Partners who chose to stay for the long haul

Your experience is obviously the ideal, and was how it was in the early stages of my husbands illness, but when we changed to a different area in 1980's I found a mental health service that refused to include carers, in fact considered family to be the problem. Fortunately this has had a complete change in the past few months, but a good deal of damage and stress has occured in our family during the years in the wilderness.

@LizzieLou

Sadly in the early days for us there was no communication with a private pdoc, it was a poor therapeutic relationship which was abandoned fairly quickly.

Sadly with little insight into his behaviours (but fortunately the insight that something was wrong) and without appropriate support from me (I did my best but had no idea and would just encourage him to go to the doc/take meds and suffer through his hypomania), after 8 years Mr Darcy spiralled into psychosis, going AWOL a number of times and he was in and out of hospital getting worse, he became delusional and attempted a few times, the last attempt resulting in major damage. After this and with me disagreeing with some treatment being given, a pdoc told me to look things up. When I did and understood I was able to report behaviours that were actually symptoms, his diagnosis was changed, he was appropriately medicated and has been stable for 4 years and has not been readmitted.

Following his last hospitalisation,I lodged a complaint and communication was a key component of this.

Certainly with a recent interstate move I have found our new public health care team to be accomodating. To me carer communication is essential, it is not negotiable.

No I am not included. It is his secret journey and largely he manipulates the conversations with his Phsych to remain blameless in the MI picture. The surface is only ever scratched no really important work is ever achieved by seeing his Phsych. It's really only an exercise in having a friend to play chess with. It's been useless for a long while now. Feeling very flat with it all.

I seem to be in the wilderness as we speak. My darling has turned into someone I don't know anymore. Found out a week ago he stopped taking his meds 2 yrs ago. His Phsych has known all along. When I look back at how I have been treated in the last 2 yrs all I do is cry. I have been carrying the responsibility for his MI all that time and blaming myself for getting things wrong. Trapped in corners of abuse but still being the MI bodyguard and holding him back from being locked up by society manic anger outbursts at innocent people. I never knew. I was not part of the decision re his meds and even though I reached out to his Phsych via email and told the truth about his delusional behaviour and violent verbal outbursts mania and paranoia was suggested I buy a book. The happiness trap. CBT....honestly !!! As if we haven't been that route 10 yrs ago. I don't get it. Responsibility where does it begin?

I have been told the same by professionals several times over the years. My reply is always how is that going to help either me or my husband. Your not very good At your job are you? And quietly walk out the door. If my life experience is more than they are trained for then I should have a degree not them.

Thankyou for your kind words. My husbands Paranoia has eroded my friendships all but one very dear friend who is also Bi Polar she has been a wonderful support but as you can imagine often crosses over into another person I sometimes need to support as well out of love.
My husbands intensity frightens people so we need to stay out of public. I have limited mobility and ride a mobility scooter which makes accessing good services difficult. I still drive but not very far. My lack of privacy for myself is another issue as his fear I may speak to someone about him is triggering.

No family being the only girl in the family with 3 brothers who don't have a clue about MI and basically don't want to know. Mum lives with us as she is 85 and frail just about to move into permanent care.

I have reached out to a local counsellor who has in the past been helpful but she just said "leave him". I'm not going to do that and found that a very demoralizing experience. We dearly love each other.

For now we just remain at home in our beautiful part of the world and live quietly alone.

I bought the book as advised I will read it. I already am well versed in CBT he will look at it but being an extremely high acedemic will feel it childish and it will sit on the shelf until like you I willl pass it onto another in need.
My energy is incredibly low at the moment in fact flat. Time will hopefully help. Sometimes feeling safe and quiet at home is all I can do.

thankyou again for the reply.

@Carlachris I have also had the "suggest you leave" and have now made it very clear at the start of any counseling that I am not going anywhere and please do not go down that track.

I have just come across this article and the term "differentiation" (being comfortable with ones partner having their own interests in a relationship) which in turn brought to my mind the question of if my partner does not like a particular friend of mine is there something that I need to be aware of and subsequently came across the 2nd article as to when is something a flag or a red flag? Interesting reading.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/04/dear-therapist-my-partner-is-super-judgmental-of-my-friends/558815/

https://conscious-transitions.com/flags-versus-red-flags/

I do feel we have had similar experiences, I certainly have little family support, no sisters or close friends now that I can confide in. Even family members back away from mental illness. As for the expectation that the thing to do is leave. How easy it is for medical people to say that, but it is not so easy to do, for so many reasons, one that has always been an issue is lack of money. Another of course is I was expected to leave the house I paid the bulk of the morgage on, and leave myself homeless? My husband still insists on trying to keep up the fiction of his stable working life, how he earned a lot of money. He is very intelligent, but has never been able to cope with reality, and would not manage without a lot of help. Recently thank goodness I have been supported by the public mental health system we rely on, but there are still some who have not caught up with the idea that actually the reason he attends is that he does have a mental illness, and I am not really the one with the problem. There was a suggestion that because I mentioned to a doctor his paranoia had increased that I needed psycotherapy.

Thank you. I have read and largely agree with both articles. I suppose we need to take what we need from all the information available and somehow make sense out of the patchwork we live in. I'm good at sewing so forever catching the dropped stitches in our marriage. I think I'm largely tired. The saying it is at times easier to "just give in" rings true. It doesn't help but It's true.

I am learning to gauge the crisis differently these days through trial and error. Bit of an impossible task now my love is unmedicated. I have been told by professionals that he needs to help himself. I've been telling them that for years.
hubby holds Several degrees one in Political history and 2 honor degrees in Phsychology. Makes it even trickier when he already knows how to subvert the systems designed to help. For now we wait. I will not leave him. I'm not going to let MI take him from our family. we are becoming grandparents later this year. He has to decide what role to play in the childs life. Unmedicated none or medicated.

thankyou for the articles. I appreciate them.