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AJ · June 8, 2016, 09:08 AM

Hi Catman and welcome to the forum. You are in a difficult situation. Being with someone with a mental illness is not easy, never mind if you're dealing with your own. Mood swings are difficult at the best of times, never mind if you are being shut out of the process. Perhaps it is all he can do to stay a float right now, it's hard to know if he's not talking to you.

Does he see a psychiatrist? Perhaps he would be open to seeing him sooner? His medication may need to be adjusted, and or he may have other issues going on.

I'm very different than my partner. I like to talk things thru and my partner needs time to process what's going on before being ready to talk. I have learnt over the years that it is better to wait then force the issue. Having said that, we have agreed to talk about it later in the same day. Neither of us can have something 'hanging' any longer then that.

Also, am I wrong to think that if this pattern will be our life together from time to time, I shouldn't have to let him cut himself off from me every time it happens until it passes?

Perhaps he needs time to sort out what's going on for him and maybe it needs to be longer then you would like, but one thing you do deserve is respect. It would not be too much to ask him to at least acknowledge your presence. Perhaps giving him the time he needs with some ground rules might be possible.

Take care of yourself in all this and do what you need to do for yourself for your own well being.

**catman** · June 8, 2016, 02:00 PM

Hi AJ,

Thank you very much for your reply. It helps a lot to know there are other people willing to listen and share their own experiences. I absolutely relate to the way you are different from your partner. I like to deal with things immediately, otherwise I dwell on it and make it worse, whereas he likes to wait days to process. I think that's a good suggestion to wait until later that day, but he never seems to be "ready". He can be very hard-headed (though I still love him dearly), and I've asked him to acknowledge me through text messages just once a day so I know he's okay, but he doesn't keep up with that very well. I'm scared that I'll push him too hard and he'll just toss his hands up and say forget this. He has been talking to a couple different counselors for at least half a year now.

**uni** · June 8, 2016, 03:14 PM

Hello Catman, and welcome to the forum! Thanks for sharing about your situation. Bipolar disorder is notorious for putting stress on relationships, that's for sure. By trying to find out more about bipolar you're doing both of you a favour.

How do you figure out what he's experiencing or thinking when he won't communicate with you? You can't, not really, because nobody is a mind reader. When, if, or how he communicates is pretty much up to him. How much time it will take before he does so is unpredictable. Meanwhile, my concern would be how to keep yourself on an even keel in spite of his behaviour, since you struggle with depression and anxiety yourself. Are there positive activities and people in your life that can balance out the upsetting stuff about your boyfriend, and give you some peace of mind? These may be life savers for you, and if you are doing well then everything will be a little easier to handle. I know it doesn't change the fact that your boyfriend has a potentially life threatening illness though. I don't know if any of what I've written is helpful, but it's all I've got. Others her can probably relate more directly. My heart goes out to you in dealing with this.

**catman** · June 8, 2016, 04:37 PM

Hi Uni,

Thank you for your reply. What you wrote is helpful. It helps me confirm that it's not just me who can't "figure him out". It would be hard for anyone to read minds. I agree in that I need positive things in my life. I have my mom who helps a lot, but I do find myself crying and panicking over my situation with my boyfriend. I've been thinking of getting involved in some exercise group, but I haven't brought myself to do it yet. Just getting involved in this forum already makes me feel a bit better. Do you have any advice on getting myself busy with positive things? I'm struggling quite a bit with that.

C.

**uni** · June 8, 2016, 10:12 PM

Hello again catman. I'm glad you find the forum helpful. You can vent or ask questions or help other people and it's all to the good.

Regarding positive things, I find there are (1) positive things done alone and (2)positive things done with other people.

Having even one other person (a positive person) to go for a walk, or a coffee, or some other simple activity with is a help. It gets me out of home and moving around. From there, I find it easier to carry on doing other things I enjoy. The difficulty for me is actually picking up the phone and calling someone. Of course I use a landline from the last century when I'm at home

. I sometimes do text someone with my cell, but not to have a text conversation. I do it to ask if it's a good time to talk. I'm always conscious of possibly getting someone at a bad time so like to check first.

