
I am the only person in the past 15 years who has stood by him. His family and our friends dropped us like hot potatoes when his diagnosis was confirmed.
But I am desperately unhappy in this marriage, for a number of reasons. There has been no intimacy for 13 years. My husband hasn't worked for six years and relies entirely on me for financial support. He watches television all day, and is not the slightest bit interested in finding a job, doing volunteer work, going to the gym or socialising. I, on the other hand, work full time and do lots of volunteer work in my spare time. I also have a good social life.
I had a horrendous childhood, owing to an extremely violent and alcoholic father. Both my parents died when I was in my early twenties, and I married my husband within three months of meeting him. I didn't realise that he had a serious mental illness. I simply put his exuberance down to an extremely outgoing personality.
I have had serious health problems of my own in the past few years, and suffered family bereavements as well. But my philosophy of life has always been "get down off your cross, we need the wood", so I carry on. However, my marriage situation is really weighing me down now.
I have never been unfaithful to my husband. My Catholic faith has kept me strong but I have changed and no longer want to stay in a marriage in which I seem to give everything and receive nothing in return. I do, however, feel an enormous sense of guilt at the thought of leaving as I am the only constant in his life, and he has often told me that, should anything happen to me, he would simply take his own life.
I have tried on numerous occasions in the past to discuss the lack of intimacy in our marriage and my unhappiness, but it completely destabilises my husband, and leaves him needing even more emotional support and reassurance than before. I have now reached the point where I am too weary in spirit to know what to do for the best, which is why I am asking for your advice. Vanessa
Dear Vanessa,
You are weary, deeply unhappy, unhealthy, burnt-out. Your husband may be threatening you with suicide if you leave him but staying with him is draining your own life force. I have an image of an inert, controlling figure, sucking the life out of you while you try desperately to sustain some kind of a life of your own and valiantly do what you see as your duty. Whether you leave your husband or not, your current situation is unsustainable.
Does it make you feel any better when I tell you that 90 per cent of marriages in which one partner is suffering from bipolar disorder end in divorce? A website called
www.lifeloveandbipolar.com will tell you that the diagnosis of a spouse with bipolar disorder has been called a diagnosis for the couple.
And the diagnosis is not good. The same website argues for bipolar-divorce prevention strategies, even as it hands out the bad news. It sounds to me as though you have beaten the odds single-handedly in surviving this far but I have to ask, how long can you continue to soldier on with no reward?
What are your options? Who can you talk to? I assume that your husband has support from the mental health team, a psychiatrist and his GP. Have you discussed your situation with any of them? You say that he is stabilised on his current medication but it sounds to me as though he is still on the depressed side of manic-depression. He certainly doesn't sound functional. According to Freud, the two most powerful forces in human life are love and work – but your husband is capable of neither at the moment.
Somebody – everybody – on his team needs to know that you have reached the end of your tether, and consider what support he would need if you left him. Carers – and you are a carer – carry the burdens they do because it is assumed, until they collapse, that they will. If you left him, in order to live independently and breathe, would you carry on supporting him financially? Who would live with him? Who would take responsibility for his care? You need to discuss all these questions with others.
But what I would really like you to do is find somebody who will just be there for you, somebody to whom you can talk honestly, not just about the present situation but about your whole life. Your childhood accustomed you to abuse, and to second-guessing and placating a difficult and unstable man. It is a situation you were born to, which is one reason you are finding it so very difficult to leave your husband.
But, in therapy, for example, you could begin to unravel what is appropriate to your past, and what you could do for yourself now as an adult. Even if you were to leave your husband, I think you would find it difficult to make a new life for yourself without addressing the damage done to you by your past. The website of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (
www.bacp.co.uk) will explain different types of therapy and help you find somebody in your area.
How is your Catholic faith helping you here? Who was it, in your family, who urged you to get off the cross because they needed the wood? I assume they meant you to stop behaving like a martyr but, in fact, getting off your cross and walking away, if only temporarily, is exactly what you need to do in order to save yourself. Your priest, or someone from your church, is the obvious person for you to talk to. But you need compassion, not guilt; open listening, not judgment. It sounds as though you have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.
The situation of your marriage is one of co-dependency. By supporting him in every way you are enabling your husband to relinquish all responsibility for his situation. I think you might also find it very helpful and enlightening to attend a meeting of Co-Dependents Anonymous, a Twelve Step group along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous, which exists to support people in situations like yours.
One of the typical characteristics they quote in identifying patterns of co-dependent behaviour is, "I am extremely loyal, remaining in harmful situations too long". Another, which might relate to you, is, "I compromise my own values and integrity to avoid rejection or others' anger". You can find a local group through
www.coda-uk.org, which will provide you with a sponsor, and help you to develop healthier behaviour.
A psychologist I once knew said that the body never lies. We can spin ourselves all kinds of narratives. We can be consumed with guilt. We can kid ourselves about our own happiness and sustain the most unsustainable situations but it will be the body, unconsulted, put-upon, abused, that will tell us when it has had enough. If you are weary in spirit and sick in body, as you are, you need help to change your situation.