Doing solitary stuff can work too, like hobbies or whatever you normally enjoy. The trick for me is to start small. For example "I'll just spend five minutes journaling" or reading a helpful book or doing some stretches or meditation or something creative. More often than not, the five minutes turns into quite a lot longer.

AJ · June 9, 2016, 09:13 AM

You know what I've found very helpful, is to get up at the crack of dawn and meet a friend at the dog park to run our dogs. They love it, we chat and it's a great way to start a day. Of course sleep can be a little lacking if bedtime is too late.

When I was younger and much healthier, physically at least, I used to run early in the morning every day. I still miss it all these years later.

Sometimes starting small as Uni has pointed out, can really help. When I had no energy or motive to do much of anything, I would write, and still do. Sometimes it's a line or just a word. Sometimes it's a scribble.

Uni I'm going to buy you a new cell for Christmas.

**paul m** · June 10, 2016, 03:13 AM

Hello Catman and welcome to the forum. I can't give you any great advice as you and your B/F's live's are different than mine.

Bipolar is a strange illness and one that is hard to get a good handle on what will work and what won't work. Bipolar, put my wife and I through Hell several times and made our lives very difficult, and still rears it's ugly head once in a while.(I'm the one with bipolar)

If we had to do it all over again, a couple of things that we would do are very clear and several other things that happened because of the illness are also very clear. .

1) I would seek much more aggressive treatment. I spent way too much time taking meds and having them not control my mood swings. Nothing wrong with meds, I take them all of the time, but the right ones can be hard to find. I would have insisted that my doctor help me to find out what works much quicker. It can be really hard work to get better and the side effects are awful of some meds so I hated changing meds, but until I found what worked it was hard to live a halfway normal life.

2) My wife and I , during periods of normalcy , should have talked a lot more about what to do in case/when future episodes came up. All too often we had no plan what we would do when ups or downs hit.

3) Often I did push my wife away, because I was hurting so bad I didn't want to inflict that on anyone.

4) Sometimes I pushed my wife away because mania and mixed states sometimes made me a world class a*shole who thought he knew everything and/or didn't care about other people's feelings.

5) We both would have spent a lot more time learning about the illness. It takes a very long time to learn about some mental illnesses because the same illness may vary a lot from person to person. So what meds work for me, may not work for someone else and my symptoms may be much different.

6)We would have spent more time paying attention to what were the early warning signs for a mood change (example, if I start not sleeping, but have a lot of energy, I'm heading manic) . If I start obsessing about anything or anyone, I'm probably under going a mood swing. Conversely, sleeping too much, not being particular about my hygiene and losing interest in things that I normal enjoy, usually means that my moods are heading down.

7)We would have spent a lot more time learning about triggers. Triggers are something that make a mood swing happen. Everybodies triggers are different, but examples of mine are , lot's of coffee, not sleeping much , poor diet and too much sugar, will trigger me just about every time into a manic episode. Going into a strip joint immediately overwhelms any meds that I'm taking and will make me manic in about 2 minutes. Meds cannot control everything,

8) I would have given up drinking much earlier. I was never a heavy drinker, I doubt if I got drunk drunk once every 6 mths and I never drank more than a dozen beer a week on average. But for me that much was poison. I still drink and I'm not against drinking, but I've never yet met anyone with serious bipolar who didn't have a lot of problems if they used very much alcohol or other substances.

There has been lots that I have left out and not everybodies illness was as difficult as mine, nor was mine as difficult as other people's. For most people it is possible to get better , not always, but mostly, but it is never easy for the person suffering or their loved ones.

Having said all of that , certainly it's possible to enjoy life, at least for some of us. Our son is getting married this summer and he , like myself, still has problems with bipolar. My wife and I will have dating since 1974 this fall and in August we will have been mrd 40 yrs.

So ask lots of questions and learn all you can about the illness. Like all other lifetime illnesses, it sometimes takes a lot for everyone concerned to learn about what will work and what won't . Take Care.paul m

**catman** · June 10, 2016, 03:44 PM

Hi Paul,

He's since broken things off with me. It has left me feeling very drained and emotional. I always tried to stick by him during his swings, but this time he pushed me away to the point where I don't think it would be right for us to get back together.

**paul m** · June 11, 2016, 12:47 AM

Hello Catman. I can understand you feeling that and I don't blame you for feeling that way. I can understand your feeling of loss and despair, especially when you worked so hard to keep things together.

I don't know in how many different ways I pushed my wife away. Even in my marriage bipolar and mood swings caused problems beyond belief. Problems that no amount of love alone could over come.

Any one who has posted on here for a while will know that I will never win a lottery , because I used up all my luck when I met my wife. I've always realized that she was an exceedingly special woman right from the very first couple of dates.

However even special people can be pushed to far. To be honest with you, we wouldn't be together today if many yrs ago our son hadn't got really sick with bipolar and we were forced to pool our resources together to help him recover. I was well on my way to recovery when this happened, but my wife had suffered enough and we were going to split. Attending to our son forced us to work together and apply some patches to allow us to continue together.

The illness causes terrible things to happen and the human suffering by all can be unbelievable. You have my sympathy in regards to your break up, no matter what the cause, break ups are pain full. Take Care. paul m

**catman** · June 11, 2016, 01:26 AM

Hi again, Paul. It's not that he pushed me away to the point of me being done with it, but he pushed me away as in told me it's over. It's left me unsure of what part was actually our relationship not working for him, and what part was his mood swings... I have so many questions that I don't think I want to know the answers to. I wanted to be with him forever, despite the pain his illness caused me or our relationship, but apparently he didn't want that with me. Can I ask you if you ever broke up with your now wife like that? Or have you always held on to her despite the setbacks? I just feel like if he really wanted me, he would've wanted me by his side through all the bad times. Is that true? Sorry for asking such personal questions, if you don't want to answer I'll completely understand. It just helps to get a different experience of bipolar than that of my ex-boyfriend's.

You've been a great help.

C.

**paul m** · June 12, 2016, 02:05 AM

Hello Catman. I don't mind personal questions. I will forewarn you that what happened to me and what is happening to your ex and you may be much different. Bipolar affects everyone differently plus some people are good people, they just have a bad illness, others may have a bad illness and still be an a*shole.

You said " I just feel like if he really wanted me, he would've wanted me by his side through all the bad times. " Rationally that would be true, unfortunately rational and bipolar don't tend to coexist. My wife said to me more than a few times "If you really loved me, how could you say those things or do those things or variations thereof.

Looking back, with a lot of experience, I still don't know why I did and/or said the things that I did. Sometimes, I felt that I didn't want to put her through all of the hell that I knew that she was going through and sometimes I didn't care (mania) that I was putting her through a lot of hell. During those manic times I considered it was my right to do what I wanted and if she wanted to leave that was fine with me. Please remember that when I was normal, I considered this woman to be the best thing that ever happened to me, yet when manic, I made lousy choices and said terrible things.

But yes I broke up with her and pushed her away even though I knew that I should not have at times. (Not me , the illness did that, but it was my body and mouth that did it. if that makes any sense).

I've tried to commit suicide a couple of times, once was because I didn't understand why I was putting my loved ones through so much hell and why I was pushing them away so much. My psychic pain became so bad because of this , that I could not see any way out for them and me, except for me to end it all.

For me, the worse part about bipolar wasn't that it ruined my career and in a lot of ways ruined my life for many years, the worse part was how many other live's it ruined for many years as well.

My wife, still lives with a nagging fear that I will someday become manic again. I have a great fear that I will become that manic again. I still have nightmares about that possibility and so does my wife. Depression, no matter how deep, I have learned to life with , without thinking about suicide. However I'm not sure that I could live through another episode of extreme mania.

Does that mean that I think that you should give your ex another chance. I can't say that, I don't know either one of you. My wife and I had nearly 20 yrs in and had two kids before my mania got really bad, for another 5 yrs it was a horror show and then it took another 5 yrs to put things back together and we still have a few struggles at times to this very day. So our path was much different than yours.

I'm sorry if I haven't given you a clear answer, but some things still aren't clear in my own head, bipolar can be like that. If you have more questions or if something is unclear, please ask. Take Care. paul m

P.S. to all. For those of you who don't know me, I am basically a nice guy who would not think of hurting or bullying anyone. When I talk about my doing terrible things and/or hurting people, it wasn't that I did anything physical to anyone.

However lying, cheating, verbally abusing people, spending money like crazy, not caring if the rent, hydro, phone and other bills were paid, disappearing for hrs or days and not caring about anyone but myself are all examples of doing terrible things to others that caused those other people to have more than their share of nightmares.

Believe me, it's also nightmare to be a nice guy and realize that for the last 6 mths you have done those sort of things to others, worse still to get better for a few months and then repeat everything again, over and over. To add to that nightmare is to try and get better and not be able to no matter how many doctors you see nor how many pills you take.

**catman** · June 13, 2016, 05:45 PM

Paul, thank you for all the time you give to this forum. It's very helpful to all, and especially when things are so unclear, it's nice to have other experiences to go off of. My ex boyfriend did many of those things, if not all. He could be very verbally abusive, and he would ignore me all the time without caring about hurting me, but he wasn't always like that. That's why I'm so confused if it was his illness or just him. It could've been both, but I just don't think he's at the point of his life where he's ready to really deal with it all - and I can't blame him for that. You have to be willing to accept help from other people, but more importantly from within. He needs to work on himself, as easy as that is to say, just like all of us with mental illness do. It's hard, and I wish I could be there for him because I know he needs help, but I can't drain myself every time for him when he just gets angry at me for "not understanding". I know I can never fully understand what mania is like because I've never experienced it, but I am always willing and able to learn. Another thing he said when he broke up with me was that he started disliking every part of our relationship. To me, that sounds unfair and more like a mania type of comment, but it's so hard to tell.

**paul m** · June 16, 2016, 06:08 AM

Hello Catman. You are quite right that he probably needs to work on himself.However that can be difficult. I'm not saying that you are not understanding, I don't think there is much else that you can do. However to give a few more examples from my own life.

The few times I got mad at my wife wasn't because she didn't understand, it was because she had preconceived notions about how, when and what would make me better.

Those notions were not helped much by my doctor who said dumb things like " He should be better by now, is he taking his medication?" . (medication only works if it is the RIGHT medication). Or well meaning relatives telling her that "if he would only read this self help book he could get better" or in the case of my mother, "if only he would go to church and pray more. "

However I digress with a little of my own venting LOL.

You said a couple of things . One that it could be part illness and part him. You are probably right, unfortunately he may not know himself which is illness and which is himself. As humans , we tend to be creatures of habit. So if mania makes it easy to lie, go out drinking with the boys on a regular basis and live in an unrealistic world for 6mths or so, at the end of that time it's not so easy to suddenly become a truthful, sober guy who suddenly needs to shun his drinking buddies.

So some bad habits can become ingrained and can be very hard to change(especially if we had a good time 75% of the time in the last 6mts).

You said "You have to be willing to accept help from other people, but more importantly from within. He needs to work on himself" I couldn't agree more, however I will show a little sympathy towards him when I say that bipolar is the most confusing thing that I ever had to try and figure out. There were long periods of time that I didn't know who the real me was or what I was like. That still does not excuse the need to work on ones self. In the 90's medication was touted as the answer. Nowadays, while the answers may be still difficult to find, at least there are more resources available.

The # 1 rule when caring about some one else's health is to look after your own first. The MDAO puts out a good guide about helping someone with a mood disorder https://www.mooddisorders.ca/guide/g...-mood-disorder

You won`t find any great answers there, but it may help you to understand a bit more.

In the mean time, look after your own illness,you seem like a good person and the younger a person starts to get a handle on their illnesses, the greater the likely hood there is of good results.

**catman** · June 16, 2016, 01:53 PM

Paul,

You're very right. I sympathize for him too, however, I can't push the healing process for him. If now's not the right time for him, hopefully he'll find more of himself and what works for him soon enough. I wish I could've helped more, which I think backfired quite a bit in our relationship. I was SO willing to help, but didn't know how, and that in turn stressed me out - also why you're very right in needing to take care of yourself first. He really didn't know what he needed to help himself, but one of the things he would go to constantly is "I just need time". However, it wasn't something our relationship had much of, unfortunately. I think it was just too soon for him. He has a lot of growing to do, and I truly hope he discovers what helps him, and can have someone else in his life understand what helps him as well.

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